Jaws: The Revenge

On the island Amity during the Christmas break, Mrs. Ellen Brody's younger son Deputy Sean is taken by a great white shark one night after being called out to move a piece of wood tangled up with a buoy. After this happens Michael who lives in the Bahamas with his wife and daughter studying sea snails, visits his mother and asks her to come down there with him and the family. Ellen wants Michael to not go near the water, but he convinces her that it's all fine, since great whites don't like the warm water. But hold on as the shark that killed Sean is now stalking the family and has only one thing on mind - to wipe out the Brody family.

Leave those Brody's alone! Err, what crud… yeah reading the outline above you'll be just rolling your eyes at how ridiculous this film does get. The last sequel "Jaws 3" was a bad film, but I actually enjoyed it to some degree, but here the personal agenda format was just rubbish and the special connection between the Brody's and the shark was just plain risible. I just found this clunker quite lacklustre with it's melodramatic, soap opera of a story and it's lack of thrills and suspense. It was quite a drag and it did have that cheap TV feel about it, despite it's more than capable cast. The only thing that I thought was decent was the terrifyingly, bloody and macabre opening death. Although, few of the performances ( mainly Lance Guest in the key role of Michael Brody and Michael Caine's happy- go-lucky pilot character Hoagie ) made sure that the film didn't sink too fast. While, the rest were simply one-note and Mario Van Peebles' Jamaican accent was just so dodgy. But what was in need of a life-jacket was the dire script that threw out many awful lines of dialogues. "I've always wanted to make love to an angry welder. I've dreamed of nothing else since I was a small boy." What?! The repetitively, diluted story is full of crock with many implausible situations and it doesn't leave too much up to the imagination. Was the writer and the director drinking sea water on this project? Maybe so, because Michael's wife's supposed piece of art resembled… what? I just don't see it. Well, the sprawling beach lines and crystal blue waters were a nice sight. Too bad that the mechanical, but crooked plastic shark slowly got in the way. The ramshackle design looked dreadful, but the makers didn't seem to notice because they constantly kept showing the abomination in it's full glory. I even got the feeling that the shark just couldn't stop grinning. The (few) shark attacks are rather furious and quite graphic, but I found the latter ones to be laughable because of the execution. Really, it goes all out to outdo itself, but this puddle turns out to be simply inept in mostly every single department. Overall, a fatally disastrous novel production that never should have seen open waters and you won't be laughing too much, but you'll be a daze of bemusement to how this franchise fell apart.

It's definitely as bad as its reputation. This is one shark that just won't let go!

If there ever were proof of the law of diminishing returns, the fourth entry in the Jaws series is it. The original was a taut thriller that launched the career of one of Hollywood's most celebrated directors. By comparison, Michael Caine often looks as if he is incredibly upset to be missing his award ceremony in order to appear in this piece. Lance Guest and Mario Van Peebles frequently appear to be wishing to have better things to do, while Lorraine Gary frequently looks stoned in moments when she is supposed to look frightening.

Clearly, the budget spent on this film didn't go into the research, script, or mechanical shark. Exactly why Michael Brody and his pals are putting what are apparently tracking devices on conch shells is never explained. Perhaps any explanation they thought of was so incredibly stupid that they thought it best to give up. An alternate explanation of why Michael is working in the water was never thought of, either. The true Ed Wood moment of the film comes towards the end of the piece, when the shark rises out of the water, and roars at Elaine. This is the first time I've heard of sharks having vocal cords. Given the box office draw this stinker had, I suspect it will be the last.

The shark takes a real beating here, too. The reason the shark wasn't seen often in the original was because Spielberg noticed that if one put it in front of the camera for long enough, the audience would notice that it doesn't move like a real shark. In this edition of the Jaws story, not only do they keep the camera focused upon the shark for more than enough time for the audience to notice the model's flaws, in so doing they make it crystal clear that this shark was made on the cheap. There are some shots in which the support structure of the shark is visible under the outer layer. There is even what appears to be a seam in the back of the shark's main fin.

To its credit, Jaws: The Revenge is well-photographed. While the 2.35:1 frame is often sparsely populated, depth of field is used with great effect in several shots. The fact that even frames with one character in them won't make sense when cropped to fit analogue television is a credit to the director and cinematographer. If only this kind of workmanship could have been seen in other aspects of the film.

Another area where Jaws: The Revenge deserves due credit is the score music. While the score is very much inspired by that which John Williams provided for the original, it distinguishes itself and genuinely works in its own right. In fact, one could almost say that the score music is more than the rest of the film deserves. The music is literally able to inject dramatic tension into scenes that, by all rights granted under the accepted rules of film-making, really shouldn't have any.

When all is said and done, I gave Jaws: The Revenge a one out of ten. It works as a comedy in the sense that it is a stinking pile of crap, but there are precious few moments when the people making it seem privy to the fact. As a result, the film winds up in a class all of its own. It's not just so bad its good, it is so utterly bad it is incredible.

It's personal because I hate this audience-insulting movie. This has got to be the stupidest horror flick of all times. The ending (all of them) alone would be enough to justify this film's place on the bottom 100 list. I mean the premise (shark is after the Brody family for revenge. It chases (and beats) the Brody's to Jamaica to harrass them and snack on a few extras).

The effects went WAY downhill for this one. The shark on the Universial Studios tram tour is more convincing then this duct-taped-at-the-seams roboshark. The acting is atrocious (especially Mario Van Peeble and his grating "hey mon" accent)

The movie is one of the worst I've ever seen. The attack scenes are worse than what I used to do with Fisher Price Town and a stuffed seal from Marineland. The shark follows them to the Bahamas; apparently for revenge...revenge for being killed in earlier movies! Or is the shark exacting revenge for his friends who were killed? Or maybe (and here's something they could have pursued) it was the WIFE of the previous shark who decided the wife of her husband's killer should suffer. Well she did suffer, by appearing in this movie. For Jaws 5 I suggest the surviving family members of Mrs. Brodie swim back to New York and start biting sharks.

Jaws: The Revenge is the final entry into the Jaws series, and thank God for that. Ellen Brody is now living in the Bahamas after her youngest son Sean, who has followed in the footsteps of his father and become Chief of the Amity police, is killed by another Great White Shark. In what is the most ridiculous plots of all time, we find out that one specific shark is holding a grudge against the Brody family, and after it kills Sean, it swims against the Gulf Stream down to the Bahamas so it can kill Ellen and Michael as well. Jaws: The Revenge is an embarrassment to anyone who knows anything about sharks, and is the worst of the series.

The plot is completely wrong in this movie. The whole plot is built off of bs. I can't even allow suspension of disbelief to let me ignore that the shark is hunting the Brody family. It's ridiculous! Aside from that is that the film contains any number of factual errors about sharks ranging from having the shark swim backwards, roar like a lion, stand on its tail, and devour a helicopter. The shark in the first film did unusual things, but nothing that would make a shark lover cry.

The acting in this movie is so bad that...You know what? I don't even want to discuss it. It's bad. Terrible. Loathsome. Repugnant. What else is there? Lorraine Gray played Ellen just fine in the first film, but for some reason in this film she let all of her acting skill slip away. Even Michael Caine, who is a vastly talented actor, shows absolutely no skill at all.

Every copy of Jaws: The Revenge should be swallowed by the shark from the first film.

1/10