Jaws 1½: The Next Bite
Just when you almost thought it was safe to go back in the water
Fifty years after the release of the original movie, Jaws 1½ tempts us back in the ocean with another mouth-clenching shark-fest.
Using deleted scenes of Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw, Chief Brody and shark-hunter Quint are reunited with the Oceanographer Guy (whose name no one can ever remember), played by a de-aged Richard Dreyfuss using technology left over from Scorsese’s The Irishman.
Jaws aficionados will point to the fact that Quint was eaten by the shark in the first movie.
No problem for screenwriter Andy Salmon, who niftily keeps Quint alive in the belly of the shark, so that when the shark explodes in the original, Quint is conveniently spat out like a modern-day Jonah ready for the sequel.
Together again, they join forces to track down another killer shark that’s terrorising the beaches of Amity Island. A stunt double shark who escaped from the set of the first movie, but no one noticed.
There’s no time to lose because once again, fat-head Mayor Larry Vaughn has reopened the beaches, even though the new shark has already eaten four small boys, plus a couple of rabbits.
Mayor Vaughn is only pushed into action when his own wife is eaten while bathing, trying to prove to everyone there are no such things as sharks.
He hires Quint (again), and soon the crew is off to sea with 20,000 crates of cold beer, determined to save the day.
They then spend the next few days wasting time playing cards, drinking beer, arguing, and showing each other tattoos. All while the stunt double shark circles around them, wondering when they are going to start firing harpoons into its back.
Eventually, they jump into action and spend the next day mindlessly chasing four yellow barrels around a vast ocean for no reason whatsoever.
Tired and bored, the shark attacks and eats Quint (again) while watching the Oceanographer Guy swim off to the bottom of the ocean (again) like the coward he is.
The shark is about to finish off Chief Brody, when he finds an electrical cable that a film crew are using for the making of Jaws 2, and rams it in the shark’s mouth.
The shark explodes, and Chief Brody and the cowardly Oceanographer Guy swim back to Amity Island to a hero’s welcome.
A welcome that’s even sweeter when Brody and a holographic Roy Scheider realise they’ll never have to make Jaws 2, as the entire film crew was killed by the exploding shark from a legacy sequel called Jaws 1½ made in 2025.
Confused by the time paradoxes, Chief Brody goes for a swim and gets eaten by the shark used in Jaws 2, but everyone had forgotten about.
Crazy film.
Rating: 2 bites out of 5.
This was originally published in 21st Century Flicks.
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I was always rooting for the shark. I'm sad it exploded.
I hope it comes back like some sort of Frankenstein's monster.
“No problem for screenwriter Andy Salmon, who niftily keeps Quint alive in the belly of the shark, so that when the shark explodes in the original, Quint is conveniently spat out like a modern-day Jonah ready for the sequel.”
Wild shit