JAWS 50th ANNIVERSARY

[Paul Adsett]

Today is the 50th anniversary of the release of JAWS. The Universal 8 10 minutes cutdown is now widely regarded as the best 200ft film ever released on super 8.

[Osi Osgood]

Just about, or is, the longest digest ever on super 8 200ft!

[Steve Klare]

-a memorable Summer that was!

I was barely 13 years old, and Mom and Dad decided I wasn't old enough to go. My 19 year old sister DID go -and it had an effect on her.

A couple of days later we were watching TV and this beer commercial came on screen. This guy out on a lake in a rowboat got a bite on his line and hauled this immense fish out of the water up past the camera. My sister screamed and pulled her legs up on the couch!

Being the little brother, I thought this was hysterical, and yet she did not!

I need to put this in perspective too. At the time, she was a first year nursing student and not long after that would earn the nickname "Blood and Guts" because when a frog with its chest flapping open got loose in one of her lab classes, and everybody else (including the professor) stood on top of the tables screaming, Blood and Guts Herself caught the poor thing and properly anesthetized it!

She would eventually go on to work as an Emergency Room and Operating Room Nurse: amputations, car accidents, hunting accidents and that one surgeon that had the habit of humming hymns starting maybe a minute before his patient flat-lined!

(She is NOT exactly "squeamish"!)

Where I live, a lot of tourism and recreation is on our ocean beaches. I don't often go because in the peak of the season parking and beach space is really crowded. -not so that summer! The people that held beverage and food concessions at the parks reported a really poor year!

JAWS is different for me than for most people: to this day I still haven't seen it on the Big Screen with theatrical sound. Based on my small screen experience, it's a really good adventure story and not very frightening. Sad to say, I can never experience it the way it was meant to be because even if I saw it theatrically, most of the element of surprise would be gone.

[Mike Newell]

Funny, I watched the 2x400 Jaws with a blue filter and then viewed the spectacular Blu ray last Friday. It still holds up really well after 50 years. I think it was one of the 1st movies at 12/13 I went with mates rather than family to the cinema.

Seeing it on the big screen the 1st time was a dynamic moment. The 200, 400 and 2x400 digests are really well edited. Whether the rumour of Spielberg involvement or a brilliant editor at Universal 8. Whoever did it did a fantastic job.

Spielberg digests on super 8 are generally better edits than some digests Raiders of the Lost Ark, Duel and Close Encounters as 400s are extremely well cut and cover the story.

Even The Sugarland Express and 1941 as 2x400 are improvements on their feature length versions.

[Bob Kuzyk]

The 200' had excellent quality and editing, you got a full 10 minutes on a 200' reel and price (when did that ever happen?), U-8 introduced their new slipcase packaging, and I think a poster was even included. Like Paul said- the best 200 ft. release ever on Super 8 (although the 200' STAR WARS may have done more to promote the hobby).

[Ed Gordon]

...
JAWS is different for me than for most people: to this day I still haven't seen it on the Big Screen with theatrical sound. Based on my small screen experience, it's a really good adventure story and not very frightening. Sad to say, I can never experience it the way it was meant to be because even if I saw it theatrically, most of the element of surprise would be gone.

Steve, I have the opposite problem. I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in Super Panavision 70 on a Cinerama screen. I can't watch it on a small screen. Even the 4k Bluray projected on to the large screen in my home cinema is simply not good enough! The Cinerama presentation was shown in the original 2.89:1 aspect ratio, so the home releases in 2.20:1 butchered the movie.

[Rob Young]

I first saw Jaws on my B&W portable TV in my bedroom when I was 10.

I was probably too young as it made my slightly wary of even getting into a bathtub! lol! I’m serious too.

It took a while before I went back in my local swimming pool as well. Needless to say it had an affect on 10 year old me.

Thankfully I soon got over it. As both the movie and myself age it just gets better each time you watch it, doesn’t it? Even long after the scares have worn off, it’s still a remarkable piece of adventure and drama. How did that 25 year old do it?!

The Universal 8 2 x 400ft was good in its day, but that Blu-ray and 4K are something else. Still looking forward to watching it for the 50th Anniversary, despite having seen it a zillion times.

The 200 footers is great; if only every 200 footer was, well, 200ft!

Mike, RE 1941; absolutely, it makes a perfect half hour and is a vast improvement on the overblown feature.

[Mike Newell]

Mike, RE 1941; absolutely, it makes a perfect half hour and is a vast improvement on the overblown feature.[/QUOTE]

Still has the nudie girl from Jaws in it.

The one that scared me when young about 10 . I actually had nightmares was Quatermass & the Pit late at night on B/W television. Those were the days when you got the Marx Bros movies on a Friday night. Think the black & white television hid the shortcomings of Les Bowie’s special effects LOL.

[Rob Young]

I too also found Quatermass & The Pit was pretty spooky on TV (the series and the Hammer movie version), but it wasn’t until I bought the Derann 400ft edit of the movie that I saw that army guys face melted off! It was obviously cut from TV airings at the time and was quite a shock to suddenly see it in a movie you thought you knew. Another reason to love super 8 as a kid; you got all the gory bits that were edited out on TV!!

[Phillip Campey]

I was 13 when I saw jaws at the cinema. The uk did not get the film until after Christmas so we got it in 1976. It became my favourite movie of all time and I’ve seen it countless times and owned it on every format going including the 200ft which is a fantastic edit. I love seeing it on the big screen but my favourite viewing was the 3D presentation a couple of years ago. Now all the prints I have come across on super 8 and 16mm have faded so had a scope 16mm print made which is fantastic.

[Osi Osgood]

Even having the great digests from these last few years, I'd love to find a nice scope print of the feature, which does exist, but is hard to find. It's another one that needs to be seen in scope to really get that (dare I say it?) "immersive" experience.

[Graham Ritchie]

I first watched JAWS on its release at the cinema along with 1100 others projected on a single screen one night. That experience, I have never forgotten and in all the years of going to the cinema to hear the reaction to what they watching on the big screen that night, for me has never been repeated. I stiil to this day can't watch that severed head, my brain was programmed from that night to make me jump, so even today 50 years on now on blu-ray I cover my eyes it still effects me to this day.

PS I would really like to see the 3D conversion at a cinema or as a later blu-ray release, I understand the conversion was really good when it did its limited 3D run at some cinemas overseas of late.