Sharks Wildcard: Jaws 2 (1978)

Gather together from the cosmic reaches of the universe. Here in this great screening room with comfortable recliners are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled.

Keith.

Uh, this one, uh, Jaws in particular had this as a sequel. It also had Jaws 3 in 3D, which if you didn't know, I saw in theaters.

Terry.

Sounds important. And it sounds like this witch should not have it.

Derek. I need some oak stairs and a chicken salad croissant. And the power twins, Zap and Jordan, with their magical lemur snort dedicated Welcome back to Fumbling Their Way Through Movies, one forgotten gem at a time. This week we take a bite out of 1978's Jaws 2. This is Fumbling Through Film.

Hey, what is this?

A wake for a funeral?

You surprised us. Chief, I walked over as soon as I heard about it. They only fired me, they didn't bury me. Hello, baby, I'm home.

I know.

I know you know. Listen, I got something for you. This is gonna work better on you than on me because you're a snappier dresser. Oh, hey, we're drinking the good stuff.

How about a toast?

A toast to the new chief.

Yeah.

Come on, Alan.

The new chief is gonna need all the luck he can get.

No?

Okay, we'll do it together. Toast to the new chief.

Hail to the chief!

Hello and welcome to another one-of-a-kind, genre-defining, brand new episode of Fumbling Through Film, the only show that dares to bring together 3 dudes to talk about movies. These, however, aren't just any movies.

That's right. I'd turn in my badge if it was just any movie.

Well, Terry, you better get that badge ready. I want your badge and your gun because these are the ones we missed, overlooked, or feel are simply worth revisiting. That is any movie.

I talked to the secret society that runs this thing and they said yes, they agree also, Derek, any movie.

There's a secret society that runs this thing?

How come Keith knows about this?

There's a secret group of guys that You know, they're going to go behind closed doors and they're going to be able to tell us that in fact Terry needs to be fired. Yes, he can't be sheriff anymore.

Oh, we don't need a tribunal to fire Terry. We can do that however we want.

No, no, it takes a tribunal and it takes a very secret, important society to fire me.

Well, until that day happens, my name is Derek and I'm a fumbler. Joining me here in the Fumbledome as we await the secret tribunal's return is the Prime Minister of Fumbling and Film, Keith.

Hey, hey, what's up KG? Fumbler extraordinaire, potential member of the Fumble Anati.

Fumble Anati.

Yes, yes.

That works for me.

See, that's the secret society.

Yeah, that secret society is waiting to see how this episode goes before I guess before they fire Terry, the Dr. Dre of Kansas, or even me.

That's right. I hope I don't get fired. I'm gonna do my very best this episode, so maybe they'll. forgive me for my sins.

Maybe, but the, the Secret Society does have, uh, God in it.

Yeah, God is part of it, which is kind of tough because he does see everything, and so he can be a little, uh, I don't want to say judgmental, but he definitely is allowed to judge anybody however he wishes. So that kind of sucks.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you got my vote, Terry.

Secret Society is composed of Christian God, also Cthulhu.

The Living Tribunal's in there too.

Yep, there's lots of various deities and entities in there that govern—

Alanis Morissette.

Alanis Morissette governs our podcast.

Jim Caviezel.

No, no, I would cram him into a cannon and launch him into the sun before I let him anywhere near our podcast.

Or near God. Or—

yeah. Oh boy, now that society's gonna talk Yeah, yeah. Derek, you might be all by yourself next week.

Yeah, well, if that's the case, I better tell everybody what it is they're in for this week and next week. Every week we watch movies, but not just any movie. Nah, every month one of us chooses a theme, a genre, a guiding light, some sort of man in a tower shooting at blue fish. That we all have to choose a movie that adheres to that man of the tower.

Well, yeah, we want to listen to that man because he is shooting wildly into the ocean.

So yes, he doesn't wait.

We're doing Shark Month. That's a good way to find movies, right?

The shark's here.

You can get that far. He shoots over the kid's shoulder at some bluefish. Come on. So yeah, we got to adhere to that guy and whatever the theme is. And then on the 4th week, we truly fumble like this week when we watched a movie that's given to us by The Wheel of Doom. Anyway, this month is DTF, Down to Fumble. Y2, year 2. M9, the M stands for month.

Oh, shucks, I almost forgot again.

And that is a Terry month. So Terry, let us know what our month was about.

We're talking sharks all month.

Sharks all month. Not a school of bluefish. We're not idiots. Sharks.

Yeah, you're right. And there's a lot of extra fish in this film. I noticed I didn't like that.

Actually, I don't know if a single other fish was shown on screen.

At the beginning, there's that school of fish over the credits. Oh yeah, that's way too many other fish that aren't sharks.

Yeah, well, Terry, since you started off this month, what did we start with?

Dangerous Animals from 2025.

Serial killer shark, shark killer movie. And then I went with dub 2. I went with Shark Waters, the documentary about sharks and shark finning.

Our very first documentary.

And then Keith followed that up with our second documentary, Sharktopus. Sharktopus. Back-to-back documentaries.

Yeah, that's a— that documentary was shocking.

Yes, it was. And then we spun the wheel and we had our wildest wheel spin yet because we got Jaws 2.

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh yeah. But not, it took us a while to get there.

But Terry vetoed it. And then we got Keeper and Keith vetoed that. And then we got Alita Battle Angel, which I put on the wheel and then I vetoed that. And then we gotta spin again, and then we got Jaws 2, which couldn't be vetoed.

We, we all had a veto left over this month, so we decided to use them.

Yeah, use them or lose them, right? Can't take them to the grave.

So nope. I wish you could though.

Veto your own death. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, well, off to hell. No veto. All right, you're good.

I, I find this a well-earned victory is how I'm looking at this.

Yeah, well-earned victory. Keith, Keith put in some overtime to get this one.

Yep.

Yeah, he tried his best and it worked out.

Yeah.

Now, before we talk about our viewing of Jaws 2, before we deep dive Jaws 2, did any of us have any previous knowledge, history, and/or experience with Jaws 2?

No, I've seen the first one. Obviously, that's a classic film, and I knew there were other sequels out there. There's four of them, I believe, and there's Cruel Jaws. We can't forget about Cruel Jaws. But I've never seen any of these other ones besides the first one.

I want to say I I know I've seen bits and pieces of this movie. I probably saw it all the way through at some point, like on TV at some point in like the eighties when they would replay stuff all the time.

You think this was on TV at any point?

It had to have been.

I don't know.

I mean, especially leading into you know. Leading into like Jaws 3 in 1983. I'm sure they played the hell out of it leading into that. Um, because I've seen parts of this, but I didn't remember all of it. Hmm.

Well, much like Terry, I had seen the first one and relatively recently, for the first time ever, I saw it all the way through.

Oh, nice.

Say within the last year. I have a long history with Jaws. And my cousins tormented me with it when I was like 6.

Oh.

Right? It used— it would come on TV, like on, you know, ABC Friday night. And on Fridays, we would spend the night over my grandma's house. And I remember like, oh, you should watch this, you'll like it. They thought it was hilarious. It scared the absolute shit out of me as a child. So I had this like longstanding aversion to the movie Jaws. I'd only ever seen like 15 minutes of it. And as a 6-year-old child, I could not handle it. So, but as a, you know, 50-year-old man, I got through it okay. I think survived, lived to tell the tale.

That's good.

But that was one of those right and wrong sort of things. I think I'd get over my desire to not watch Jaws and turn it into watching Jaws. And it was fine. Like, it— I, I don't know if I had it built in my head as like this amazing thing, and then it just, it like underperformed when I watched it. But it was fine. I thought it was good.

I know I saw Jaws 3 in theaters.

Mm-hmm.

And I think I also saw Jaws 2. Well, I think I saw Jaws 2 prior to seeing that, and I saw both of those prior to seeing the original Jaws.

So then I guess your expectations were low. Going into the original Jaws.

Yeah, I mean, and again, by the time I saw it too, I also wasn't as probably as big into movies as I am, you know, as I've grown up. But rewatching the original Jaws, like, especially like when I watched it, uh, just a handful of years ago, like during like pandemic time, I was like, it, it really holds up really well. It's a good movie, uh, on a bunch of different levels. It also like kind of mirrored like a lot of the stuff going on at the time as well, which I thought was just kind of like a— it was an odd coincidence but also like made it kind of stick out even more.

Yeah.

And then watching this movie makes me think that Jaws is even more of a masterpiece.

So anyway, that's neither here nor there. This is about Jaws 2. So, and I never saw it before. I knew it existed. I didn't care though. Uh, anyway, Terry, you and I would need to relax because Keith is going to take us closer to his beloved Jaws 2 than any of us could have ever dreamed with another pending Fumbler's Deep Dive.

Uh, everyone get back in the boat. Let's do this. Uh, Jaws 2 came out on June 16th, 1978, uh, almost 3 years after the original. This one though, rated PG. Uh, it was gonna be R, but they eliminated a couple of extra, uh, kills, um, to lower it back down to a PG rating. It is 1 hour and 56 minutes. Does not need to be that at all.

No.

Um, yeah. Uh, Police Chief Brody must protect the citizens of Amity after a second monstrous shark begins terrorizing the waters. Now, uh, after Jaws came out, the popularity of it— this is one of a bunch of movies in the late '70s and into the '80s, uh, that got made because of the box office success of Jaws. Uh, this one, uh, Jaws in particular had this as a sequel. It also had Jaws 3 in 3D, which if you didn't know, I saw in theaters. Also Jaws Revenge.

You saw them?

Yeah.

Uh, also Jaws Revenge in 1987, which actually has a 2% on Rotten Tomatoes. But you also had, in 1977, there was Orca.

1977.

Yes. 1978. You've seen Orca?

No, I heard it's good. I own it on Blu-ray.

What about Piranha in 1978?

I don't like that one.

1977, there's a movie called Tentacles.

I'm assuming that's about— That's horrible.

Octopus. Killer Fish in 1979.

I haven't seen that one.

Barracuda in 1978. Tintorera, Tiger Shark, came out in 1977. Blood Beach in 1980, Piranha II: The Spawning in 1982, The Last Shark in 1981, Up from the Depths in 1979, Humanoids of the Deep. That's not like a shark thing.

That's a good one.

That's in 1980. And The Island of the Fishermen in 1979, Devilfish in 1984, and Mako: The Jaws of Death in 1976. So a lot of, a lot of fishy movies coming out.

I would throw Alligator in there, even though Alligator isn't a fish movie. This movie reminded me of Alligator in a lot of ways.

Definitely has the, definitely has the same vibes, uh, with that as well. So yeah, uh, this one had a budget of $20 million, uh, is what it lists there. But some of the stuff I read said it budget actually could have gone up to $30 mil. They, I guess this was like at the time the most expensive movie Paramount had ever made. And so they really weren't keeping track of the budget just so that it wouldn't get shut down. It opened up in only 640 theaters. It was the number 1 movie the week it came out. Number 2 was Grease. This, at the time, it grossed $9.9 million domestically in its opening weekend, which made it the biggest opening weekend gross in history, breaking the previous record set by Jaws in 1975.

Wow.

Wow.

Only a sequel could beat it.

Adjusted for inflation, this movie made $497.5 million. Uh, by comparison, the original Jaws, non-adjusted, made $497.9 million.

Hmm.

Uh, at the time, again, this surpassed The Spy Who Loved Me from 1977, James Bond movie, as the highest-grossing sequel worldwide, and it held the record until surpassed by Rocky II in 1979, which then later, a year later, was surpassed by Empire Strikes Back.

Hmm.

This was filmed mainly in Florida.

Interesting.

Despite them being up in, uh, Long Island, New York type area of the world that they're supposed to be in.

Same coast.

Yeah. Now taglines: Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. Yep. This has apparently become one of the most famous in film history. Karen Levitt, who's a co-writer or a copywriter at the advertising firm that made the trailer for it, is credited with coming up with the phrase.

Okay.

They released this movie in 1980. Uh, tagline of one good bite deserves another.

No, I don't like that one.

Uh, this movie is directed by Jeannot Szwarc. I think I'm gonna get that right there.

Yeah, sounds right.

Yeah. Uh, he's got 80 film credits including lots and lots of TV, uh, such as like 15 episodes of Grey's Anatomy, 15 episodes of Bones, 14 episodes of Smallville, 6 episodes of Heroes, 13 episodes of Kojak, not Kolchak. Oh, 19 episodes of Night Gallery, which was Rod Serling's, uh, horror-based show, uh, around, I guess, like, uh, some paintings, like, like an art gallery type thing. And that each painting was like the— would lead into like the actual story that he was doing. In 1984, he did direct Supergirl.

Uh-oh.

Uh, Kara of Argo City goes undercover to retrieve the Omega Hedron from a witch. Stars Helen Slater's Supergirl, Faye Dunaway, Peter O'Toole, and Mia Farrow.

What the hell's an Omega Hedron?

Who knows? Sounds important, and it sounds like this witch should not have it.

No, I don't think so. No, but, uh, I don't know why, but just a superhero movie with Faye Dunaway, Peter O'Toole, and Mia Farrow sounds weird.

Well, Keith, I'm gonna Enhance your deep dive. The Megahedron is a powerful fictional Kryptonian energy artifact.

Oh, it's Kryptonian in name.

First introduced in the 1984 live-action film Supergirl.

And then that was the last name I ever heard of it. Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Might be important to the lore nowadays. I don't know.

In 1980, Jeannot also directed a movie called Somewhere in Time. A Chicago playwright uses self-hypnosis to travel back in time to meet the actress whose vintage portraits hang in a grand hotel.

That stars Christopher Reeve, correct?

Yes.

And he uses a penny, I think, to travel through time.

He uses a penny?

Yeah, I think that's like something about a penny.

Magic penny.

It also stars Christopher Plummer, Jane Seymour. It was written by Richard Matheson, and this was made, uh, because Universal Pictures owed him a favor after Jaws 2 had been the studio's number one box office performer in 1978.

Well, good for him, cashing in.

It's also, I do believe, his highest rated, uh, movie.

So here's what happens in that movie. Uh, while happily living in 1912, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a penny from 1979.

Wait, what?

Which snaps him out of the self-hypnosis and brings him back.

Wow. So he thought he was in 1912, but he wakes up.

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

Interesting. No, he was in 1912 with time travel through self-hypnosis, right?

He hypnotized himself back into time?

Yeah, that's how he travels through time. But he reached into his pocket and pulled out a penny from 1979, which broke his concentration.

Ah.

And pulls him back to 1979.

Gotta make sure if you're gonna go back in time, you gotta only bring coins from that time.

Yes. That's—

or everyone knows that.

Empty out your pockets.

Yeah, don't bring anything.

Don't bring anything back in time. But then if anything, when you go back in time, you should stuff your pockets.

With anything that's valuable and then rob them for all they're worth and then go back.

That's why I would come return with all this, all this awesome, all this loot. Loot.

Yeah, coal and gold nuggets.

And get that 1912.

That's all they have in 1912 is coal and gold nuggets.

Yeah. Yes, the 2 most valuable items, I think.

Mm-hmm.

Might steal a few cattle.

Steal a few cattle.

Mm-hmm. Shove those in your pocket.

I'll be taking these.

Yes.

You'll never catch me.

No, not with my— with those steer— I got 400 head of steer I'm shoving in my pockets.

I brought some really big pants, luckily.

I used to work with a guy who, who, who had, um, what he called his buffet pants. And when we went to the Chinese buffet at lunch, he would shove like food in his pockets and bring it back.

Oh my God.

Yeah, much like Napoleon Dynamite, but he'd have like crab rangoon and stuff in there.

That sounds like a good idea. What else are you supposed to do with all those pockets on?

I don't know.

This movie was written by Carl Gottlieb. Okay. Uh, he wrote a lot of TV comedy shows back in the days, doing work with the Smothers Brothers, the Bob Newhart Show, uh, Flip Wilson Show. Uh, but he's mostly, uh, very well known because he also wrote Jaws, and he also wrote Jaws 3D.

Wow.

Oh, which I saw in theaters back in the day.

I heard of that.

Yeah. Uh, in between writing these things though, uh, he also wrote in 1979 The Jerk.

Oh, Steve Martin.

Yeah. Simple-minded sheltered country boy suddenly decides to leave his family home to experience life in the big city where his naivety is both his best friend and his worst enemy. Uh, Carl actually also did a little bit of directing every now and then as well. Um, a couple of things that you guys might know, he directed Caveman starring Ringo Starr, Dennis Quaid, and Shelley Long.

Oh, he did? Yeah, yeah.

And, uh, several segments of one of my personal favorite, 1987's Amazon Women on the Moon.

Oh boy, I've heard of this movie before. Yeah, I feel like this has come up a lot in the previous podcast.

I like that movie a lot.

I like those convergence of Jaws 3 and Amazon Women on the Moon.

Dude, it's like favorite things.

This is the ultimate deep dive for Keith.

This movie stars, uh, the only person I'm really gonna talk about in this one as far as, uh, stars this, Roy Schneider, not Rob Schneider. Oh, don't get the two confused. Uh, Roy, pretty good actor. Uh, he was, he plays, uh, Chief Brody in, in Jaws. He also comes back and he plays, uh, Chief Brody again in Jaws Yep. Um, he did not originally want to appear in this film, but he had recently left the production of The Deer Hunter, which led to conflicts with Universal Pictures, with whom he was locked into a multi-film contract. The studio agreed to forgive him for leaving Deer Hunter if he did this film, which they would count against his 2 remaining films in the contract.

You probably should have done Deer Hunter.

Well, he got paid $400,000, replies, his role as Chief Brody, 4 times what he got in the original film. It might have also helped.

That's pretty good.

Apparently him and, uh, Jeannot, uh, butted heads all the time on this, and he was kind of a pain in the ass to work with on there because he didn't want to be there. But he was also, you know, at the time that he did, uh, this one, he had already been nominated— Best Actor nomination, Best Supporting for Buddy Russo in The French Connection.

Okay.

And then in 1980 He was nominated for Best Actor Overall when he played Joe Gideon in the movie All That Jazz. Director-choreographer Bob Fosse tells his own life story as he details the sordid career of Joe Gideon, a womanizing, drug-using dancer.

Wow, sounds like a stand-up guy.

Uh, Roy was also Captain Nathan Bridger in 1983's SeaQuest DSV, as well as 47 episodes of SeaQuest 2032.

It's not the puppet one, is it?

No, no, this is one— it's all live-action one, but it was either this or it was either on Syfy or USA Network, one of the two.

Oh, nice.

Another movie outside of the Jaws franchise that I actually really like him in is in 1983. He plays Murphy in the movie Blue Thunder. Rebellious Vietnam vet and police helicopter pilot Murphy and his rookie partner are assigned to test a cutting-edge helicopter prototype. Murphy is surprised when the lead pilot turns out to be a fellow vet and personal nemesis.

His nemesis.

Yeah, I rewatched this movie a couple years back. A couple years back. It is. It's actually very good. Blue Thunder.

That sounds awesome.

Blue Thunder is awesome.

Sounds awesome. It's actually a really good movie.

They're making a second one of these things. Yeah, didn't Tom Cruise announce this?

That's Days of Thunder.

Oh, that's a racing movie. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And yes, he did announce that they're making a Jaws 2. Uh, is the sequel to Jaws, which was based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. However, Jaws 2 was not based on any existing novel like the original one was. The movie was eventually novelized in 1978 by American author Hank Serles. It was based on an earlier screenplay that had been put together by Dorothy Tristan and Howard Sackler, and it, uh, differs in a handful of respects to the final one, which was written by Carl Gottlieb, with some assistance from Howard Sackler. A couple other real quick notes here. Uh, Mark Gilpin, who plays Sean Brody, claims that when they're shooting one of the scenes on the makeshift wrap of wrecked yachts, uh, they were being circled by real hammerhead shark. Uh, the actors were scared and began to scream and holler at the production crew, who was, uh, a little far off and just thought they were simply in character and just gave them a thumbs up. Wow. Yeah.

Well, we learned they're not that dangerous from a documentary, so I bet they'll be fine.

Yeah, yeah, it's probably true. But I mean, if you're in a movie about like sharks like killing people and all of a sudden one shows up, regardless of what kind it is, you're probably freaking out a little bit.

Yeah, I'd be on edge.

Yeah. Uh, that helicopter scene, uh, took 4 days to film apparently.

Wow.

And despite not being a professional actor or an experienced stuntman, helicopter pilot Jerry Baxter nevertheless agreed to sit inside the prop helicopter with oxygen bottle and rescue divers at hand as it collapsed into the water, thus eliminating the need for any extra stunt double or dummy.

Wow. What a— that's, uh, quite the risk he took.

They probably threw in like, you know, I don't know, like extra, extra food at the, uh, crafting table for him.

The crafting table?

At the craft, craft service.

Like Minecraft style?

Yeah.

Here's some extra planks.

I need some oak stairs.

Yeah, they gave him some over at craft service.

And a chicken salad croissant. Holy shit. Goddamn. I didn't know there was gonna be a crafting table on our deep dive.

Yeah, I didn't know there weren't gonna be any stunt doubles allowed either.

I will say that that helicopter scene impressed me because it was practical. Yeah. Not because it was good, but because it was practical.

Okay, well, that's not good.

Well, it's the whole thing. I'm like, that's a real helicopter they had to flip over.

Yeah, it did. I mean, it looked cool when the blades were smacking into the water, breaking off and flying all over the place.

I doubt that really happened. I did— I'm sure they didn't let— leave the people in danger of blades breaking off and flying, but maybe they did. I don't know. Authentic.

It could be to get that real fear from the actors.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, they do with the hammerhead shark. They could have done with that too.

Why not?

Yeah.

Ah, holy cow. Well, we're at that time of the day where we gotta talk about watching Jaws 2.

It's every— yep, the day— that time of day comes once a week and we have to talk about our watching of Jaws 2. Yep.

And up until now, we're just like, haven't watched it yet. So I get to edit out like a 3-second chunk. Did you watch Jaws 2? Nope, nope, nope. All right, I need to cut that out. Now we actually have to talk about watching Jaws 2.

Yep, you sure do.

I like, you know, I, I understand like the first one's got like all the tension of like the shark, like, you know, being out there and it's attacking people and you don't get to see it and it's all that buildup stuff. This one, like, it's attack stuff, but like I found this one to be more like almost like a Friday the 13th, like slasher film type thing, a little bit more like, because the shark is like just constantly going around doing stuff and almost looks like it's targeting people. Yeah.

He's not an animal, he's a monster.

Yes.

Where the first one is, you know, as monstrous as the first shark is, uh, in the original Jaws, it, it, it's still just this big giant, you know, fish that's out there. And this one gives that a bit of a different vibe. I don't know if that's also because then, then, you know, they roll in all the, the young kids, so it's, you know, kind of like got, you know, even like the Friday the 13th, like, yeah, camp vibe, you know.

Yeah, teens are about to have sex on a boat. Jaws ain't gonna have any of that. He's gonna—

Yeah, let's kill him off and stuff like that. Yeah, so I— it just— it's got that different vibe, and— but it also does like really, I don't know, like over-the-top stuff. Like the, the whole thing at the beginning where like the guys are down there swimming and they find the orca and the guy wants to get a picture in front of it and stuff. I was like, all right, we gotta remind people where we're at and what happened and But we're gonna do it, which then also is the thing that kind of sets up where like also like the shark shows up specifically like, hey, this is where you know my brother got killed. I'm back now. Set the tone off like and not in a good way for me. Yeah, starting the movie.

I feel like this movie has like no tension at all. No, like the like original Jaws, it does have a lot of tension of like when's it gonna strike? You know, it's very mysterious. This one the shark just appears and there's like. doesn't build up to it really. I feel like it's like, oh, here he is, you know. There might be like one or two kind of cool moments where he like just pops out, but I feel like they don't do a good job of building up like his appearance, even like the mystery of him. Like, I know it's Jaws too, we know it's a shark, but like they don't really milk that like, uh, so mystery, I guess.

Yeah.

And so, uh, Swaruu, the director, he specifically was like, yeah, that was awesome in the first one, but now everyone knows what the shark looks like, so We don't need to do that thing where we're—

well, they did. We don't know the shark is all scarred.

I'm not sure it got burned in the beginning.

Yeah, it gets worse as it goes on. So obviously it, the, I think it had the fight with the orca.

That was a huge reveal. I was like, oh man, this shark is like—

It's like Two-Face shark.

Yeah. Shark Face. Seeing it, uh, like when it catches on fire and then later on you see like every time it pops up, like the whole one half is charred is actually pretty cool looking.

Yeah.

And there's one time where it comes up outta the water and the thing looks like gnarly, like its, its teeth are like all weirdly, like its jaw looked like it was weirdly misshapen and stuff like that as well. But it, it's a very gnarly looking shark when it pops up, uh, outta the water at one of the times. Like the original one actually like looks like an amazing creature. Uh, and this thing looks like, again, maybe that's another reason I keep thinking maybe it gave more of like that like slasher movie vibe is cuz also now you've got this like disfigured Thing popping up out of the ocean and stuff like that.

Um, should have been a zombie shark.

Zombie.

Yeah, original Jaws is brought back to life and he must come back for vengeance.

Well, if they hadn't blown the original one up, maybe that would have worked.

Yeah, but maybe the post-credits scene, you see like all these little pieces starting to come back together, form back together.

Yeah, or there's somebody that like collects the shark brain and puts it into another shark.

Yeah, let's see. That's a great idea. This is a big complaint, and I know this is kind of a weird complaint about sequels, but for this movie in particular, it made me think. I was like, it's kind of annoying that there's some random new shark that showed up.

Yes, because I hated that.

It's like, it doesn't make any sense. Brody has this theory of like, well, maybe it sensed that the other shark died, and the lady's like, no, sharks don't take things personally. But this shark does seem to take things a little personally.

Yeah, this shark seems like it's on a mission to do something.

It needs to explain why the shark is the way it is, or it needs to do something completely different with the movie. And I know if you go to see Jaws 2 and there's no shark, that's, that's a problem, probably. But honestly, I was like, the character stuff's not horrible. You could probably do something interesting with like this guy who's like haunted by his experience with the shark. And maybe he's like, is it a shark or not? Are people just having boating accidents? You know, like, and he's like shooting into the water frantically.

Yeah.

Yeah, like him having a mental breakdown about it, you know. I thought that would be kind of a cool, interesting movie, but then I don't think people would like that.

And they lean right back into the whole thing again of him like, hey, we got to shut things down for a while. No, it's not good for business. Like, can we do something? This time it's because they're trying to sell like waterfront properties and a resort-type atmosphere thing, as opposed to just like keeping Amity in business during the, you know, keeping them making enough money during the summer so in the winter they, you know, can just kind of chill. You know, in the, in the 3 years since the last thing, this place has suddenly like become like a booming place that they want to build a Holiday Inn and some other stuff at, and this is going to throw it all off again. I'm like, it's just kind of the same problem from the first one. Like, yeah, it would've been cool to see a guy who is the guy who's putting cyanide drops onto the bullets.

Yeah. See, like he's, he's obsessed. I would love it.

He's, I mean, He's going nuts and he has every right to because he had this traumatic experience with it. But like, yeah, they could have leaned into those type of things.

That would have been a cool mystery of like, is he just going crazy or is there really a shark? And then, you know, of course it reveals maybe the shark is real, but like they don't make that a mystery. Like, I like the idea of him like going too hard, like back to shark hunter mode when he doesn't need to, and people like freaking out about it. I think that's a good idea.

You know what would have been really cool? Is if he was the one doing the killing.

Whoa.

As he was haunted by it. And so he just kept doing things to make it look like sharks were doing it.

He became the shark.

Yeah.

He, he took that skeleton of the dead shark and like climbed inside it and started swimming around.

I wasn't going that far. I'm just saying he's, you know, he's doing things to make it look like, you know, he cut big chunks out of an orca.

Just, he's wearing a shark skin robe and he tucks his junk back and dances in front of a mirror. Yeah.

Would I bite me?

I'd bite.

Yeah, that would be a way better movie.

I need something different because this movie is too much of the same and worse in almost every single way.

Yes, like, I—

it's obviously they made this one because they were like, hey, guess what, uh, people's cousins are traumatizing with the first one, so let's make this one a little more kid-friendly. Let's make a bunch of teens that are just hanging out.

did not like the teen stuff very much. I thought that the, uh, them getting stranded out— there's a lot of like kind of just like insane over-the-top stuff that doesn't really make sense. Like them like all crashing into each other in the middle.

God bless America, man. I wanted to nuke those kids out of the water. I hated every one of them. Just very annoying carpet bomb. I couldn't stand them.

The, the one The one girl, she's with the cousin or whatever that they bring along, and she's just nonstop wailing the whole time they're down the stretch. Like, it— I'm like, come on.

Well, I mean, kids out there, because of her, do you do everything your parents tell you? No. You're gonna see you at 8 AM. I'm like, fuck you. Jesus Christ.

That's the most unrealistic part, is as a teen getting up at 8 AM. Yeah.

And then you— let's take the— let's take our younger brother with. Nothing. bad's ever gonna happen there.

And they all had boats, and like the dipshit kid had a dipshit boat, right?

It was inflatable. Yeah.

Yeah, like their boats matched their personalities for some reason. It was really— I didn't— did not like it at all.

Uh, yeah, and it's like, again, like there's a whole like thing, even like with him getting fired, it could have like focused more on like, you know, a little bit more of the dark turn of like, you know, where his head continues to go and stuff like that, as opposed to just like Oh man, my kids are out there now.

Maybe he goes vigilante mode, starts going out on the water hunting sharks himself.

Well, I think he went vigilante mode when he was shooting the bluefish.

Yeah, but he had a— he was a badge still at that point.

Which also, everyone else is like, dude, it's just a bunch of bluefish. He looked out there with binoculars. Couldn't he see like that blob moving around and not just sitting there? Like, I don't know, I would think it would like kind of swarm around and stuff like that, as opposed to him thinking That it was, you know, just a a giant shark.

He wanted to see sharks, so he saw sharks. That's the thing. He knew he knew in his head already that there was a shark out there. That's right. And see, that would have been good because he's losing. He's unhinged. He's losing it. That would have been a good movie. But he's proven right for the most part. I mean, he probably should not have blind fired at that child and killed the bluefish. Those bluefish didn't deserve to get shot with cyanide bullets.

No, he probably missed every one of them.

Now, I was also concerned because he. First of all, he's pouring cyanide all over his bullets on his desk. That's not gonna end well, I feel like. And like, someone touches his desk and just dies. Oh, he was—

Oh, no, he had a, he had a towel down. He had a towel down 'cause he wrapped 'em all up when he was done.

Yeah, better wash that towel very thoroughly.

I don't know if he, I don't know if he gave the wax enough time to, to fully harden up, but, you know, he's—

There's child's helping him pick up bullets off the ground that are definitely covered in cyanide.

Watch after that. Also, that, that scene, like, before, like, you know, it's him doing it and you can, you know, it seems like it's kind of obvious, but like when they're showing like just the up close of like somebody dropping the cyanide onto the thing and all, like the way that they're doing it makes it almost seem like, like, who is this mysterious, uh, yeah, scientist? We're gonna have the shark, we're gonna have the shark, but there's also gonna be like a weird serial killer.

Yeah, the cyanide bullet killer going around.

Yeah.

Which is, which is a hat on a hat.

That would be amazing.

Kill a person.

Yeah.

Put a cyanide-coated bullet in 'em.

The hat on the hat on the hat is that it's the shark putting these bullets together. That would've been crazy.

Oh, you see a fin putting it down. It's like the mystery of who it could be. Yeah. It's like, huh, I wonder. Deep in the ocean, you see the, the trenches and stuff behind them, the coral.

I think my, my biggest takeaway from this though is And again, you've got a different writer, uh, well, no, actually same writer. Guy didn't actually want to write this, they had to talk him into it. But like, you have this and then you get this other director guy, but like, I— the drop-off from the original movie to this is kind of crazy. Like how, like how bad this one is compared to the original, and like how just kind of boring this movie is compared to the original.

This movie is Terribly boring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Terribly boring.

An hour and 30 minutes probably would've been perfect for this.

Here's—

I still would've been like, okay, a little much.

I was almost tempted to log the times, like the start and end times of just wasted filler material.

Oh, like the lady on the— lady on the ski who they just showed like at least 10 minutes of. Over and over.

Like the people on the beach. You know, there's just like, even before the opening clip, Dude pulls up, he's clearly drunk in his car, and then we watch him walk from his car to his house for like a minute and a half. It's like, Jesus Christ, like, we get it. We know he's got some issues, right? Like, you can condense that. If you take all the filler material out, this movie's only like 40 minutes long. Like, all the sailing, the, the kids just doing the same thing over and over and over again. You're just like, geez, there are so many scenes. The point of a scene is like to progress a story, right?

Yeah.

Like, so something has to change over the course of a scene. A decision has to be made. A point of view has to shift. Something has to happen in a scene to make it worthwhile. And there's so many scenes where nothing happens. Like literally nothing happens. You're just like, fuck, man. That's my biggest issue with this movie. It's just, it's so boring.

Yes, it needs to embrace what it is. If it wants to go over the top with it, keep it short and sweet.

Mm-hmm.

Go all in on that. But they don't. They want to try and kind of make it like a serious drama too.

Yeah.

And the serious drama stuff is— it's not horrible, but it's so slow sometimes. Yeah, like the pacing's not very good. No.

If you were younger the first time you saw it and you, and you're watching like, oh cool, okay, I'm watching this, and you get into it, you're not really paying attention to the fact that like, oh, they just pulled up that giant electrical cord in the ocean, uh, early in the movie and basically just told you exactly what was gonna happen.

Yeah.

Killing the shark with that was kind of awesome.

I, I like that.

You know, me watching enough movies now and seeing that them pull that up, you know, when they're trying to like, uh, find the the, the dead lady and the skier earlier, and they pull that up and they're like, oh, it's the electric thing, we gotta let it go, otherwise the whole town will go out. I'm like, oh, that's— they're gonna kill the shark with that thing later. That's the whole point of showing that right now.

I thought the shark was gonna eat through it and turn off the power and everybody's gonna be without power, but it just—

no, instead it just—

the whole Eastern Coast has— is without power because the shark—

yeah, I thought he was going to cut the power and then everybody somehow that was going to help him.

I'm assuming the power still probably went out. I mean, he bit into it pretty good and You know, all that, you know, electrical that went into it. It was kind of— that was probably like that. And when it catches on fire, it might have been like my 2 favorite parts of the thing.

When that woman's in the ski boat and she gets the gasoline, why is she pouring on herself? If she just pours it on herself, I'm like, she's gonna self-immolate.

I'd rather burn than get eaten.

Burn to death than be eaten by a shark.

That is a debate. I don't know. That's a good question. Probably would rather get eaten, to be honest.

Would you rather be eaten by a shark or burn yourself alive?

Think fast. You're thrown in the ocean with Jaws and you gotta get a can of gasoline. Your choice.

I don't know anything about Jaws 3 or the rest. Are they all— do they all take place in the same New England town?

So in Jaws Revenge, uh, the wife comes back in that one, uh, and there's one other person that are in Jaws, Jaws 2, and then Jaws Revenge. One other lady Um, I think it might be their housekeeper or something. They're in all 3 of those movies. Jaws 3 in 3D, which I actually saw in theaters with my family.

Oh yeah.

They, uh, like an aquarium or like, uh, some kind of like aquarium place locates a, you know, finds a baby great white and, you know, takes it in and the mother comes back, uh, to get it and just wreaks revenge on the whole thing.

The mother of the shark comes to seek revenge.

Yeah. Comes to find her kid. Shark eats bears. Yeah. She comes to find her baby.

Makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And then I actually don't know what Jaws Revenge is about.

Wait, Jaws 3 is about that? The mother comes for revenge in Jaws 3.

Comes to get her baby from the aquarium.

Yeah. Jaws: The Revenge is not about that.

No, it's about Jaws seeking revenge. So that was my thing. The draw— if you're gonna make a sequel to Jaws, it's gotta be about the shark, right? And it— you should just be anywhere else in the world and tell another shark ravaging the coast story.

Yes.

It doesn't have to be this same town, because like Terry said, it's like, why is there another man-eating shark in this New England town where that never happens.

Especially where, especially if you're gonna film the whole thing down in Florida anyway, why not have it be another—

Well, that's movie magic.

But no, but I'm saying like, why not?

So much gets filmed in Canada that—

No, I'm saying why not have it just take place off the Florida coast? And instead of having like Chief Brody, or maybe Chief Brody has moved from Amity because of the last thing that happened and now he's there and shows up.

And the sharks follow him. Like he's a shark magnet. That'd be, that'd be a whole different take.

That's a good idea.

But this is because then you're looking at like a Die Hard situation where like the same crazy shit happens to John McClane over and over again.

Yeah, I'd love that if he moved.

Okay, so Jaws 3D, a giant 35-foot shark becomes trapped in a SeaWorld theme park. It's up to the sons of— oh, it's up to the sons of Police Chief Brody to rescue everyone.

Weird.

Yeah, so the 2 sons from Jaws 2, and I, I can't remember whether if they were in Jaws 1 or not.

At least one of them was.

The 2 kids are now working in an aquarium, or they happen to be where the aquarium's at.

I happen to be there, and then they have to save everyone from an evil shark that got trapped inside.

Several years after Brody electrocutes the shark at Cable Junction, his sons Mike and Sean are now working in different roles at SeaWorld Orlando.

And so there you go, Keith, it's Florida.

So now they move there, and this, uh, that one starts No, Dennis Quaid. Dennis Quaid is, uh, Mike Brody.

Oh God.

Um, some guy named John Putsch plays Sean Brody. Sean Brody's like 5. How many years after this? It says a few years. That can't be—

I don't know, the proverbial few.

Jaws: The Revenge. Chief Brody's widow believes that her family is deliberately being targeted by another shark in search of revenge.

Yes, see, that's okay, but it, it's in Amity.

Yeah, they're back there. Um, Lance Guest now plays Michael Brody.

Wow.

Mario Van Peebles is in this one. Um, Michael Caine is in it and has said he's never seen it.

Yeah.

Uh, Lorraine Gary, who plays Ellen, she's the one who's back. Uh, the wife is still there. Doesn't exactly say what happened to Chief Brody, but—

Dead, I assume.

Yeah, killed by a shark, I would guess.

Killed by a shark.

Yeah, it looks like she may now be, uh, With, uh, Michael Caine. Wow.

Chief Brody was killed by a shark, but it was a— it was like a wrong place at the wrong time. Caught somebody— caught a shark, you know, holding up somebody in a back alley, and the shark ended up killing— shooting him and killing him too.

Yeah, here we go.

Just a few seconds earlier or later, he would have caught the shark, you know, and it would have been safe.

Earlier, he could have stopped the shark. Later, he would have missed the whole event entirely. Yeah, just happened to come around the corner right when that shark was hitting somebody.

Too good of a heart not to intervene. He's retired at this point, his badge had been revoked, but he still wanted to try and help.

All right, here we go. Uh, Sean Brody has assumed his father's role as Amity Island Police Department and is engaged to a young woman. His mother Ellen still lives in Amity as well. Mike is now married and, uh, his wife is researching conch snails.

Cool.

In the Bahamas, uh, one night while repairing a buoy in Amity Harbor, the police boat Sean is ambushed from below and killed by the Bro— by the Brodys' old enemy, a great white shark.

Wow. She—

oh, okay. Um, after the funeral, Ellen wants Mike to stay off the water. He refuses, and he takes her back to the Caribbean with him, uh, where, uh, him and his wife and daughter now live. Uh, starts enjoying life again. meeting a charming pilot named Hoagie, who's played by Michael Caine. But then they inquire— they encounter another great white shark, uh, in the water, and it soon starts wreaking havoc. Uh, taglines: This time it's personal.

Sounds like it. The multiple sharks have a grudge. When Jaws 5 comes out, if they want me, I'll do it.

Yeah, I'd do it. But you're right, Terry, I think the solution to this, this whole shark hunting us down problem is like move to Nebraska.

Yeah, they're never gonna get you unless—

Again, land sharks.

Like, there's no sharks in Denver.

Also, unless you go to aquarium. Don't go to aquariums, you're good.

By the way, the quote for this, you know, on IMDb where they start showing quotes, the only quote that shows up like immediately without clicking on the little arrow button says, quote, shark roar.

Wow.

I don't think sharks roar.

No, I, I know they don't roar.

Well, what do they do?

I'm not a shark expert. I don't know, but they don't roar.

They might.

Hold on, let me do this. Do sharks roar? No, sharks do not roar.

Yeah, this is AI. I don't trust AI.

A lot of things they could have done differently here. The main one might have been just don't make any more of these movies.

It's a cash grab. That's all it is.

Yeah, I mean, the first one is— the way it ends, I mean, again, you're not gonna have Son of the Shark comes back to Get vengeance. Like this is a standalone movie. They didn't need to roll out a whole nother. Like they killed it.

Boils, did we do it? Did we get through Jaws two?

We did. We did.

Oh my God! What do we think of Jaws two?

Chomped our way right through it.

We did chomp our way right.

Like it's a feel like.

Good.

I just say that we chomped like it's a big electrical cord.

Oh, I was.

It was easy to lift out of the bottom of the. You'd think that'd be secured so it'd be so heavy you couldn't get it. That thing was sinking the boat when they.

tried to hook it to it. Yeah, I don't know how he lifted that. He's a strong man.

Yeah, I, uh, my feelings about that— I feel like that orca that they found.

You feel like the, like, 2-week-old dead orca?

2-week-old.

So plasticky looking in it. It had to be because of the age and the decomposition.

And the fact that that lady really didn't want to question that it possibly could be Like what else would have taken another bite on?

Another orca.

She said that. She's like, or, you know, it's just been floating around. All these fish, you know, have all been chewing on it.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's how I feel about this movie. Hopefully that translates well.

I came in here thinking, you know what, it wasn't so bad. It was okay. But the more immediately I've turned on it, I don't like it. Um, I, I wasn't like— I, I was bored watching it, a lot of it. But God, yeah, I didn't think that the drama was like that bad. I just think the pacing was off. Like, they definitely could have cut a lot of stuff out of it, cleaned it up a little bit. The shark stuff's just kind of ridiculous, and the whole premise is just like, come on, it happened again. They don't try to put a cool twist on it or anything. It literally is just the same movie but worse. Um, and that I think is its biggest downfall. It should have tried something a little more creative.

Yeah, I agree. Was the movie good? No. Was it the worst thing we've ever watched? No. Um, did I enjoy it? No, I didn't. Uh, okay, it was just so goddamn boring. Get rid of the boats, get rid of the kids, get rid of all this shark in between stuff. Don't just make it just all shark all the time. Jesus Christ, do something interesting.

Yeah, let's get like a True Detective style, uh, thing here and, uh, you know, really It's like, here, we'll watch paint dry for 35 minutes, and now there's a shark.

And I'll watch paint dry for another 10 minutes, and there's a shark. And then we'll watch this person water ski back and forth for 5 minutes. Like, Jesus Christ, I get it, they're water skiing.

So much water skiing.

Yes, so much of the boat stuff too. God, they're just on boats constantly.

Yes, and I don't like that the Brody guy took the boat and he doesn't know how to drive a boat or know any directions or anything. Yeah, he should have. Why did he do that? He like, they let him drive away with that boat and he's like, don't tell me starboard or just point. And then he's like, where the hell is this coast? I'm like, why did you go out into the middle of the ocean with this boat, you fool?

What a dumbass.

Yeah, I didn't like that. I don't like that.

Well, we know what we thought. What did the internet have to say?

Hmm, I wonder.

Well, on January 24th, 2014, oh boy, veryyappy-887-913905 had this to say.

Wow.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, dot dot dot. Jaws is my favorite ever film, but so is, dot dot dot, Jaws 2. I love the film. It is way, way, way underrated.

Wow.

Four years after the great white shark terrorized the small resort of Amity, unsuspecting vacationers start vanishing in an all too familiar fashion. Dot dot dot. Only one man knows the truth of what really is going on in Amity Island. My favorite four films are dot dot dot. One Jaws. Two Back to the Future. Three The Lost Boys. Four Jaws Two. I adore the first two Jaws films, and I think it was very unnecessary for three and the Revenge. This film starred dot dot dot Roy Scheider as Chief Martin Brody slash Martin Brody, Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody, Murray Hamilton as the mayor slash Larry Senior. Hey, found that helpful. The month? Not so much. 10 out of 10.

Why would you end it that way?

I don't know.

And all you know what though? Maybe he was trying to get the word count. He's like, okay, I have to just add some stuff in here. Like, that's very— like, these people need to take like an essay writing class or something.

I agree. Not to be outdone, on January 14th, 2016, whoa, Partial Movie Viewer had this to say.

Oh no, partial. He better not have like gotten up and left halfway through.

We'll see.

Oh my God, that would be great if all this guy does is review movies while watching only parts of them. Like he just picks like a random like starting point.

Yeah, it just goes to 53:17 and starts from there. Yeah, it could be worse, dot dot dot, proved by Jaws 3. Jaws, Highlander should have been left alone. As Connor MacLeod said, there can be only— there can only be one, which also applies to this movie. They should have caught on by the poor reviews at the time and buried Bruce instead of copying Planet of the Apes.

Huh? There's what?

Instead of copying, comma, Planet of the Apes.

It copied Planet of the Apes.

I guess all the sequels. It is over and was over back in 1975. I wish the studios had taken their stinking paws off this epic and had come up with more original thought. The original is, without question, one of Steven Spielberg's crowning achievements. The cast was perfect, the directing was perfect, the scenery was perfect, the musical score was perfect, and even the boat, the Orca, was perfect. And yes, they did need a bigger boat.

Wow.

With that said, why in the world would anyone want to make a sequel? And then another, and then another, and then another? I know some may think these movies get scarier sequentially. No. That is wrong. They do not.

Who says that?

They progressively sink to the lowest or low. Granted, as good as the first one is, the storyline, when dissected, is kind of lame. But come on, this is Hollyweird. The job in Tinseltown is to entertain, and lame is the name of the game. I found Jaws 2 not to be entertaining in the least. This fiasco ended up being a very irritating follow-up. Sadly, Jaws 2 fostered several unscary sequels. Nothing except the surviving cast members and theme song is memorable about this poor copy. If you need a nap, watch this joke. Just don't wake everyone up with your snoring.

Wow.

7 found that helpful. 10, not so much. 1 out of 10.

Very impassioned review.

Yes, very poor use of punctuation as well.

The Planet of the Apes thing still throwing me a little bit, but I did like his callback when he said, get those damn dirty paws off.

Yeah. Oh well.

What now? Hold on, Planet of the Apes? What about Planet of the Sharks?

Oh man, we're ape sharks.

Ape sharks.

Okay, so they're half Yes, they're just sharks with giant, like, gorilla arms.

Oh, they really—

they reach out of the water, grab you, and pull you in.

And then eat you. Yeah, they don't have— nothing else is gorilla about them, just the giant gorilla arms.

Yeah, it's like, oh shoot, we're safe on the— on this rocky ledge. Yeah, they'll never get us up here. Big old arm comes reaching out, grabs you, pulls you in.

That'd be awesome.

You never see the entire planet of the ape Earth. I bet there are some ape sharks floating around.

Yeah, possibly. Everything else is ape-like on Planet of the Apes.

It's Planet of the Apes. It should be.

Little ape birds and ape insects.

Yeah, with all their own societies, of course. They're all in courses.

They have to.

It only makes sense.

The ape apes have to go to war with the shark apes.

Oh, the shark apes would growl, wouldn't they?

Yeah, shark apes can roar.

Roar, I mean.

Yes, they would have to roar. Like a—

they have gorilla lungs as well. That's what makes them different. Uh-huh.

That's it. They have gorilla kidneys as well.

Yes.

You like gorillas.

Still shark heart though.

Yeah, still the heart of a shark, the heart of a killer.

Weirdly, it's half shark brain, half gorilla brain. It's like one little small and then one half's really big.

Yeah, the creative half is the ape half.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's how you learn how to use tools.

The analytical side, the murderous side is the shark side.

It's the most dangerous combination.

That, that's why it has gorilla arms, is so it can do like sign language and stuff too.

Talking to each other down there.

Amy, my ape shark is signing that it's hungry or whatever.

That's a warning sign. If I see an ape shark doing that, I'm getting out of the water.

It— what's it saying? It says it wants to eat us.

Okay.

At least it told us ahead of time.

So polite.

That's the Apath talking.

Yep. Oh boy, we did it, boyos. We got through another month. M9. M stands for month.

I can't believe we already got through Shark Month. I kind of feel sad.

I know. It was, it was a very fast swimming month.

Yep, went by quick.

Did. So you know what that means? We gotta bust out that spreadsheet because Keith is the tabulator of rankings.

Yes, tabulator himself.

I've got my, I've got mine ready, but, uh, Terry, we'll let you lead.

Yeah, since it's your month, Terry, what's your ranking?

All right, my ranking. I'll go from worst to best.

Okay, that's what you do.

Usually how this works.

Sharktopus was by far the worst film we watched this month. If not of all time.

No, it's just definitely—

let's not go that far.

I think there might be deep thinkers. No, this is— I think Sharktopus is one of the—

you think Sharktopus is worse than Jiu-Jitsu? Yeah. And you think it's worse than Lone Wolf McQuade?

That's a tough one, but Lone Wolf McQuade had more, um, a little more like— at least it was less CGI, you know?

So it had some polish to it.

Yeah, the effects had like— there had to be some effort With the effects, like physically doing them rather than a truck that could bust out of being buried underground. Yes, the shark. That see that was a standout moment of Lo McQuaid. What did Sharktopus have? I don't know. I have probably forgotten 75% of that movie already.

Just last week, I don't remember a single bit of it.

Yeah, all I had was those two guys painting the ship. That was the best part.

Yeah.

Um, so Sharktopus definitely the least ranked, and then I'm gonna go. Jaws 2. Yes, honestly, pretty big step up, but not a great film. And then I'm gonna go Sharkwater after that, and then Dangerous Animals. That's what I'm going with.

That's my ranking too.

All right, guess what? That's my ranking also.

Wow, we all match!

This might be a first.

All 3? No, it's not a first. Maybe it might be a Y2 first.

Yeah, it doesn't happen often.

No, it does not.

No. Wow. Well, I'm impressed. Consistent month, at least. Yeah.

Well, in terms of ranking, Sharktopus was so bad, there's no way it could not be ranked as the worst movie of the month. And Jaws 2 was considerably better, but it was still quite bad. So yeah.

Yes, the only debate was Sharkwater versus Dangerous Animals for me.

And then yeah.

I just think—

oh, I didn't think that was much of a debate either. I, I thought Shark— I thought Dangerous Animals was far enough ahead, and then there's a big gap between that and, and Sharkwater. But then there's also a big gap between Sharkwater and the other 2. Like, like, there's, there's, there's pretty big gaps in between each one of these. There wasn't any that was like it could have been a toss-up at all for me. Pretty straightforward.

All right. Well, well, well, I guess that means we're on to M10, huh?

What's M stand for? Month.

And me as well.

Yeah.

Because it's a me month. Now.

I'm excited.

There's a lot going into this month. And I apologize ahead of time because it's going to be a smidge restrictive.

Okay.

So not any movie?

It's not going to be as broad as like Sharks.

Oh.

A little more restrictive, but there's story that goes with it and why we're doing this.

Okay.

When I grew up, I didn't have cable. I lived in a small town and cable wasn't even brought to it until I was in high school. Okay.

Wow.

And at that time, I lived with my mom and my stepdad, and he didn't want to get cable. I was like, all right. And he said, instead of cable, we're going to do something, and then we're going to do this. Every month we can get— we choose a movie off of Columbia House, and we'll get—

Wow.

We'll get that movie instead of having cable. Instead of having all the different channels and all the different options that come with having cable, we'll spend the amount of money that we would've spent on cable on a single VHS from Columbia House.

But you got like 10 of 'em up front, right?

Yes. Right. So, but here's the thing, Columbia House, and I know, you know what it is, Terry, but it was something special for me. 'Cause when I grew up at that time, it was a way that I could learn how to scam a system. Because I was only like a teenager and I would be like, hey, I'll take 40 CDs for a dollar and then never pay you for the rest of me. And guess what? I'm only 14. You can't come after me. Right?

So you gave them to me.

Yeah, you're dumb. And so, and this was way before there was like credit scores and stuff like that, but it was a thing. Right. And so they had them for CDs. They had them for cassettes. There was also BMG, which was like an alternative to Columbia House, which had like a whole different catalog of things. But then they also did movies. And you do movies, you can buy DVDs and you could buy VHSs and/or LaserDiscs. And usually there was a catalog or like there was an advertisement in the paper and you got to choose a number of things for a dollar and you had to select off of that sheet. So what I did is I went out and I— you'd be surprised things you can purchase online. I purchased on eBay an original authentic Columbia House LaserDisc advertisement where you could select 3 LaserDiscs for a dollar each.

Wow.

So what we're going to do is we're going to select 3 LaserDiscs off of this ad. Man, this is fantastic. And it is our Columbia House. Now, It's— here's the thing. This is from 1992. So there's like 80-something movies on here to choose from. And now when I— and we got to rotate who got to pick on Columbia House. And it was always like, do I pick a movie that I'd already seen and loved?

Yeah.

Or do I risk my $20 VHS purchase on something I don't know? Because I was responsible for this. So this time I chose something I do know and love, and it's a classic. It's number 0576042 on this page, and it is The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Wow, the original?

The original The Day the Earth Stood Still.

That is— that's an old classic.

That is a movie I grew up with. and love and I have not seen in many years. And so that's what I— that's what we're watching for the next one.

That's exciting.

Keith?

I love this. I'll be honest, there's a lot of really good options here.

There are. There's a ton of great movies on this list.

This is fantastic.

I had a hard time. I was like, do I pick any of these other amazing movies that are on here, or do I pick one I haven't seen? Because they had to make it very appetizing, right? Like, like, whoa, you gotta pick 3. So they gave you like some really good options, and there are some really good options on here.

I mean, there's things that we've watched on here.

There's some stinkers on here though too, so beware. Yeah, but we're watching The Day the Earth Stood Still from 1950-something or other. That's what we're doing. Columbia House.

This might be like, this might be one of like my toughest things to pick. All right.

Oh, we did it, boyos. We got through Shark Month. We're on to Columbia House Month. And then—

Excellent.

And, uh, the day the Earth stood still. And I guess, uh, that leaves us with, uh, nothing else to do but to end this the way we end everything.

That's true.

Oh no.

Oh, it's 3D, that's why they're doing it. Wow, it pops right out of the screen.

Oh, why does it make chewing noises? Thanks for listening to Fumbling Through Film. New episodes drop every Thursday. Got feedback or questions? email us at [email protected]. You can see our films to fumble before you tumble into the grave and other musings on Letterboxd at Fumble Thru Film. The thru is T-H-R-U. You can also follow Keith on Instagram @kg3030lives and on Letterboxd @kg3030. Terry is on Letterboxd @terry2099. Derek is on Letterboxd @derek9ix. All original music is done by The Dr. Dre of Kansas, Terry. So hit him up for them bangers. Our new podcast logo is done by the delightful and talented Sanjay Vicky Nayak. You can find her on Instagram @einkstein. That's Einstein with a K in there. We'll see you next week as we keep on fumbling. Jim Caviezel needs to go away. Him and Mel Gibson and the rest of that lot. They can all— Kevin Sorbo and All those people are all them of their ilk.

Hercules, Hercules.

They're all in the same little cadre of assholes. I don't want to deal with them. I don't want to be anywhere near the podcast.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, Christ, I got to edit out Jim Caviezel chatter.