peter benchley – Horror Ghouls

For this year’s shark week special, we’ll start off with the biggest fish of them all, the ultimate shark horror movie. The one and only movie that scared people away from the beaches and even lakes and swimming pools (!). It scared the bejeezus out of a lot of people, and some even carries that galeophobia to this day. Yes, we’re of course talking about Jaws from 1975, an instant classic when it came and still remains one, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. While Psycho made people afraid of showers, Jaws made people afraid of the ocean.

The story starts off in the New England beach town of Amity Island, and we are presented with the first kill almost immediately. A group of young people are partying at the beach, and one of the girls decide to go for a late night swim, while her too intoxicated boyfriend drunkenly collapses and passes out in the sand before being able to join her. Lucky for him, as we soon see her pulled underwater and dragged around like a ragdoll. By what, we don’t see, but of course we have a hunch. Next morning, her partial remains are found washed up on the beach, and when the coroner concludes that this is caused by a shark attack, police chief Martin Brody wants to close the beaches for people’s safety. But, oh no…that won’t do, since the town’s summer economy would suffer! Mayor Larry Vaughn won’t have any of such nonsense, of course. So what happens next is that everything is swept under the rug, no shark here, false alarm, fake news, probably a boating accident. Then the young boy Alex Kintner is killed at a crowded beach, where everyone gets the pleasure or watching nature’s brutality at its finest. And now, of course, it’s time to take it seriously enough to put a bounty on the shark, causing a full-frenzied amateur shark hunting by the local fishermen. Soon afterwards, some of them catches a tiger shark, and the Mayor once again declares the beaches safe. Ding-Dong, the shark is dead! Or maybe not. Slicing it open, there are no human remains inside its stomach. It’s also not as big as the presumed culprit should be, which is more likely to be a great white shark of the much larger kind.

And yes, much of the plot’s key points have been copied, referenced, and parodized numerous times over the years: a giant killer shark (or other creature) plus a town not wanting to take it seriously because of tourist money and local traditions, or something similar. It’s a no-brainer that a movie’s huge success will always make people try to copy it, and there’s no doubt that Jaws has inspired numerous shark and creature feature movies, and continues to do so, because there’s just so much it got right. One of those things include Spielberg’s decision to use lesser known actors. He said that actors who were more anonymous would help the audience find it more believable, as “stars bring a lot of memories along with them, and those memories can sometimes … corrupt the story“. True words. Besides, we all know that the real star here is the shark anyway, so…

Originally, this was actually not meant to be a Steven Spielberg film at all. John Sturges was first considered as director, then it went to Dick Richards instead, but he was dropped from the project. One of the reasons was apparently that he had a habit of describing the shark as a whale…I guess he mistook it for a Moby Dick story. Steven Spielberg became aware of the position and really, really wanted the job, and it all ended with the producers signing him to direct. The producers actually also wanted to train a great white shark for the movie. Uh…yeah, nope. Of course that was not possible, so that’s where “Bruce“ came into the works, which were three full-size pneumantically powered prop sharks. And the film crew nicknamed the shark props after Spielberg’s lawyer Bruce Ramer. Fun spin on the old phrase “all lawyers are sharks”.

The movie was shot mostly on location at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. It was also the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean, and yeah…the production was troubled where both the budget and schedules went to shit. To top it all, the main star of the movie, Bruce himself (the mechanical shark) malfunctioned all the time, causing Spielberg to focus more on the shark’s ominous presence than showing it very often. Which may very well have been art by accident, as this movie is definitely an excellent example of how less is more when it comes to showing off the “monster“. Add to it the excellent theme by John Williams, which has become so iconic you’ve probably heard it even if you haven’t seen the movie, and you’ve got the shark’s threatening presence in just a minimalist theme song. That’s no small feat. And despite being a movie that doesn’t show the “monster“ all too often, it doesn’t drown in loads of unnecessary subplots or character interaction that doesn’t drive the story further (which can be an issue in some creature features). The pacing is really good, there’s a constant sinister vibe overlaying the movie due to the shark’s elusive presence. And of course, we have some kill scenes which are really well done.

I’ll admit, Jaws holds a special place in my heart as one of the very first movies to actually scare me. Like, literally. I saw it at a very young age, and as someone growing up in a coastal town where boat life and spending time nearby the ocean and fishing during the summer was a way of my normal everyday life, the idea of a giant shark prowling underneath the waves literally scared the piss out of me. Most of the other horror movies I’d seen was too fantastical and removed from reality to really give me any “but what if“ impact. And while there aren’t even any great whites here in Norway, and the only shark species that roam the Norwegian waters are no threat to humans, it still instilled a deep-rooted fear in me which persisted. At the same time I also got fascinated by sharks, and I already had a love and fascination for ideas of sea monsters and the like, so overall I guess you can say that the movie kind of got me hooked.

If there is one downside with this movie, it’s how the public perception of sharks turned very negative, causing wide-spread trophy fishing and “revenge hunts“. I’d say that this is a people problem, not a movie problem though…both Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg expressed regret over how the movie caused such an impact on the real-world shark population. That being said, shark populations have also suffered from industrial overfishing and the shark fin trade. Humans will always remain the most dangerous creature, no matter what.

Jaws was the highest grossing film in history until the release of Star Wars two years later, and in 2001 the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the US National Film Registry. While there’s a huge ocean of shark movies out there, Jaws still takes the biggest and sharpest bite compared to all of them.

Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
Country & year: USA, 1975
Actors: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Carl Gottlieb, Jeffrey Kramer, Susan Backlinie, Jonathan Filley, Ted Grossman, Chris Rebello
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/

On a remote Caribbean island, there’s a government facility where the head scientist, Dr. Bishop, works on a project which includes a shark and human hybrid with the ability to adapt to any environment. Richland was sent to visit the facility, and is lead inside by Peniston. While Richland is being shown some of the dolphin/shark hybrids, the human shark hybrid breaks free from its tank and kills Dr. Bishop. Richland orders Peniston to kill it, but for some reason he instead traps the creature in a containment unit and dumps it in the sea.

Then we head forwards in time, to 25 years later, when a marine biologist (Dr. Chase) is working on the same island. The locals are not so fond of him, with his obvious care for sharks and his willingness to protect them, and he doesn’t exactly earn any extra stars of approval when he botches Ben Medeira’s fishing trip by cutting loose a pregnant great white shark that one of his customers had on the hook. Meanwhile, things are stirring up as another local, the cocky fisherman Puckett, retrieves a containment unit, and yep, it’s that one containment unit, which has been in the sea for 25 years. By doing so he accidentally and unwittingly releases the creature (which was alive for 25 years inside that containment unit…) and it’s hungry, of course. Medeira, while trying to lure back the pregnant white shark by throwing bloody fish pieces into the water so he can get it back on his customer’s hook, ends up as the creature’s first victim. The locals believe it’s the great white that killed him, the one that Dr. Chase set free, and despite his objections after inspecting Medeira’s body no one will listen to him. In perfectly good timing, Dr. Chase’s ex-wife, their son and the ex wife’s sea lion Robin comes to the island for a visit. While trying to solve the mystery behind Medeira’s death, which Dr. Chase is convinced could not have been done by a shark, the crazy Peniston (who is called “Werewolf” by the locals since he keeps howling at people for no apparent reason) sees the empty containment unit and realizes that the creature has been set loose.

Creature is a miniseries directed by Stuart Gillard, and it’s based on Peter Benchley’s novel White Shark. As you probably know, there’s another shark movie based on one of Peter Benchley’s novels, the famous Jaws which is a classic and probably one of the very, very few shark horror movies that can be deemed to be good. Not saying there aren’t many entertaining shark movies, there’s plenty of so-bad-it’s-good and pure comedies out there, but very few shark movies with a serious tone have been even close to successful on the same level. So, if you expect Creature to be in the same vein as Jaws, you’d be sorely disappointed. It’s slightly cheesy, typical B-class creature feature, but not without entertainment value. For example, the creature itself is pretty well made. No surprise there, seeing as Stan Winston and his studio is behind the special effects. We do not see all that much of it, though, but the few scenes where it’s properly included looks pretty neat. And I do say properly, because some scenes with the creature are filmed/edited in such an inexplicably distorted, unclear and strange way. This would have made sense if the effects were crap (considering it’s a well-known “trick” in some movies with very low-quality special effects to make those scenes as quick and confusing as possible) but here it makes no sense at all. Oh well. The acting overall is decent enough, we have Craig T. Nelson (the father in Poltergeist) as Dr. Chase, and it was fun to see Giancarlo Esposito in the role as Peniston/the crazed “werewolf”. Esposito is now mostly known for his role as Gus in the Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul TV series, and even had a role as the dictator villain in the video game Far Cry 6. Here, however, he mainly plays something completely different from the stiff-faced villainous type he’s mostly known for.

The movie was filmed partly on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. (As is mostly the case when a movie or series is based on a book, there’s differences, and in this case the material from the book has apparently pretty much gone through a complete reworking. For example, in this miniseries the US Navy creates the creature during the Vietnam war, while in the book the nazi’s created it during WW2, and the story is set to happen on Long Island instead). Aside from the tropical surroundings, we do get some enjoyable sets, including an abandoned laboratory partly underwater, tunnels, and a foggy swamp. Yeah, sure, it’s not great, the book is probably better (I haven’t read it, just a hunch), and it’s sometimes unintentionally cheesy, but at least it’s entertaining. So grab the popcorn, put your brain on standby, as this B-creature feature will by no means scare you or astonish you, but with its mish-mash of a human hybrid monster, government cover-ups, family struggles, occasional nonsense spritzed with a Caribbean flavour, it’s a typical B-movie that’s entertaining on a popcorn level if you can take it for what it is.

Director: Stuart Gillard
Writers: Rockne S. O’Bannon
Country & year: USA, Canada, 1998
Actors: Craig T. Nelson, Kim Cattrall, Colm Feore, Cress Williams, Michael Reilly Burke, Michael Michele, Matthew Carey, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Blu Mankuma, John Aylward, Giancarlo Esposito
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0156205/

Tag: peter benchley

Jaws (1975)

Creature (1998)