Bound to the Past: Jaws

As a kid, I was really a huge fan of sharks.  Ridiculously so.  They were, after all, "nature's perfect killing machine", which was a quote said or written by everybody.  By the 4th grade, I had accumulated numerous books of the Scholastic variety, and watched every nature program on the subject that was available without the benefit of cable television.  My mom had added to my burgeoning interest by finding copies of Shark: Attacks on Man by George A Llano and Shark Attack by H. David Baldridge at rummage sales. I was, at a young age no less, becoming an oceanographer-level expert on the notorious carcharodon carcharias.

And needless to say, I had seen Jaws about 10 times by the time I was 9.  At that age, I had decided I wanted to take the leap and read Peter Benchley's novel that was the basis for Steven Spielberg's now famous popcorn extravaganza, and likely my favorite movie. In the same basement rec-room that I had stumbled across the book Strange Unsolved Mysteries, I had also found someone's ragged and dog-eared copy of Jaws, emblazoned with the "Now a Major Motion Picture" stamp that has become so famously applied to novels making the leap to the silver screen.

Benchley's book became the first "non-kid" book I ever read.  Sadly, it was nowhere near as exciting as Spielberg's filmed version, and contained a bit too much melodrama for a youngster geared up for blood-and-guts killer fish action.  Who needed all that marital intrigue?  Certainly not this 9 year-old.  Despite that, this was the moment that I fell in love with the concept of the novel.  I've been an avid reader ever since.  Eventually my sister bought me the novelization of Jaws 2 by Hank Searls for Christmas, and this young completionist was thrilled.  I had a mini-library of shark-related material to continually delve into, while that behavior drew shaking heads and rolled eyes from family members.

In the winter of 1979, another sister (see a trend developing here?) bought me Ideal's Jaws "board game" where you need to pluck junk from the great fish's mouth before its jaws clamp down on the plastic hook you use to accomplish this goal. To be honest, the box it comes in is much cooler than the game itself.

Not too much further past that moment in time, sharks lost much of their luster as explained here.  Nonetheless, The Great White Shark, through fiction and fantasy, had become an imagination-piquing device that I, to this day, occasionally still reference.  I've seen Jaws and Jaws 2 many more times since, passed their legendary stories on to my kids, (avoid numbers 3 and 4 at all costs, unless you dig unintended laughter) own a DVD copy of Blue Water, White Death, and have immersed myself in Steve Alten's hyper-speed Meg series with great relish.  Meg, to the uninitiated, is based on the Megaladon species, the prehistoric precursor to the Great White, said to be a 65 foot version of it's descendant.  You can imagine where the imagination can take that concept.  A filmed version of that classic is headed to the big screen this summer, 43 years after Jaws.

I don't know if I would have become the avid reader I am, the lover of suspense and sci-fi that I continue to be, the admirer of the great creatures that only mother nature can provide that I have always been, had it not been for Jaws.  I definitely wouldn't have turned out to be the Roy Scheider enthusiast that I am.  Speaking of which, check out The Seven-ups and Sorcerer today.  I mean it, buy them now.  These films are 70's masterworks.

And again, to a book, I'm grateful.

Say, if you're in the mood for my less-than-insightful look at one of the most blatant rip-offs of Jaws ever made, there's this.