By PAUL DOWNEY (BearManor Media; 2022)
BearManor Media published movie making-of books are usually always worth reading, even THE SHARK IS ROARING. It’s one of the lesser such books, although the major problem is not the fault of author Paul Downey but, rather, with the movie he’s profiling.
The 1987 JAWS sequel JAWS: THE REVENGE is a bummer. Not a so-bad-it’s-good bummer, but an uninspired TV-worthy product with a premise, about a telepathically-endowed great white looking to get revenge on the widow (Lorraine Gary) of the Cape Cod based sheriff (Roy Scheider) who killed one of its relatives in the first JAWS, that’s more fun than anything in the finished film.
To elaborate: the script posits that Scheider has died, with his better half still residing in the beachfront community where the previous films took place. In short order, Gary figures out what’s going on, via an apparent psychic link with the shark, and commandeers a boat to take the critter on. Along for the ride are THE LAST STARFIGHTER’S Lance Guest as Gary’s grown son, the late child actress Judith Barsi (1978-88) as her granddaughter, Mario Van Peebles as the Rastafarian comic relief, and Michael Caine, who famously said of this film that “I haven’t seen it, but I have seen the house it bought my mother, and it’s marvelous” (a quote that, appropriately, begins this book).
Downey does everything he’s supposed to, providing an authoritative accounting of precisely how JAWS: THE REVENGE went wrong: it was rushed into production in a race to meet a summer ‘87 release date, under the guidance of a director (the late Joseph Sergeant) who was better known for (and suited to) small screen fare. Downey takes his info entirely from published reports of the film’s (un)making, followed by interviews with several of the principal actors (Caine not included) and crewmembers, a review of the infamous novelization by Hank Searls, a mini-profile of the JAWS: THE REVENGE NES game, an insult-laden takedown of the film by filmmaker B. Harrison Smith, and other ephemera—including a chapter on the tragic life of Ms. Barsi, who also appeared in ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN and THE LAND BEFORE TIME, and (together with her mother Maria) was killed by her father on July 27th, 1988.
Jaws The Revenge NES Video Game
Readers hoping for a deep dive a la Declan Neil Fernandez’s BearManor published EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC exhumation HORRIBLE AND FASCINATING will be disappointed. This book, thorough though it might be, is much like the film it profiles: eager to please but ultimately unsatisfying.