Wednesday 26 October 2011

Jaws: The Revenge (1987) Dir: Joseph Sargent


Widely regarded as the worst movie ever made - it's not. That honour falls to Tranformers 1, 2 or 3 - this is still certainly a duff old clunker.

The plot:
Ellen Brody, erstwhile wife of hero Chief Brody from movies one and two, is still living on Amity Island.
Her son, now all grown up, seems to have replaced Chief Brody as the go to guy for all things marine related, and is called out one night to clear some driftwood from a buoy. Reaching down into the murky depths, wouldn't you know it, a Great White attacks, ripping his arm clean off at first before returning to finish the job.
Ellen, of course, is devastated and, along with her only surviving son, heads off to The Bahamas!
That's right.
Living in the grip of a constant fear of the ocean and of sharks, she heads to a tropical island surrounded by fucking water and, once there, immediately starts swimming.
I'm not making this up.
Well, this being a shark movie an' all, seems the shark somehow senses she has moved from Amity and, yep, it follows her to The Bahamas where it's quest for vengeance can resume as, believe it or not, the shark somehow knows she was married to Chief Brody and he was responsible for this current shark's mother's death!!!
Seriously.

I really like shit movies as a rule, not least because they are generally nowhere near as bad as people think they are.
See, you have to take into account budget and talent and time taken before deciding how truly awful something is. That's why the Tranformers movies are so monumentally awful, because of the vast amount of money taken to produce something so cripplingly dreadful.
You know, think about Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, if you would. It's a rubbish film, but it probably cost the same amount to make as was spent on shoelaces in the Transformers movies, so to compare the two is unfair.
Here, though of a moderate budget, it's hard to excuse the flaws, the primary one being an overdose on the saccharine. Honestly, the family are so fucking perfect it makes you want to puke, and there's even a 'cute' little girl thrown in who, frankly, I just wanted them to feed to the gulls whilst still alive.
See if she's so chipper then.
With a plot as ridiculous as this, there's no point taking it seriously, so for those claiming it the worst mover ever made, think again.
It's bad, but it's no SS Hell Camp.

2 out of 5

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