Jaws(1975)

Submitted by Evan B

POOPER: (Thanks Curt, The Grand Poopbah!)
After the shark kills Quint (Robert Shaw), Brody (Roy Scheider) stuffs a SCUBA tank in its gullet and blows it up with a well-aimed rifle shot. Then he and Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) swim home.

Long Ending:
One summer night off the beaches on Amity Island, a woman named Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) goes skinny dipping, only to be horrifically attacked and killed by a Great White Shark. Her remains wash up on the beach and new police chief Brody is assigned to investigate. He quickly determines she was killed by a shark and prepares to close the beaches. However, his actions are opposed by Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) and the city council. The summer season is when almost all the local businesses make their money, and declaring a shark attack and closing the beaches could cripple the economy. The council also convinces the medical examiner to retract his finding that Chrissie was killed by a shark (instead declaring her killed by a boat propeller). As a recent arrival on the island from New York, Brody doesn’t have the political capital to overcome them. So Brody reluctantly allows the beaches to stay open. The next day, the shark attacks again and kills both a dog and a local child named Alex in front of a huge crowd.

Alex’s mother offers $3,000.00 to anyone that kills the shark that ate her boy. This attracts the attention of many ill prepared and inexperienced shark hunters. A local professional shark hunter named Quint (Robert Shaw) refuses to participate unless he’s paid $10,000 (correctly guessing that this shark is a true danger, Quint is unwilling to risk his life for any less). Brody also contacts Hooper, a shark expert and oceanographer, to assist him in locating the shark. Hooper and Brody go out in the ocean and find the wreckage of one of the inexperienced shark hunters. As Hooper investigates, he finds a tooth of the enormous Great White lodged in the boat, but drops and loses it when the corpse of a dead hunter startles him. The next morning, the amateur hunters come to shore with a dead tiger shark that they claim is the shark that killed Chrissie and Alex. Hooper and Brody try to convince Mayor Vaughn that this is not the killer shark, but lacking the evidence of the Great White tooth, Vaughn refuses to listen and reopens the beaches. Alex’s mother, having learned Brody knew about the shark but didn’t close the beach, also slaps him in public for his dereliction of duty.

Huge summer crowds arrive and the Mayor convinces everyone to go into the water. The Great White attacks again, devouring a man and nearly even killing Brody’s own son and his son’s friends who were out sailing in a boat. Unable to deny the truth any longer (and noting his own son was in the water), Mayor Vaughn agrees to pay Quint $10,000 to hunt the shark. Brody and Hooper insist on going on the hunt with Quint. Hooper brings along a shark cage, scuba gear, and poison, while Quint intends to use old school methods to kill the Great White. They sail off in Quint’s boat, the Orca. Although there is some friction beyond all three, they eventually bond. Quint recounts that he is one of the few survivors of the USS Indianapolis (a true story), which was sunk during WWII after delivering the nuclear bomb. The men were trapped at sea for a week – 1000 went into the water but only 300 were rescued (most of the rest were eaten by sharks). Ever since then, Quint has hunted sharks.

They encounter the shark, which aggressively attacks the ship. Quint’s hunting method is to attach barrels to the shark. The barrels naturally float and are meant to force the shark to the surface where it can be harpooned and shot to death. However, the Great White proves too powerful. It manages to swim into the depths despite having three barrels attached to it (Quint notes no shark has ever been able to submerge itself with more than 2 barrels attached). The hunt drives Quint mad, and he destroys the radio so that neither Hooper nor Brody can radio for help.

With none of his hunting methods working and the ship’s engine destroyed after repeated attacks by the shark, Quint agrees to let Hooper try and kill the Great White. Hooper loads poison into a spear and then descends in the shark cage while wearing scuba gear in hopes of poisoning it. However, the Great White is so ferocious that it is able to smash through the cage, rip the cage from the boat so that it sinks to the ocean floor, and knock the poison spear out of Hooper’s hands. The damage causes the boat to begin sinking and the shark leaps from the water onto the deck. Quint and Brody try to hold on as the boat tilts towards the shark’s snapping jaws, but Quint isn’t able to keep his grip and he slides into the shark’s mouth where he’s eaten. Brody manages to climb up to the mast, armed with only a handgun. As the ship continues sinking, the shark begins swallowing debris. One of Hooper’s spare scuba tanks full of compressed air gets lodged in its mouth. As Brody sinks closer to the shark waiting below, he shoots at the tank. With time for only one more shot, Brody says “smile you son of a…” and hits the scuba tank. The tank ignites, killing the shark in an enormous, bloody explosion. Hooper (who managed to successfully escape the shark cage and flee from the shark as it turned its attention to the boat) returns to the surface. Brody and Hooper use the barrels to keep afloat and they begin a victorious swim back to shore.