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A really hungry and big shark has taken an interest in the residents of Amnity. Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close down the beaches when a woman’s body torn apart by a great white shark washes ashore. Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) prefers to pretend it never happened eventually agreeing only to have shark watchers on the beach. Brody calls in a shark expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss in his breakthrough role) tohelp determine if the shark they’ve caught is the culprit of previous attacks. When it’s discovered that the shark isn’t the culprit that has made Amnity into a feeding ground the townspeople hire a local shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw in a brilliant performance) to track down the shark. It’s very clear later that Quint, Brody and Hooper aren’t hunting the shark; it’s hunting THEM. ***

A classic blockbuster that changed the way movies were marketed, Hollywood made movies (it helped launch the “high concept” movie, i.e, one whose plot can be distilled to a description of other movies or into a single line) and audience expectations for movies. “Jaws” paved the way for “Star Wars” and even “Titantic”. ---

This is the first time that Laurent Bouzereau’s full length documentary “The Making of Jaws” has appeared on DVD. Originally produced for the “Jaws” laserdisc, the original edition of the movie only had an hour of the two hour documentary on it. It’s an exhaustive and penetrating documentary covering everything from the conception of the original novel through to casting, Spielberg’s interest in making the movie and the disfunction of “Bruce” the sharks used for shooting the movie. ***

We also get a 9 minute featurette produced in 1974 called “From the Set”. It’s a promotional featurette produced for the movie that hasn’t been seen since 1974. It features Spielberg being interviewed by Iain Johnstone along with some of the cast members. This featurette is located on the first disc along with the movie. We also still have the original extras that were a highlight of the film including deleted scenes and outtakes. Unfortunately, they didn’t include the original theatrical trailers for the movie. It’s a pity as this would have made this the ultimate edition for fans. We also get the storyboards and “The Jaws Archieves” that were on the original DVD release. Finally we get a 60 page photo journal included in the slipcase. It’s a nice extras but doesn’t provide fans with anything they won’t see on the DVD. ---