#1 – It’s Groundhog Day!! – (99%)

I mean it is actually Groundhog Day, I don’t mean my favourite movie is Groundhog Day. If you want to read my review of the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ look up review #76. Today is the final review for this list but it is also the 2nd of February which means it is literally Groundhog Day so they will be celebrating over at Gobblers Knob with Phil the groundhog later today. But enough throwing you off the scent of the number one movie - here is my actual review…

Overtaking Halloween into top spot is the ultimate suspense movie and now my number one. The quickest I’ve ever read a book was ‘Jaws’ and it took about two days. Not only was it a fantastic novel by Peter Benchley but also a great movie. After the book Carl Gottlieb created the screenplay for the movie that was produced by Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown. Directing his second motion picture was Steven Spielberg with a superb score from the legendary John Williams. This movie ran over time on filming, ran over budget, ran people nerves to shattering point, ran patience to an end with a non-working shark, nearly killed the crew and actors on sinking vessels and had so many issues been made that it used all of its $9m production budget that when it was released Universal Pictures held it’s breathe as this movie was going to cost them a fortune with a failure. It did not fail returning $472m and becoming a Christmas and Easter staple on tv. Re-released in cinema’s and owned by me on video, DVD and Blu-ray this is a well-loved movie in this house (ok mainly by me but still). Even the critics liked it, of course IMDb was a bit sniffy as it wasn’t cultural enough with an 8 out of 10 but Rotten Tomatoes saw the light giving it 98%. It stars three, well there are all more in the cast by these three stole the show with Roy Schneider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. If you describe this movie by saying it’s about a rubber shark eating people, then you missed the point by a long way. It is so much more than that, labelled a horror or a thriller it is a real show of character acting with three different actors stuck together and playing off each other both on screen and behind the scenes also. I guess I really should get around to the plot then.

A big rubber shark appears at an island and then it eats people. OK I couldn’t resist doing that after giving the impression an in-depth plot analysis was coming. I will stop being a buffoon now and start over. One night a drunken young couple go for a skinny dip in the sea, he was too drunk and passed out on the beach while the girl is eaten by a large shark in the ocean while he sleeps. Searching the beach in the morning the deputy finds what is left of the girl (not much). The police chief (Brody) decides to keep the islanders safe they should close the beaches and keep everyone safe. The mayor, business leaders, newspaper editor and coroner put pressure on him to change his report to say boat propeller thus allowing the beaches to open again. Soon after a young boy is killed and eaten on a beach full of bathers. A shark expert has arrived by the name of Hooper who performs an autopsy on the first victim confirming it was a shark attack. This time he closes the beaches while someone has put a bounty on the shark. When some local fishermen catch a Tiger Shark (A whaaat?) the press men get lots of pictures and they run a story saying the shark has been captured and everything is safe. When a third attack occurs on a beach full of people including both the mayor’s and Chief Brody’s kids on it. Brody forces the mayor to sign a contract to hire Quint a shark hunter on the island. Chief Brody and Mr Hooper join Quint on his boat as they head out to see to hunt down the massive great white shark that has been terrorising the island.

That’s enough, except to reiterate that this movie is not about a shark eating people this movie is about a rubber shark forcing politician to make decision over keeping people safe or keeping the economy open and earning money. Hmm that sounds familiar to something, but I cannot work out what. The police and scientific theories suggest that the beaches should be closed and prevent the beast from feeding which will ultimately make it go away. Or they could ignore the problem and watch the situation get worse as more people die at the hands of something ignored as a problem. This whole situation takes up the first part of the book with much more sinister reasons in the background and the first part of the movie too. The second half is down to three characters in a boat isolated from the rest of the world in a battle of survival. The book and the film differ in that you have Quint and Hooper at logger heads over class with the chief refereeing them. In the book it’s the chief and hooper that do not get on and Quint is the referee. The dynamic in both cases works but in completely different ways and the triangle of the relationships is interesting and when you know that Robert Shaw was drunk for some scenes and would play up against Dreyfuss behind the camera to spark something it worked well on camera. Richard Dreyfuss really didn’t get on with Shaw during filming, but I think he was too young an actor to appreciate what Robert was up to. The characters didn’t get on, so he wanted that chemistry on screen, and it was there. They had their moments on and off screen as well. That whole evening together scene with the three together just makes this movie. Show me the way to go home, a big Chinese fella pulled me right over and the haunting tale of Quint’s voyage on the USS Indianapolis. It makes this movie. When you think that Dreyfuss turned the role down initially, but hated his last performance so called and asked to be in it as he was worried his career was heading down the toilet. Charlton Heston wanted the role of Quint which would have been a disaster. Chief Brody was offered to Robert Duvall but he wanted to be Quint. Actors who turned down Quint included Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden. Less than 10 days before shooting and they didn’t have a Quint or Hooper. Producers Zanuck and Brown had just been working on ‘The Sting’ and suggest Shaw who wasn’t interested until he was talked into it. As I mentioned Dreyfuss was the first choice after his role in American Graffiti where ‘the’ George Lucas has suggested him to Spielberg, but his change of heart would come very close to shooting date. Spielberg himself said that the Hooper character was so much like him, which might explain why the role changed from that of the book. There are errors in there one spotted by my in that more barrels are fired into the shark than those on the boat. There are others but the biggest issue with the movie was in making it and getting the shark to actually do what they wanted it to do. There should have been three one from the left shots, one from the right shots and then one from the front. None of them worked. Trying to film in the sea was probably not the greatest idea as the salt water screwed with everything. Another aspect of the movie is that many additional cast members were made up of the locals of the island they decided to film at. The two that instantly spring to mind were the mother that slaps the Chief was a local drama teacher who looks so old in this movie but really wasn’t that old full stop, secondly the second in command of the police Deputy Hendrix was a local as well. It was filmed on Martha’s Vineyard which is in Massachusetts. Yes, the shark looks very rubbery, yes this is a movie from the 70’s that looks like a movie in the 70’s but I can live with it because the story and the acting and the interaction of those actors are top draw. This is about three completely different people thrust together on a boat fighting to kill a shark and then end up fighting to survive themselves and not just from the shark but from each other as tensions run high and people may neglect their tasks. This movie just works on so many different levels that I can forgive the look of the shark, but I tell you something Spielberg has left it alone he hasn’t gone back with CGI improvements and let’s do a do-over. He has said that is what I made, and I will stand by it. All hail to him, he made a classic that took the world by storm. It changed me. I am now a shark person and love them. This didn’t turn me against them like many others this made me want to learn more and embrace them and appreciate that sharks are in the minority of creatures on this planet that people haven’t mucked about with. No Great White Shark has ever survived in captivity and its nature’s way of saying if it’s not for conservation than it’s not worth doing. They have never bowed down to humans they have just got on with their own existence and fair play to them. On my own personal journey, I have swum with sharks, tope shark which are just beautiful and look just like a shark should look like. Angel Shark that didn’t mind me stroking her and she was beautiful and finally a few (I think it was 5) Sand Tiger Sharks who look scary but all of them teeth are used on fish and definitely not me. Beautiful but in a completely different way. This movie made all that happen, and it has influence so many things to me and I believe all the for the better.

So that it is, the list that started in March/April 2020 concludes on Groundhog Day 2021. The greatest feel-good movie according to sky movies and I would find it hard to argue with that. I hope you have enjoyed it and to allow you to go and find your movie and read what I said about it so we can have a post covid-19 beer and argue the toss about it. For those that don’t know about 9 months into this list I was diagnosed with Bowel Cancer. This did lead to a delay of a week or two of posting early in 2021. I was due an operation early in 2021 but this was postponed until February which has allowed me enough time to conclude this blog. Many people ask me what I will do next and I have a few ideas. Maybe a whole ‘how I am feeling about the whole situation diary’ which may work but I have got new DVD and Blu-rays which I could review, or I could look at bands and songs but that would be an even bigger list so I will have a think about things and see what happens. For this blog, the next post(s) will be an alphabetised list of movies and a full countdown list of movies so you can see everything in one place. I am not as emotional as I thought I would be getting to then I hope that you have enjoyed it. I have heard positive feedback, but I haven’t had that many reads on each movie but its quality and not quantity, I guess. Thank you those that have stuck by me throughout and I know who you are, hopefully these will get more reads in the future but only time will tell.

Enjoy and remember to live long and prosper (and I didn’t review a Star Trek movie!!)