Jaws: Do you feel safe in the water?

Thirty years ago today, Peter Benchley's number one best-selling novel was released as a major motion picture. I was 9 at the time, and my friends and I only had lakes to swim in, but it did make those occasional brushes with fish into scream-worthy occasions. I can't imagine what it would have been like to live near a beach at that time, and have seen that movie!

Have you seen Jaws?
Did it effect your swimming habits?

Have you ever seen a movie that did scare you enough to make you change your habits?

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Review: Cabin in the Woods 8/10

I love Jaws but you have to be far removed from reality to change habits based on a movie

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"You smell that? Do you smell that?... Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end..."

Hmm... I dunno about that. If you can't learn from the mistakes of others, aren't you doomed to repeat them?

Yeah sure but the point you are making doesn't apply because these 'others' are not real. You have more chance of being killed in car crash than by sharks. Every year snakes kill more people than sharks.

So... characters in fiction aren't real?
Thanks man. I've been confused on that for ages.

Question: did you know these statistics before you saw the film, or did you look into it after?

Anybody else?

Yes.


No.


No.

Well, Fast Times at Ridegemont High did remind me to always keep the bathroom door locked.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

That kinda looks like you...

A sensible alteration.
My horror movie viewing convinced me that breaking off from the pack to 'have a look around' was a bad idea. And I've stayed our of wells ever since The Ring

You wouldn't go swimming off the Irish coast anyway. You need asbestos legs for the sea to the left and a geiger counter for the bit between us and Anglia.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

eeeeww... So the Emerald Isle is glowing?

Jaws didnt affect my swimming habbits. but i remember when i was like 6 or 7 when i first saw Carrie it changed a habit if you would call it that. in my bathroom the garbage can is right under the flusher for the toilet so everytime i would go to flush i would move the garbage can in fear of a hand coming out and grabbing me like the last scene in carrie excet thats not a toilet but i was young and scared of everything.

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"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theater admission and the babysitter were worth it."
- Alfred Hitchcock

It ain't green by chance, y'know. The Irish Sea is one of the most polluted waterways in the world - the nuclear subs don't help much either...

Back to your original questions:

1. I was only 3 when Jaws came out in the cinemas here so the first time I watched it would have been on TV in the early '80s.

2. I'm not much of a swimmer anyway. Didn't actually learn until I was 14, had cracked it by the first lesson and was happily lapping the pool, haven't been bothered since. If the Good Lord had intended Paddy's to swim, he'd have made the Atlantic from whiskey.

3. Not a chance. Some women have tried to change my habits though. Weird how I started smoking again after my split. It was probably out of relief.

I love Jaws.

Have never went swimming in the ocean since I saw it (will swim in Long Island Sound or fresh water). I know I am "far removed from reality" but that movie really scared me. The book scared me too!

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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx

I avoid dating mechanical sharks, but that's about it.

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"Today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

Aaah the book! I was not allowed to see the movie, as a kid, but I was allowed to read the book. Scared the snot out of me!!!


Lordy, so you say... We'll see, next time a mechanical shark propositions you. My money's on "maybe".

Defininatly will need to lose the teeth. Then maybe isn't that long of a shot.

I absoloulty love Jaws. It's one of Spielbergs films that was so present during my childhood. Pretty screwed up film to show ya 6 year old kid but God Bless the parents, they were liberal. Spielberg is a favourite director of both my mum and dad, and since film has always been such a large part of my mums life (She was in several British films with the likes of Albert Finney, including the St Trinian school girls trilogy and her mother was in I Could Go on Singing along side Judy Garland) Spielberg was a director my mum and dad thought we should watch as we grew up, his films reek his passion for storytelling, and Jaws was one of his films that i loved the first time i saw it.


"We're gonna need a bigger boat..."

My most memorable viewing of Jaws was on a large open air screen, over looking the sea in Plymouth on the south coast of England on a summers eve last year. Was brilliant.

As for changing swimming habits after viewing it, it didn't really affect me too much, apart from making me look for big pointy black things sticking out of the water whilst i swim, but i have several friends who also watched it whilst they were young and has casued several problems when they go to the sea side. One of my firends Sarah, was affected so badly by the film when she was younger that she really has trouble swimming in the sea, and even in swimming pools if someone swims up to her under the water. She absoloulty cannot watch any type of shark on screen, she just freaks and leaves the room. On our first veiwing of Finding Nemo at the cinema, she left the theatre during the duration of the scenes with Bruce the shark. So she unfortunatly was not touched by the magic of the Spielyberg and Jaws.

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Pumpkins scream in the DEAD of night!

Your cool factor just went into orbit!

Yeah, that's a pretty bad reaction. Poor girl! My laughter at her having to leave Finding Nemo is TOTALLY sympathetic, please note.

Seeing Jaws against that backdrop does sound perfect. Was it a drive-in or were you sitting outside?

i saw jaws when i was in my early 20's...at the time i still lived near the beach but it never frightened me not to go in...i had read the novel and so the fiilm was a welcome relief because the movie was so much better...

the only movie to have an affect of me was man without a face...i learned a few things from that film...

I shall let her humiliation be known. It's a good weapon actually, whenever the girl irritates me, i just grab for my Jaws DVD. Cruel? Maybe. Fun? Oh yes.
It really was perfect. Plymouth is just down the road from where i am at University, and every now and again, the BBC erect a giant cinema screen right on the Plymouth coastline, on a big area of grass called the Hoe. It's really pretty. They normally do it in the summer for festivals and i happened to be down there when they were showing Jaws. The sun doesnt set till about half nine at night, and we all had a picnic and some drinks and sat watching it by the sea. It really was brilliant.
Apparently the BBC do the same kind of thing in Brighton, another sea-side town, but at that event, they erect the screen on the beach so you have the choice of watching Jaws whilst swimming and sitting in the water. Not sure if i'd go for that though