Review of Jaws 3-D (1983) by Brandon S — 19 May 2010

Mike Brody (Quaid) works in a seaside aquarium, where all is well until a captive shark dies and its hungry mother comes looking for vengeance.

In 1983, there was a trend, represented by Amityville special effects and Friday the 13 Part III special effects, for shooting sequels in woobly, eye-battering special effects processes, and so Universal dug up its aquatic property for another round of watery scares.

Dennis Quaid, who had to start somewhere, plays the son of the Scheider character from the first film, now grown up into an employee of Gossett's underwater theme park (if you had spent your childhood being menaced by sharks, would you not consider a job in, say, Switzerland?). As it happens, sundry folks are having their limbs chewed off, and a shark is captured for display by braggart Simon MacCorkindale.

The shark dies and its 35-foot plastic mother turns up for revenge. This consists of smashing things, so water squirts at panicking extras, and looming around while the old John Williams dum-dum-dum-dum theme plays. Astonishingly, the screenplay is by the original Jaws scenarist Carl Gottlieb and respected novelist Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man, I Am Legend), although neither of them can have been awake while they were working on it. A toothless, tedious farce which deserves to sink without a trace.