Sunday, July 15, 2012

Ocean's 'ogre'...


"That's a twenty footer." "Twenty-five." replied Quint. 'They're going to need a bigger boat'. In 1975 the first film to have a real effect on a young Ows was Jaws. I liked to fish and liked the sea and I had read the book long before the highest-grossing film in history at the time came to town on a wave of 'hysterical' media stories of it literally keeping people out of the water (I also have a very personal link to Jaws 2...something I've mentioned before [that post that will give you a hint as to my opinion of a 'death order' for any shark, ogre or not]). The superb and ominous soundtrack helped Jaws become 'one of the greatest films of all time'. And now it's being remade and produced by Robert Rodriquez, that tells you what it will be like ...bloody brilliant (see what I did there?).

The sad irony is that Jaws is being played out for real in Western Australia: with Ben Linden the fifth person killed by a shark off WA's coast in less than a year: the latest victim of Brutus; "If something is in the four to five metre vicinity and it's a white shark - which is the description we've got from witnesses - you make the assumption that it could be the same shark."

2 comments:

Paul said...

Watched Jaws again recently, still a good film. Actually went to the Premiere with my then girlfriend - nothing impresses a 15 year old girl* more than a strong arm around them when the whole audience is screaming at the scene where the body appears in the hole in the boat!

*I was also 15 in case anybody thinks I'm a perv!


Jaws 2 was good but the others were not (is the best I can say)

Span Ows said...

Yes, I went to see Jaws 3D in 1982/3 (in Canada) and was really pissed off! Luckily a steak dinner, a night boozing and Tim Horton doughnuts and coffee on the way home at 4 a.m made up for it :-)