The Master of Disguise was a dumb movie but Dana Carvey’s impression of Robert Shaw is hilarious.
Brody was going to show his appendectomy scar? In the clip I gave, he pulls up his shirt revealing the area around and to his left of his navel (and above his belt). Nowhere close to where an appendectomy scar would be.
Maybe in the book it is, but the movie isn’t implying any such thing.
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LOL, the shark is barely in the movie.
Also, it’s Quint’s boat.
Let me be the devil’s advocate here. There are some great scenes, and especially the one mentioned in the OP. But it’s a very conventional monster movie. Monster moves in. Monster eats somebody. One or two guys sound a warning, which is ignored by the political and business powers, who don’t want to scare away tourist money. Monster then eats a bunch of people very publicly. The hunt for the monster begins.
But this is a really good example of the genre.
IIRC, and it’s been more than 30 years since I read the book, Quint drowns when the rope from his harpoon get entangled on his leg and the shark pulls him off the boat into the water.
Doubt a life jacket would have saved him. (And Hooper gets eaten, again, IIRC)
Not only eaten but shot in the throat by Brody.
The monster is even killed unconventionally. When really that rifle should have been just fine. (shouldn’t it?)
Not all that different from the 1916 Jersey Shore attacks which supposedly inspired Benchley’s book.
I have a completely different point of view.
Jaws is perhaps one of the first movies I became aware of. It came out when I was five or six years old. I recall having a rubber shark toy. And I remember the book cover. The bikini-clad girl made quite an impression on me.
But somehow I never actually got around to seeing the movie. A couple of weeks ago, it popped up on Netflix, and I figured that I should see it since it was a well-loved classic. I was fully prepared to see a cheesy, melodramatic '70s action flick.
I was very pleasantly surprised. Everything about it was so well done—the performances, the cinematography, the music—all except the monologue about the Indianapolis. That scene bored me.
I found Shaw’s manner to be fake and theatrical, and the story itself made no impression on me. The only thing it seemed to do was to set up Quint’s bashing the radio the next day when Brody tried to call for help.
I wonder how much Benchley was paid for his appearance in the movie? Maybe it was just a vanity cameo.
I suspect he got scale. I think union rules prohibit anyone appearing for free.
Sharks are incredibly hard to kill, I guess because of their relatively primitive brains. In the book (and maybe in the film; I don’t remember), Quint empties an M1 carbine into a captive shark’s head, and it barely stuns him. Yes, this is fiction, but I’ve read factual accounts where sharks are disemboweled during a feeding frenzy and continue feasting on their own guts.
In ***Jaws ***the novel, of course, the shark isn’t shot or blown up.
He simply dies (finally!) after having been harpooned and towing floats around for several days.
Even better - she was nude, not bikini-clad, on the cover. She was skinny dipping at a beach party.
No such scene in the movie. In the movie, it was an M1 Garand, far more powerful than a carbine. I suspect several well placed shots up close with a Garand would eventually kill even a 25 ft Great White, but it would be a slow death due to damage and blood loss, not an instantaneous kill.
Of course, Mythbusters tried to blow up a scuba tank with a Garand on multiple occasions, and it never worked - the bullet would go right through and leave a neat hole, not rupture the tank.
I agree, Jaws and I’d add The Natural are book’s who’s movie adaptions are much better than the original written material.
Beautiful summary of the scene Shodan, it is one of the best moments in movie history. Robert Shaw was an amazing actor.
A direct homage to Captain Ahab, in case anyone missed it.
That was a well-written OP and makes me appreciate the monologue and the movie a little more. Well done.
One unusual aspect of his court martial was that the commander of the Japanese sub that sunk his ship was flown to Washington to testify. He told the court that had McVay zig-zagged his ship, it wouldn’t have made any difference.