ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - June 16th
"JAWS 2" released in 1978
Amity Island has suffered financially ever since they became known as the site of the infamous shark attacks four years ago, with business interests going to the mainland. In desperation, mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) is counting on resort developer Leonard "Len" Peterson (Joseph Mascolo) to revitalize the island. In this tense climate, Chief Brody starts to find evidence of another deadly shark stalking the waters - a "boating accident" involving a mother and her water-skiing daughter, a blurry photograph recovered from a missing divers camera, and a dead beached killer whale (with an enormous bite taken out of it). Ignoring the "evidence", as it would be disatrous to the town's development plans, the Amity Town Council instead fire Brody and continue to do nothing about the shark. Brody seems defeated until he realizes his two son's, and their friends, have snuck out to go sailing. As the victims are taken one-by-one from their boats, Brody and his wife Ellen (Lorraine Gary) race out to sea to save their children - and Brody, once again, must battle a killer shark!
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With Universal demanding a sequel to Jaws early into the success of the original film, producers David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck realized that someone else would produce the film if they didn't, and they preferred to be in charge of the project themselves. In October 1975, Steven Spielberg told the San Francisco Film Festival that "making a sequel to anything is just a cheap carny trick" - although he later seems to have changed his mind, directing sequels for the Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park franchises - and that he did not even respond to the producers when they asked him to direct Jaws 2. Despite Spielberg's rejection, the studio went ahead with plans to make the sequel, leading to an arduous 18-month pre-production process with screenwriter Howard Sackler. It was on Sackler's recommendation that theater and film director John D. Hancock was chosen to helm the picture.
Hancock began filming in June 1977. However, after nearly a month of filming, Universal and MCA executives disliked the dark, subtle tone that the film was taking and wanted a more lighthearted and action oriented story. Additionally, Hancock ran into trouble with MCA Chairman Sid Sheinberg regarding the storyline involving Sheinberg's real-life wife Lorraine Gray's role. When he refused to the demands, Hancock says that this - and his later firing of another actress who turned out to be a Universal executive's girlfriend! - contributed to his own dismissal from the film. He was replaced by director Jeannot Szwarc.
Immediately Szwarc and star Scheider clashed. Scheider, who never wanted to return for the sequel, only reprised his role to end a contractual issue with Universal after his first plan to be dismissed failed - apparently he was so desperate to be relieved from the role that he "pleaded insanity and went crazy in The Beverly Hills Hotel"! With tensions already high on set with the pressure of a huge budget, mechanical and special effects not working, and directing a cast of relatively new young actors, producer David Brown asked Scheider and Szwarc to a meeting to settle their differences - only for it to result in the two men having a fistfight which Brown and Verna Fields had to break up! Eventually they found a middle ground to work together, and filming continued on location on Martha's Vineyard and the waters off Navarre Beach in Florida. The film finally wrapped three days before Christmas 1977.
Jaws 2 was the most expensive film that Universal had produced up until that point, costing the studio $20 million (almost US$80 million in today's dollars), it was released on June 16th in 640 theaters across the United States and Canada, ranking first and giving it the highest grossing opening weekend at the time; grossing US$77,737,272. Despite grossing less than half of its predecessor, it became the highest-grossing sequel in history up to that point. Critical reception for the film was obviously not as positive as the original (but it is regarded as the best of the Jaws sequels in retrospect), receiving generally mixed reviews. Although many critics identify some flaws, often comparing Szwarc negatively to Spielberg, with John Simon feeling that the "shark's waning is caused by a decline in direction: Jeannot Szwarc has none of Steven Spielberg's manipulative cleverness", most remained constant in their praise for the performances of Scheider, Gary and Hamilton.
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The film's tagline, "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...", has become one of the most famous in film history, being parodied in numerous films. With tagline acting as an omen, Universal would again bring back the killer shark and the Brody family (minus Scheider, of course) in the films Jaws 3-D (1983) (starring Dennis Quaid and Bess Armstrong) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987), with Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles, Michael Caine, and, returning to the series, Lorraine Gray. The Jaws films also inspired a slew off unofficial sequels and rip-offs, the betters of these are often considered to be Piranha (1978) as a rip-off, and Great White (1981) (also known as The Last Shark), as an unofficial sequel.
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 53%
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