Oh lordy - Jaws the Revenge is a bad, bad movie. Michael Caine gave up the chance to accept his Oscar for Hanna and her Sisters Oscar because he was shooting this film? Talk about pouring lemon juice and salt into the open wound!

So I live in the pacific northwest, where it is not unheard of for Great White sharks to be seen (one was just spotted in the south end of Puget Sound just a couple of months back). Granted, finding a Great White around here is rare, but not unheard of. Of course the odds of a swimmer being eaten by a shark are about as half as good as being hit by a meteor and slightly better than being attacked by the loch ness monster. Considerably greater, in fact, if the swimmer in question is in fact no where near Scotland.

So it's a very on a very personal level that Jaws scares the crap out of me.

The first film I ever clearly recall seeing was Jaws - back in 1975, in a small theater with a nautical theme. You know - a snack stand that was shaped like a boat, portholes in the bathroom doors, netting and seashells hanging from the ceiling - that sort of thing. So not only was I traumatized by the very scary film, I was freaking out that the shark would swim up through the toilet while I was pinching a loaf and eat me. Talk about some permanent psychological damage!

Hey - I was five. Sue me.

But of course being a 5 year old boy, I loved monster movies. In short, I've been a lifelong fan of all of the Jaws movies. I've seen 'em all in the theaters, most of them 3 and 4 times each. Even though I know it would be crap - I'd still probably go see Jaws 5, if Universal ever got off it's butt and make the silly thing. My fondest wish is not for the Star Wars movies on DVD, but that Jaws 3 is realized in all it's three-dimensional glory. I'd say that I was hooked, but I'm trying to avoid stupid fish jokes.

Oh to hell with it - yeah, I'm hooked.

And for good reason. The first Jaws is a all time classic movie. It's one of the few films that actually does stand up to all the hyperbole and praise heaped upon it. It's the movie that ushers in the Golden Age of Spielberg, back when he had a backbone and balls. Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, Raiders all showcase Spielberg at the height of his powers. Jaws is clearly the best of them.

"Wait a second", I hear you say." I thought this was a review for Jaws IV?"

Yes, yes - I'm getting to that.

See, you have to know where you've been in order to understand where you are going. The greatness that is Jaws only serves to accentuate exactly how badly the fourth one sucks. Oh, and suck it does - although I've seen much, much worse.

The plot, such as it is, details one of the most out there conspiracy theories that I've ever heard. In short, the shark is out "to get" the Brody family for the sins of the father, so to speak. Chief Brody knocks off Bruce the Shark in the first film, and the subsequent two interim sharks have been gunning for him ever since. In fact the fatal heart attack that Martin suffers (well before the start of the movie) was directly attributed to shark trauma - at least according to Ms Brody.

It couldn’t have anything to do with Roy Scheider not wanting to have anything to do with this god-awful mess, could it? Naw. (Of course Roy dodged a bullet here only to wind up taking one anyway in the series with the talking dolphin. It seems than neither man nor beast is safe from the curse of the fish)

Anyway, one of Ellen Brody's son - who seems to have forgotten the events of Jaws 3D - has taken up the mantel of Town Sheriff in his father's footsteps. He doesn’t emulate his father completely however, when he gets eaten in the first 45 seconds of the movie while clearing a log from a navigation buoy. Tough break kid - or should I say good going, since you don’t have to suffer throughout the rest of the picture. The rest of us however, are not so lucky.

The distraught Ellen decides to pack up and head down to the Bahamas to see her other son, the marine biologist - who too seems to have amnesia about the incident at sea world. Perhaps Ellen isn't that familiar with world geography, but the Bahamas are right on the ocean. If I were trying to get away from Shark attacks, I'd move to - oh, I don’t know - Arizona? Perhaps a piece of land locked real estate? I haven't done much research, but I'm going to wager that there isn't a whole lot of shark related deaths in the desert.

Anyway, what kind of movie would it be if Ellen got away from the shark that easy? So of course the Shark With A Taste For Revenge shows up in the Bahamas too. The exact same shark.

Now, Great White sharks are fast. Heck, Bruce kept up with the Orca while it was chugging along full tilt no problem. But for a shark to not only home in on Ellen's location like that, but to get to the tropic paradise in only a couple of days means that the shark:

1) Built a Giant Shark Catapult and launched himself there.
2) Was kidnapped by aliens and deposited there after the anal probes were done
3) Has super powers

My money is on number 3 myself. In fact that would explain some of the feats exhibited by Jaws that are far beyond the abilities of any mortal shark, such as hovering above the water for several seconds at a time or home in on the target of it's vengeance from half way across the globe. This could also explain why the shark explodes for no clear reason at the end of the film. Super powers will do that to you, you know.

Anyway, our Turbo-Charged Super Shark hauls fin down south to the lovely tropic paradise of the Bahamas and does what any self respecting Great White does in these circumstances - start chomping! Tourists? More like buffet! Sadly, this movie has the lowest body count of any Jaws film - only a whopping four people get eaten, and of those, one is in a dream sequence and one gets spit out by the shark after it explodes at the end of the movie.

For those of you who cant be bothered to sit through this train wreck of a movie, I've isolated the time codes of the shark attacks for you. Feel free to jump ahead to the good bits and save your sanity. You're welcome.

Time Code Index of DEATH:
Junior Brody - 3 min 50 sec
Ellen's Dream - 22 min 25 sec
Some Random Chick - 1 hr 8 min 29 sec
Mario Van Peebles - 1 hr 20 min

So , two people die and stay dead. Pretty depressing, considering that the only thing we watch these movies for are the Large Rubber Sharks eating people.

While on the subject of the shark - you would think that Rubber Shark technology would have evolved between 1975 and 1987. Not so! See, Spielberg knew one thing - less is more. Nobody would be scared of his pathetic looking monster, which is why all we see are fleeting glimpses of fin, or the barrels that Quint fires into it. By the time we actually see Bruce in all his rubber monster glory, we're so sold on the rest of the film that it doesn’t matter that the shark looks fake as hell.

The problem is that Jaws IV follows the law of diminishing returns of sequels - the guideline that studios follow that says that a sequel will only make about half as much as the movie previous to the one before. Thus the studios budget accordingly. What this means was that Jaws IV suffered from having most of the Rubber Shark technology budget go to Michael Caine and Mario Van Peebles' paychecks. As a result, not only do we see too much of the shark, what we do see looks like complete and utter crap.

(Let me take a brief moment away from the review. One thing I must point out, other reviews mention that you can see the inner workings of the shark in several underwater scenes, and chalk it up to sloppy film making. This is in fact not the case - it's sloppy video mastering that is the one behind this one. In the properly letteboxed version, the junk below Bruce is matted out. In the full-frame version, there is no matting and you see the man behind the curtain, as it were. So - the director may be guilty of many crimes, but incompetence is not one of them. Just one more reason that letterboxed movies is the superior way to go!)

Anyway, the shark goes on menacing the scientific population. Mario implants the shark with a sensor/detector thingie, much like - oh, say the clock inside the alligator that harasses Captain Hook. If the sensor starts thrumbing away, then you know the shark is in the neighborhood. No thrumb means that it's perfectly safe to continue with the oceanographic experiments that Ellen's other kid and his team are performing.

Well. . . . it would be safe if one of the shark's super powers wasn’t Ninja like stealth. Bruce somehow has learned the skill to stop his heart and render the homing beacon attached to him useless. This allows him to sneak up on the various scientists at will. And thus we get to endure some Jump Moments where the shark springs out of nowhere on Scientist Brody (Lance Guest, who's career of a Starfighter pilot defending the League of Planets from the Ko-Dan Armada didn’t work out as well as he had hoped), while he is collecting snails.

The shark isn't the only one with super powers in the film. Ellen too has Spider Sense, that warns her that her child is in danger, even though she is miles away at a Christmas festival. But she quickly blows off this feeling that something is wrong and gets back to getting it on with Michael Caine. Good to see her bounce back from the death of her son like this, only 3 or so days before. She's a real trooper, that Ellen.

Anyway the scientists attempt to track the shark for the remainder of the film, until Bruce decides to eat some random chick while Ellen looks on. She gets it into her head to end this once and for all! She steals her son's boat and heads out after the shark. What an unarmed 50-ish year old woman intends to do against 2 and a half tons of pure Eating Machine isn't quite clear.

Michael, Mario and Lance all catch up to Ellen's boat. Then Mario and Lance rig up some kind of techobabble remote controlled flash bulb that they intend to feed to the shark - where the electrical discharges will drive him mad (like the shark wasn’t already mad enough). Mario gets eaten - excuse me, grabbed firmly by the torso and dragged underwater - while planting the Techobabble Bulb. Lance fires the Techo Bulb, and Ellen (who meanwhile is having flashbacks to events that she wasn’t there for) rams the shark with the boat, causing Bruce (who is leaping out of the water and roaring like Godzilla) to explode. Oh, and they recycle the footage of the decapitated Bruce sinking to the bottom of the ocean straight from the first Jaws for this last bit.

That’s right. The shark exploded for no good reason whatsoever. I bet you didn’t know that not only are they the most deadly creature in natures kingdom, sharks are also extremely volatile in nature and often explode without warning.

Anyway, Mario bobs to the surface unharmed, him and Lance hug, everyone goes home, and the movie is thankfully over. Unfortunately no amount of happy ending will save this stinker.

My usual policy is that there is NO movie that is so bad that there is nothing enjoyable about it. From Nine Deaths of the Ninja to Empire of the Ants - there is some amount of pleasure that can be drawn from any film. That pleasure may be as base as you and and bunch of mates sitting around the TV with a pizza and a beer totally ripping on the film. Jaws the Revenge puts this policy to the test. As bad movies go, it's bad, bad, bad. Not bad in the good sort of way, but bad in the "I'd rather gouge out my eyes, mush them up and serve them on toast than have to watch this film. The depths of pain that I had to endure for this review - so that you, the innocent reader, would not have to undergo the torture I did - is beyond measure.

You're welcome. Now if you'll excuse me - I'm going to go hit my hand with a hammer a couple of times to ease the pain.

ABOUT THE DVD:
The copy I have is the older Goodimes Video disc, and not the upcoming (as of this writing) Universal disc. I don’t know what extra features, if any, are on the Universal DVD - but if you want a crap flick for dirt cheap, the Goodtimes disc will do you just fine.

The video is a solid looking picture - non-anamorphic letterbox, if that matters. The back of the box claims that the sound is 5.1 surround, but I don’t believe them for a moment. There are no extras - not even a trailer. Pity, that - I would have loved to see how they marketed this thing on it's first release.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older