Word: sharking
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Then came CIA disillusionment, city crime and violence, and a scary shark. The cover photograph of the First Family [July 28] is as refreshing as a clear, cool, unpolluted mountain stream...
...There's nothing wise or animal about Robert Shaw's Quint. What you get is the perennial tooth missing, rough and ready sea captain. The only character played to the nines is Richard Dreyfuss's spoiled and reckless kid icthyologist Hooper. While he rarely gasps in awe at the shark's shiny hide. Dreyfuss's terrific comedic talents gives the film exactly what it needs for balance--sparking and believable touches of levity to humanize the nightmare...
...tell that Dreyfuss and Spielberg were right in synch because the balance between tension and release--a crucial asset to horror movies--is what the director does really well. Unlike The Exorcist, which constantly kept your stomach gnarled waiting for what atrocity you would be subjected to next, shark attacks in Jaws are well spaced until the end when Spielberg turns it on full force, Swooping you up and whooshing you down, it's the fun of a fishy roller coaster ride. Spielberg is better at the slow thrills--that sort of slither up on you and let you fall...
Quint, the shark catcher, initially dismisses his partners' charges of divine intelligence or beauty as hogwash. "Don't make him out to be more than he is. He's just a dumb garbage bucket." But as the chase goes on, he finds himself more drawn to the fish, almost hypnotized into the death duel. "Brody saw fever in Quint's face--a heat that lit up his dark eyes, an intensity that drew his lips back from his teeth in a crooked smile, an anticipation that strummed the sinews in his neck and whitened his knuckles." To Quint the fish...
...clearly Spielberg meant the film to be good clean fun, and apparently that's how a lot of people are taking it. WRKO radio is advertising a name-that-song contest which offers the grand prize of a shark hunt; a trip to Martha's Vineyard where the movie was filmed, two tickets to Jaws and a "shark repellent kit"--a baseball bat. Some...