It’s been almost 50 years since movie-goers walked into the theaters to see Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and walked out being terrified of entering not only the ocean but any deep, murky body of water in fear that their lower halves would be chomped away by a great white shark.
The influence that the classic creature feature had on Hollywood is no secret. Jaws holds the forever title of being Hollywood’s first “Summer Blockbuster”; it was a masterclass in both acting and directing, and the stars aligned for the famously issue-laden production to mold into something truly great. It was simply a cinematic masterpiece.
And with the creation of a masterpiece comes both the inspiration it has to those that want to recreate it, and the effects it has on the world around it. In Jaws’ case, this was a masterpiece that inspired and eventually brought forth an entire subgenre of movies on its own, and its effect on the world could be seen as a negative, as humanity’s conglomerate anxiety of sharks skyrocketed into a bloody, fear-mongered battle against nature.
Filmmaker Stephen Scarlata and Shudder came together to release Sharksploitation, a fun and informative documentary that highlights both the impact that Jaws had in inspiring the shark attack movie subgenre and the environmental impact it had on one of the ocean’s most mysterious creatures.
To knock out the stuff that is more of a bummer (but is incredibly important and interesting), the documentary covers the treatment of sharks in film during the pre-Jaws era. Let this serve as a trigger warning, several movies during this era killed sharks on-screen during the production of the films, and this documentary shows it. The 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks are also covered, and newspaper clippings of slaughtered sharks are shown.
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There’s also a segment that discusses a stunt person that was killed by a wild tiger shark during filming, which caused the production company to rename the film to Shark!, then eventually to Maneater, just to profit from the deadly mishap.
This is all before it gets to Jaws and the environmental impact the film had on the mass killing of sharks, which still goes on today, and more than 100 million sharks are killed each year, and 30% of their species are threatened.
From here, the fun begins, and we’re skirted through a timeline of ripoffs and movies that never were. Sharksploitation covers classic ‘70s creature features like Grizzly, which was essentially a scene-for-scene remake of Jaws, but with a grizzly bear, to Orca, which was prematurely seen as a ripoff but actually had a complex and moving story, and Joe Dante’s Piranha; a movie Universal sued over its similarities to Jaws.
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After discussing the slow-down throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, SYFY gets its turn in the spotlight as films like Sharknado, Sharktopus, Three-Headed Shark Attack, and other unrealistic Jaws-inspired movies started popping up in the 2000s. Then it touches on some of the more serious movies, like Open Water, The Shallows, and The Reef, all the way into 2023, anticipating next month’s release of The Meg 2.
While the film shared several hilarious kill scenes and dialogues from various movies, I do wish it went a little deeper into the impact that subgenre has had on Hollywood itself, and not just the impact Jaws had. It does discuss what a phenomenon Sharknado was, both on social media and at the box office, but not too much more in-depth than that.
The documentary had a wonderful assortment of guests, too. Classic directors and producers like Joe Dante and Roger Corman popped up, as well as Carl Gottlieb, the screenplay writer of Jaws, and Wendy Benchley, the wife of the late Peter Benchley, author of the Jaws novel. The celebrities were joined by several marine biologists and shark experts who gave their opinions on both serious topics and the legitimacy of the sillier movie plots.
Overall, the documentary was a blast for a shark and Jaws enthusiast such as me. It was well worth the hour and 46-minute run-time and couldn’t have been released at a better moment, as Discovery Channel’s Shark Week finishes up its 35th year this weekend.
I highly suggest checking Sharksploitation out, as it sits well alongside Horror Noire, Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Found Footage Phenomenon as part of Shudder’s excellent catalog of horror documentaries.
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