Classic Horrors Club

Jaws 3 (1983) was originally pitched by producers David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck as a comedy called, National Lampoon’s Jaws 3, People 0. I don’t know what he had to do with it at this point, but Steven Spielberg threatened to leave Universal Pictures if it proceeded. Even then he had the power and Universal turned down the idea. Zanuck and Brown quit the studio because of this and had nothing to do with the result, which was instead made for Universal by Alan Landsburg Productions.

I’d love to have seen the the original idea brought to life with the involvement of Matty Simmons, John Hughes, and Joe Dante behind the camera, and the likes of Peter Benchley and Bo Derek (naked) in front of the camera. I’d like to say that, ironically, Jaw 3 ended up being an unintentional comedy. However, it’s not funny. It’s not even strange or bizarre, and it’s certainly not bad enough to be good. The concept could have been interesting, one that film critic Leonard Maltin suggested was an unofficial remake of Revenge of the Creature (1955.)

The original idea came from ‘70s TV movie veteran Guerdon Trueblood (The Savage Bees, Ants!, and Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo) and wasn’t intended to be a sequel to Jaws. Richard Matheson wrote a screenplay about a shark that became trapped in a lake while swimming upstream. He claimed that “script doctors” ruined it. (Is there an equivalent to Alan J. Smithee for writers? I think Matheson should have used it.) Expectedly, the result is more like a TV movie than a theatrical motion picture.

Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid, who has said he was high on cocaine during the entire filming of the movie) has grown up and works as an engineer on a current job at SeaWorld. Throughout the movie, he shows no sign of trauma from his childhood in the shark infested waters of Amity Island. However, his brother, Sean (John Putch, who performs as if he could use a little cocaine), hasn’t stepped foot in water since Amity. When he arrives in Orlando for a visit, one of the ski performers, Kelly Ann Bukowski (Lea Thompson in her first movie role), flirts hard enough with him to eventually get him in the bumper boats…

…and they get bumped around by a shark that’s found its way into the lagoon. This moment that was inevitable takes forever to arrive, again proving that an interesting idea is poorly executed. Contributing to the pacing is the fact that our characters aren’t aware of a shark being in the lagoon until 38 minutes into the film. Also, there’s only one attack by this point. Mike and his girlfriend/animal trainer, Dr. Kathryn Morgan (Bess Armstrong) have a close encounter with the beast while searching for the victim; however, after that it seemed for a long time that they were going to forget he’d even gone missing. Luckily, the horrific remains of his body pop up (in a decent jump scare) to startle the visitors inside the tunnels of the park’s new attraction, the Undersea Kingdom.

On paper, Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett Jr.) is this variation’s Mayor Vaughn, but he’s so low key and the dialogue so thin that it’s not clear to me that he’s much of a villain. World famous photographer Philip FitzRoyce (Simon MacCorkindale) seems more like the troublemaker, making moves on Kathryn and wanting to film the capture of the shark. You see, if they kill it, it results in a one-time publicity stunt, but having it in captivity will provide a lifetime of publicity. 

There were apparently all kinds of difficulties with the technology when making Jaws 3. They had finally mastered the shark, but not the new types of optical processing. A lot of footage was apparently reshot or scrapped entirely. All I know is that it’s physically a difficult movie to watch. You can tell it was made for 3-D. The shots of half eaten fish, severed limbs, and even the shark itself have a thick outline around them. I can accept this lingering distraction because it crudely duplicates the 3-D effect. However, it also distorts the edges of the screen and background. At times, it hurt my eyes to watch. Plus, it makes the movie look incredibly cheap.

I’ll end where I began, longing for a spoof of Jaws. I can’t think of one, unless it was a small bit in one of the Airplane, Naked Gun,or Scary Movie movies. When you think of the many supposedly non-comedic shark movies that have graced our screens since the Jaws phenomenon, though, I’m not sure Jaws 3 is the one that, well, jumped the shark. Thinking of all those others, this one isn’t that bad. However, jettisoning the total comedy idea, it should have been one of the first non-Jaws shark movies as Trueblood intended. The severe change in quality from the first, and even second Jaws, is the worst thing about it.