Review: 'Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard (Updated and Revised Edition)'

While many have accused Jaws of wrecking the serious "New Cinema" of the seventies, many others have celebrated it as the movie that rescued the decade from relentless downbeat antihero drabness. They're both pretty right, though you can hardly say Jaws made cinema dumber, what with its superb script, directing, and acting. The film was so story, dialog, and character conscious that barely anyone noticed or cared that the shark looked like a giant rubber pool toy.

Review: 'Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classics'

What should be considered a "summer movie"? The first thing that may come to mind is anything featuring Frankie, Annette, and a whole lot of bikinis and sand. Or you may think of a summer movie as any you first saw as school let out and the sun seemed to stay out right up until bedtime. For me, Return of the Jedi is a summer movie not because of its metal bikini and Tattooine sand but because I very clearly remember seeing it in the summer of '83 and having it loom over that whole season of freedom and play. 

John Malahy isn't quite that loose with his definition of "summer movie," but his new book Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classics does look at nearly every angle of what that term could mean. Yes, he throws a beachball to Frankie and Annette (Beach Blanket Bingo), but he also includes such disparate movies as Jaws and its bloody beach water, Caddy Shack and its seasonal silliness, and Do the Right Thing and its sweltering summer discord. There are B-grade things like Beach Blanket Bingo and high art like Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night.  

Because the films vary so much in style, genre, and quality, I'm not quite sure to whom Summer Movies would most appeal. That variety nearly renders it a book of randomly assorted movies even as Malahy is always sure to bring his discussions of each film back to the season that is their ostensible connecting thread. Still, his writing is insightful enough and the book is a nicely designed hardcover with lots of full-color photos. 

5 Superior Adaptations of Horror Lit

Adapting literature for the cinema is always tricky, and this can be especially true when dealing with stories intended to raise shivers. What is terrifyingly evocative on the page can flop like a sack of wet leaves when realized with a dude in a zip-up monster suit on screen. Acts unimaginably awful when described cease to play on the imagination when depicted with a rubber knife and karo-syrup blood. Some of horror’s greatest literary works, such as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, It, and I Am Legend, have never received ideal screen adaptations. Some page-to-screen trips have been more lateral with stories such as Frankenstein and Dracula offering very different yet equally essential elements when turned into movies or ones such as The Haunting of Hill House and Rosemary’s Baby being faithful enough to be genuine cases of “six of one/half dozen of another.” On occasion, a film goes above and beyond, reinventing the story upon which it is based in ways that make the original text virtually irrelevant. Here are five of those superior horrors.

Farewell, June Foray

Without her Talky Tina wouldn't have talked. Neither would hundreds of other characters, because June Foray was one of the busiest voice actors in the business. She is best known as the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, who always served as a sensible counterpart to the flightier Bullwinkle's. More befitting Psychobabble's creepier sensibilities, Foray gave voice to the hair-pin shedding  Looney Tune Witch Hazel and the most terrifying killer hunk of plastic in the Twilight Zone, Talky Tina (based on her own recordings for the Chatty Cathy doll).

Foray was kept busiest putting words in the mouths of Bullwinkle's nemesis Natasha Fatale, Tweety's Granny, Cindy Lou Who, Raggedy Ann, numerous Smurfs,  and other cartoon creations, but she also dubbed live actors on occasion, including the little girl in the "Bewitchin' Pool" episode of The Twilight Zone, and fascinatingly enough, both of Chief Brody's kids in Jaws. She even made a handful of onscreen appearances in shows such as Bewitched, Green Acres, and Get Smart, but she'll always be best remembered for the sounds she made over her rich, 71-year career. June Foray died yesterday at the age of 99.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 278

The Date: July 4

The Movie: Jaws (1975)

What Is It?: Steven Spielberg employed special effects to thrill audiences and drew record-breaking revenue, but its thrills do not make Jaws any less thoughtful or its characters any less complex. And after the kills have lost their shock value with repeated viewings and sophisticated contemporary special effects have rendered “Bruce” the Shark somewhat less realistic, Jaws continues to work wonderfully as a character piece. And what characters it has! Roy Scheider as the conflicted police chief; Richard Dreyfuss as the smart but inexperienced rich kid with an arsenal of shark-finding technology; Robert Shaw as the salty, glib sea captain who has seen more than his share of horror. His account of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the feeding frenzy that followed may be cinema’s most spellbinding monologue.

Why Today?: The 4^th of July is when the shark goes on an all-out frenzy.

Ten Terrifying Monster Toys That Time Forgot!

The holidays are a time when the little ones rub the sleep from their eyes before the crack of dawn to scamper down the stairs to see what goodies Santa left under the tree. Is it a train for Johnny? Or maybe a dolly for Suzy? Or maybe it’s a galactic monstrosity so intent on ripping Johnny’s throat out that it has an extra mouth inside of its mouth. Or perhaps it’s a gelatinous millipede Suzy can create in her very own mad laboratory. Along with the usual Star Wars and Batman merchandise, terrifying toys that appealed to my love of monsters terrorized my own childhood. Here are ten of the most terrifying.

1. Mego Mad Monsters (1973)

We begin our discussion of monster toys as all discussions of monsters must begin: with Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy. In 1973, Mego, the company that totally dominated the pre-Star Wars toy market, built on the success of its superhero figures with ones celebrating Universal’s classic monsters. And these were not just any monsters; they were “mad”, possibly because they looked kind of crappy, at least compared to the similar dolls Remco would produce seven years later. While Remco’s line would be nicely molded to capture the visages of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaneys Sr. and Jr., Mego’s line was a bit generic. Dracula wore an outfit that looked more befitting Mayor McCheese than the Prince of Darkness, and the Frankenstein Monster looked a bit like he had gas. The Wolfman was pretty cool though, with its wolfier head than that of the Chaney-style werewolf. The only other creature in the line was a fairly convincing Mummy. Mego’s creeps got a really cool accessory with the Mad Monster Castle Playset, sort of a big version of Remco’s little carrying case (more on that to come). This one had a working drawbridge and gruesome interior artwork depicting decapitated heads in mayonnaise jars. A fresh generation of serial killers followed.

2. The Game of Jaws (1975)

Monsterology: Animals

In this ongoing feature on Psychobabble, we’ve been looking at the history of Horror’s archetypal monsters.

Ten Terrifying and Terrific Title Sequences

Setting the mood has a lot to do with what makes a great horror movie great. The viewer may have to be eased into the unsettling atmosphere as if it’s a chilly bath or thrown in to the terror as if it’s an inferno (because when you see a burning building, you should always push someone into it). Sometimes it’s cagiest to sucker punch viewers with a sequence out of tone with the rest of the film or let them know up front that guffaws are in store with a light-hearted approach. Or in at least one of the following cases, you may need to put some extra effort into your opening titles sequence because the rest of your movie sucks.

1. Frankenstein (1931)

Dracula was the first great sound horror film, but though its use of the “Scene 10 Moderato” from Swan Lake is so memorable that the piece has been used as horror shorthand in films such as The Mummy and Black Swan, the music plays out over the Batman insignia, which isn’t too scary. Universal did a better job of getting a title sequence right with its follow up to Tod Browning’s film. After Edward Van Sloan gives his equally corny and creepy opening monologue, Bernhard Kaun’s brassy score shudders forth. On screen we see a clawed monster, most dissimilar to Karloff’s flathead, reaching from the darkness. This cuts to a leering portrait of, presumably, the title doctor, who once again looks nothing like the actor who will play him in the film that follows. Around Dr. Frankenstein’s head, disembodied eyes swirl, both foreshadowing the sundry body parts that will constitute the monster and mirroring the many eyes of the audience watching him from the darkened theater. The monster’s credit is equally memorable, as he is named only with a large question mark, recalling his similar crediting in the first stage production of Frankenstein 108 years earlier.

2. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Seventeen years after Frankenstein, Universal gave in to playing its main monster for laughs. For a picture such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, an opening as eerie as the 1931 one wouldn’t do at all. So Universal reached into its sack of associates and pulled out Walter Lantz, who’d produced the “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” series for the studio from 1928 to 1938. Lantz is best known for cracking up audiences with his creation, Woody Woodpecker, and the style of those classic cartoons is instantly recognizable in the credits sequence of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which begins with the monster raising skeletal Bud and Lou from their coffins before introducing the menagerie of monsters in iconic silhouettes. I could watch an entire movie of this credits sequence.

3. Psycho (1960)

Saul Bass is the only title designer who has become a household name, and not just because of that “Seinfeld” episode in which Kramer thinks Salman Rushdie has been hiding out at his gym under the pseudonym Sal Bass (“He just replaced one fish with another, Jerry!”). Bass’s poster designs for films such as The Shining, Vertigo, and Anatomy of a Murder are as unforgettable as the credits sequence he masterminded for Psycho. Abetted by Bernard Hermann’s jittery score, Bass indicates all the violence and disjointed psychology to follow by slashing the screen with straight lines from every direction and cracking up the title and credits. It’s incredibly simple and incredibly effective.

Review: Taschen's 'Horror Cinema'

This year marks the 32nd anniversary of Taschen, one of the finest producers of lavish photography books in a sadly gasping publishing world. Horror cinema, of course, is deathless. The recent republication of Taschen’s tribute to that genre is a testament to both Horror’s determination to continue creeping us out and Taschen’s resolve to continue rolling out high quality photo books. Jonathan Penner and Steven Jay Schneider’s text is an intelligent enough primer on the sundry slashers, cannibals, giants, zombies, spooks, devils, and vampires that have populated some 100 years of scary movies. Nothing we old diehards haven’t studied before, but amusing and insightful enough to warrant review, and the opening passage is as beautiful and lucid an explanation of the difference between terror and horror as you’ll ever read.

Of course, that commentary is peas and carrots next to the big, bloody steaks that are the photographs comprising the bulk of Horror Cinema. Generally speaking, photo collections of this sort should be judged on the obscurity of the pictures contained. Horror Cinema doesn’t disappoint on this count, offering some of the most luridly detailed looks at Leatherface, The Alien Queen, and The Grand High Witch available. More importantly, it sports some valuable production sketches from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Phantom of the Opera, King Kong, and Alien and a gullet-stuffing glut of behind-the-scenes stills. Horror Cinema is worth the (very reasonable) cover price for these peeks at the makings of Freaks, The Birds, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Island of Lost Souls, Eyes without a Face, The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, Gremlins, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jaws, and way too many others to mention.

Psychobabble’s 200 Essential Horror Movies Part 6: The 1970s

In this feature, Psychobabble creeps through 100 years of horror cinema to assemble a highly personal list of the genre’s 200 most monstrous works, decade by decade.

(Updated in September 2021)

93. Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly (1970- dir. Freddie Francis)

Review: ‘Hausu’

After Toho, the studio responsible for all those terrifically cheesy Godzilla movies, approached Nobuhiko Obayashi about making a Japanese answer to Jaws, the advertising filmmaker took a rather novel approach. He recalled seven of his school-age daughter’s worst fears and crammed them into a haunted house movie that plays like Suspiria reimagined by Sid and Marty Krofft. A severed head flies from a water well and bites a schoolgirl on her bottom. A piano consumes human flesh and disembodied fingers pound on its keys. A girl gets into a kung-fu brawl with some firewood. A cat’s eyes glimmer with cartoon sparkles. And there isn’t a single shark in sight.

Naturally Toho was baffled by Hausu (House), as were critics. But the 1977 film became a huge hit in its homeland because kids instantly recognized the candied horrors and psychedelic flights of fancy as reflective of their own whimsical imaginations. As gruesome as this story of seven schoolgirls who meet varying fates in an old dark house can be, the delivery is more cartoonish than your average episode of Scooby Doo. Teeny-bop pop chirps cheerily on the soundtrack, and the actresses play their parts as though they may break out into The Partridge Family’s Greatest Hits at any moment. Those characters are just as transparently farcical as their adventures, each one named for the stock stereotype that dictates her every move: there’s Fantasy, Gorgeous, Kung Fu, Prof (as in “Professor”), Mac (as in “Stomach”…she’s always eating!), Melody (the musician), and Sweet. Collect them all!


The film plays out with the logic of a weird dream, so don’t go looking for a plot. The scares are on the level of those in Wizard of Oz, which means they will be particularly effective for a certain age group even as kids of all ages recognize how disturbing some of the occurrences in Hausu are. The special effects are non-stop, ranging from primitive video manipulation to “How the Hell did they do that?” magic, as evidenced by those ivory-tinkling fingers. You may step out of Hausu scratching your head, but you surely won’t step out bored.



The new Criterion Edition of Hausu comes with all the bells, whistles, and delightful doo dads one can expect from a Criterion disc, including sharp picture and sound, an enlightening and even moving interview with Obayashi and his daughter who inspired the film, a somewhat interesting interview with Hausu superfan and House of the Devil filmmaker Ti West, and “Emotion”, a bonus short film by Obayashi.

June 20, 2010: An Open Letter to ‘Jaws’

Dear Jaws,

It’s not your fault. For 35 years (happy birthday, by the way) you’ve been taking the blame for ruining serious cinema, for turning viewers into a horde of explosion-craving mush heads. You’ve been fingered as the culprit behind the tired “summer blockbuster” phenomenon that defecated True Lies, Speed, Independence Day, and Transformers (among many, many, many others) into cinemas. OK, granted, you were the first film to receive wide distribution, opening in 464 theaters throughout the country on a single date (that would be this date, 35 years ago, as if you didn’t know). You were the first movie to net more than $100 million at the box office. You even climax with a smartass one-liner (“Smile, you son of a…”) and an explosion. But I still contend that the treatment you’ve received over the years has been wholly unfair. The naysayers fixate on your special effects (which, let’s face it, were good but hardly spectacular), while ignoring your smart dialogue (“Smile, you son of a…” notwithstanding…), your flawless acting (Robert Shaw gives what may be the greatest performance ever seen in a horror movie), and your emphasis on finely detailed characters over splashy spectacle. Perhaps the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were more impressive than your shark, but have any of that movie’s characters taken hold of the pop-culture imagination as Quint or Brody or Hooper or even Larry Vaughn have? Does Jurassic Park have a scene as riveting as Quint’s recollection of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis? Does any movie? Compare the dialogue in that scene to the following, which is the first “memorable quote” on imdb from James Cameron’s record-breaking Avatar released last year. That there is some shit writing.

June 21, 2010: Super ‘70s Time Capsule: “Mr. Jaws” edition

In the wake of Jaws-mania, the record “Mr. Jaws” (1975) by Dickie Goodman sat on prominent display in any record store worth its salt. As a kid, I was mildly fascinated with this record. What might a Jaws comedy record entail? Hilarious descriptions of people getting gnawed to death by great white sharks? That would have actually been a lot funnier than the actual contents of Mr. Jaws, which consists of Goodman as a Walter Mitty-esque reporter asking “Mr. Jaws” (i.e.: the shark in Spielberg’s blockbuster) dopey questions like “What did you think when you took that first bite?” Mr. Jaws then “responds” with cutesy clips from FM Super Hits like “Get Down Tonight” by KC and the Sunshine Band, “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain & Tennille, and “Rhinestone Cowboy” by Glen Campbell.



As a comedy record, “Mr. Jaws” is some appalling shit, but as a time capsule of cheesy Jaws merchandising tie-ins and the kind of Top 40 pop trash that helped necessitate the emergence of Punk, it’s solid gold.

June 7, 2010: Psychobabble recommends ‘The Jaws Log’

There are only three things that will get me to set foot in a church: a wedding, a funeral, or a book sale. One of the churches in my neighborhood in Jersey City hosts a book sale every Sunday, and it’s a great place to stock up on Stephen King paperbacks for 50 cents a pop (nice to know that you can still buy something for 50 cents, even if it is a well-traveled copy of The Dead Zone). Occasionally, the find is richer. I came home from one of my recent book-sale trips with a fifth edition of Carl Gottlieb’s The Jaws Log (1975). Gottlieb performed a thorough polishing on Peter Benchley’s original Jaws script, appeared in the movie as ethics-devoid newspaperman Meadows, and bunked with director Steven Spielberg in a log cabin throughout the movie’s long and harrowing production.

The writer is upfront in the preface that his journal-like document of the making of Jaws was composed after the fact, as he was kept plenty busy with constant script rewrites while the film was being made, but that does nothing to detract from its enjoyment or educational value.

July 21, 2009: The Lost World: Jaws 3, People 0

Developing a movie project is such a convoluted process that it’s amazing any films ever get made at all. There are the budgetary problems, and the casting difficulties, and the conflicts between directors and producers that have caused more than a few projects to be aborted before reaching term. In this new series I’ve dubbed The Lost World, I’ll be looking at some of these sweet abortions.

Jaws 3, People 0

Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was one of the most commercially successful films of the 1970s, basically birthing the “blockbuster” and riling countless “serious cineastes” for allegedly killing the gritty cinema then in vogue (stuff like Straw Dogs and Mean Streets) and opening the doors to big special effects and lowest-common-denominator action. The critics apparently missed the complex characterizations and smart dialogue in Jaws (not to mention the fact that the special effects weren’t all that spectacular), which are so overwhelmingly the focus of the picture that it barely feels like a horror film at all. Still its shark-attack sequences scared scores of movie-goers shitless… movie goers who so adored the bowel-voiding experience that they returned again and again until Jaws had grossed well over $470 million. Typical of Hollywood, producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown didn’t know when to leave a good thing alone, and Jaws 2 followed in 1978. The sequel lacks the delightful exchanges between Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw, but gains a scene in which the shark eats a helicopter. Despite its mediocrity, Jaws 2 became the highest-grossing sequel of all-time (a title it held for a paltry two years until The Empire Strikes Back swept in and snatched it up).

Inspired by the continuing success of their series, Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown revisited the Jaws cash cow again in 1979, but their approach to this second sequel was genuinely inspired. With a title worthy of Mad magazine, Jaws 3, People 0 was to be an Airplane-esque spoof of the entire Jaws phenomenon. Zanuck and Brown hired a pair of writers from the comedy mag National Lampoon—Todd Carroll and ‘80s teen-flick maestro John Hughes— to pen the script, which would have begun with Jaws novelist and screenwriter Peter Benchley diving into his swimming pool and being devoured by the shark mid-arch. From there on the movie would have continued along as a sort of proto-Wes Craven’s New Nightmare as an attempt to make a second Jaws sequel is constantly derailed by a peckish pesce. Richard Dreyfuss and Bo Derek (!) were apparently on board to star.

Last month, a web site called Forces of Geek.com posted the fabled Jaws 3, People 0 screenplay in its entirety. While the idea was a lot cleverer and more original than just another lazy “sit back and watch the shark dine” thriller, the jokes are mostly lame and don’t come with the velocity that elevated Airplane’s lame jokes to the exhilaratingly absurd. Spielberg took greater issue with the way the script skewered a character called “The Director” (but often referred to as “Steven”), who is basically portrayed as buffoonish fish food (the shark bites bits and pieces off the Director throughout the film). After Spielberg barked “you make this movie, and I’m walking off the lot” to Universal Pictures chairman Sid Sheinberg, the script was shelved. In place of Carroll and Hughes, the producers hired a couple of likely lads— Carl Gottlieb (The Jerk) and Richard Matheson (who’d written such classic “Twilight Zone” episodes as “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and “Little Girl Lost”) — to adapt a story that basically ripped off the Creature From the Black Lagoon sequel Revenge of the Creature (i.e.: the monster goes on a rampage in a marine animal park in 3-D). The resulting picture, Jaws 3-D (1983), was a piece of crap that eschewed the originality of Jaws 3, People 0 for more lazy kills and lukewarm chills. Jaws: The Revenge, a film that’s greatest cultural contributions are its status as one of the worst sequels ever made and the deathless tag-line “The Time It’s Personal,” arrived four years later. Chances are neither of these movies would have been made had the Jaws 3, People 0 folly come to fruition, because a spoof would have likely either brought the entire series to a hasty conclusion or led to additional spoofs. Still, I don’t think the spoof would have done much to sully the reputation of the original Jaws considering that none of its vastly inferior sequels have had that effect. As far as I’m concerned, the most worthy thing Jaws ever spawned was a nifty game in which the player has to use a hook to pull pieces of garbage out of a shark’s mouth without causing its jaws to snap shut. Hmmm, is that a reel of Jaws 3, People 0 I see among the rubbish?