Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

1987
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Starring Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles, Karen Young, Judith Barsi and Michael Caine

Longtime readers of the blog are aware of my Halloween obsession/borderline psychosis.  One thing that I haven't shared, however, is the story of my last Halloween as an active trick-or-treater.  In my household, it stopped when you left grade school, which in my mind is the way it SHOULD be, and when it came time for my retirement tour I pulled out all the stops, inviting a bunch of friends over to tag along for my final voyage on the greatest street in the history of Halloweens.  The plan was to play videogames after school (check), hit the street at dusk (check), then head back to the home base and catch a horror flick to finish off the night.  Since my friends were decidedly less taken with all of this stuff than I was, they left the movie choice up to me.

The movie that I picked for public viewing that long ago October 31st of 1995? Jaws: The Revenge.

Of course, I'd already seen it.  For a lot of my sixth grade year I was an absolute Jaws fanatic, with the original movie getting constant airplay in the ol' VCR.  In addition to that, I read the Peter Benchley novel, which for my money was the first fully satisfying adult book that I'd ever read (although I definitely prefer the movie; a 45-minute subplot with Richard Dreyfuss macking it to Chief Brody's wife is just fine left on the cutting room floor, thank you very much).  And when TNT trotted this bad boy out, I was all over that shit.  At the time, I might not have known any better about the vast expanse of its suckness, and I don't think my friends did either.  Now, I'm fully aware of just how ridiculous the whole thing is and can vouch for how crappy it is.  That doesn't mean that I still don't have a lot of nostalgic fondness for it, however.  Hopefully that spirit comes through here.

PLOT:  The movie brings back Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody, wife of Police Chief Martin Brody in the first two films.  Early on, her son Sean is killed on his boat by a shark, and since Ellen had spent the film's introductory phase blathering on about how the "fear" of the shark returning is what was responsible for her husband's heart attack, the idea of this flick is indeed that the shark is coming back to stake a personal vendetta against the Brody family.  Hilariously preposterous, I know, but that's what we're working with here.  Anyway, after burying her son, Ellen heads down to the Bahamas to spend time with her older son Michael (Lance Guest), who works as a Marine Biologist.  Even better, one of his partners is played by Mario Van Peebles in full Rastafarian stoner mode.  So...yeah, this movie pretty much completely retcons the previous film in the series when it comes to the Brody offspring and their respective careers. 

Amazingly enough, the shark that killed Sean summarily shows up in the Bahamas, amping up the comedic value when attempting to make out the physics of this feat, all kinds of pissed off and ready to finish off the Brody famly once and for all.  There is also a strange romantic subplot as Ellen gets swept off her feet by Hoagie (Michael Caine), dashing pilot extraordinaire.  After a very short round of chaos involving the shark (the body count in this movie is criminally low - Sean Brody, a random girl on a beach, and maybe Mario Van Peebles - more on that later), Ellen takes to the sea for one final showdown with the shark.  So, in summary, all of this is laughable to the core, and no amount of jokes can quite convey the sheer stupidity of the plot contained above.
PLOT RATING: 1/2 * out of ****.

CHARACTERS AND ACTORS:  This is actually a miniature saving grace of the film.  Despite the inane script and plot, almost everyone in this film really does give it their all, particularly Lorraine Gary as Ellen.  It takes a pretty committed performance to utter some of the things that she says in this film ("it was the FEAR...the FEAR of it killed him!!") without eliciting laughter, but she manages to pull it off.  Lance Guest and Michael Caine are also perfectly respectable in their roles, while Van Peebles is endearingly goofy as Michael Brody's Marione Biology running buddy.  Fun fact that's also kinda spoilerish that was hinted at earlier: in the original theatrical cut of this film, Van Peebles' character dies in the film's conclusion, but audiences liked his character to the point that they re-shot the ending for TV and had him survive, despite video evidence clearly showing him being bitten, chewed up, and dragged to the ocean bottom.  Nothing a little band-aid can't fix.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: *** out of ****.  It really can't be overstated enough; I have to applaud this bunch.  They could have mailed it in, but instead go all-out and by-and-large come across like they actually care about Jaws: The Revenge.

COOL FACTOR:  It really is quite amazing to look at the evolution of the animatronic/mocked-up shark in the Jaws movies, and how the lifelike quality of the beast actually REGRESSES with time.  In the first movie, Spielberg and his wizards made it look fantastic.  By the third movie, we had 3D cardboard cutouts coming right at us.  And in this movie, we've got what you see above - a sad-sack piece of wood that has the ability to walk upright on its tail on top of the water for seconds at a time.  As already mentioned (aforementioned), this is also a movie that seems far more concerned with its maternal middle-aged love story between Ellen and Hoagie than with showing chaos.  Body count doesn't matter in a Jaws movie (the original movie had five deaths), but when they come, they have to count.  In this movie, they don't.
COOL FACTOR: * out of ****.

OVERALL:  How bad was this movie?  Despite turning a profit, despite horror going through a period now where every moderately attractive or even moderately cult-fanned film out there has received the remake bastardization in recent years, there still haven't been any Jaws movies since its release.  The flick is packed with inane touches.  In addition to the shark's heinous revenge plot and ability to travel at the speed of sound, there's also the incredibly baffling finale sequence where the shark eats its demise by...well, I'll just leave it up to you to seek that one out.  Suffice to say, the climax of this film deserves every bit of bad press and infamy that it has gotten.  Still, as bad as this movie is, it's one that actually manages to milk good performances out of its actors in bits that can be appreciated in between the truly inane stuff that happens every time the shark gets involved.
OVERALL RATING: * out of ****.  A pretty bad flick all things considered, but still worth checking out for a fascinating lesson about what truly shitty material actually looks like.