The FilmNerds Blog

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

If you ever find yourself looking for hard evidence of the immense power of the sequel in the early 1980s, look no further than Jaws 3-D. This is a movie that is absolutely horrendous in every way, from the muddled, disorganized screenplay to the low-grade cheesy special effects to the preposterously poorly-conceived premise upon which the entire film is built. And yet, Jaws 3-D finished in the Top 15 at the box office in 1983, hauling in $45 million as Universal’s summer tentpole that year, grabbing $13 million of that in the opening weekend alone.

The critics hated it, and judging by its fairly severe drop-off in the second and third weeks audiences appeared to as well. So was the power of Steven Spielberg’s original shark horror thriller really strong enough to account for the massive financial success of Jaws 3-D? It would certainly appear that way, though the film did have a few other factors working in its favor. For one, there’s no question that the early ’80s wav of 3-D films did have some appeal, particularly in the horror genre where it’s all really about cheap thrills anyway. The film also came right in the middle of July and opened against only one other new wide release, the offbeat sex comedy Class with then-unknown stars Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy. Return of the Jedi was still pulling in money but had been out for over two months and thrill-seeking audiences were ready for something new and while Staying Alive had put forth a remarkably impressive showing the week before (more on that in the coming weeks), the fading pull of disco was no match for a franchise horror sequel.

While Jaws 3-D had a lot going for it financially, troubles behind the scenes led to the onscreen disaster that ultimately made it an embarrassment of a film. Originally intended to be a Joe Dante-directed parody of the first two Jaws films, the second Jaws sequel was eventually revamped and rewritten by Richard Matheson who wrote Spielberg’s highly acclaimed directorial debut Duel. Matheson’s script started out as a relatively simple story unrelated to the first two films in which a Great White shark swims upstream and becomes trapped in a lagoon. Studio meddling from Universal quickly turned this simple idea into a convoluted mess of corporate synergy and cross-promotion. Matheson was asked to make the two male heroes into Martin Brody’s sons from the first two films for the sole purpose of linking the film to the original story (Roy Scheider was asked to do a small part in the film but declined the role and even reportedly took steps to ensure that the production schedule of Blue Thunder would prevent him from participating in the film in any way). Then Matheson was asked to change the setting of the film to Sea World in Orlando, a landlocked area, though the film asks us not to worry about where the actual Sea World park is located in Florida. He was even asked to write a custom role for Mickey Rooney (of all people), an addition that was eventually dropped.

Then there’s the matter of director Joe Alves, whose work in Jaws 3-D was not only his first directing gig, it was also his last. Alves got the job after serving as a production designer and second unit director on the first two Jaws films but was far from the first choice for the job. After the Dante-helmed parody concept fell apart, producers approached Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner who had made headlines in recent years with his experimental 3-D films Sea Dream and Magic Journeys. The projects were considered major breakthroughs in 3-D filmmaking as well as computer animation and the producers knew they wanted to employ 3-D technology for the new Jaws sequel. Lerner took one look at the screenplay and immediately walked away from the project.

Alves’ shortcomings are pretty obvious from the get-go in Jaws 3-D but to be fair to him, the screenplay’s weaknesses jump out at me before any directorial issues. Dennis Quaid‘s character Michael is setup as the male lead but doesn’t actually have an active role to play in the story. He mostly just observes the plot as it happens around him. Bess Armstrong‘s character Kay plays a much more active part in the story but as was the case in High Road to China, Armstrong is a real negative for me in this film. There’s rarely a moment where she’s not either whining, screaming or kissing Dennis Quaid mid-sentence.

Thankfully there are a couple of somewhat enjoyable performances in the film that give us a few moments of enjoyment. Lea Thompson makes her screen debut here (Jaws 3-D was released just a few months before All the Right Moves) and despite playing somewhat of an airhead she exudes the same charm and likability that made her one of my favorite female stars of the ’80s in all of her later work. There’s also a fun and somewhat shocking appearance by (wait for it…) Academy Award-winner Louis Gossett Jr. as cajun and/or Caribbean entrepreneur Calvin Bouchard, the owner of Sea World who watches over his empire from an absurdly futuristic, Star Trek-inspired underwater control room. Bouchard is rolling out his latest addition to the park, an underwater tunnel at the bottom of the lagoon. You can probably see where this is going.

So somehow (it’s not really clear at all how) a massive 35-foot female Great White sneaks into the park through a slightly open gate in pursuit of its baby that has become trapped inside the lagoon. For the first 90 percent of the film we don’t get any remotely clear looks at the shark itself, just extreme close-ups of its teeth and in some cases shots taken from inside the shark’s mouth while victims are being eaten (a clever idea, I’ll admit). The plans to deal with the shark made by the characters throughout the film aren’t always clear or well-explained but once the shark begins to damage the underwater tunnel while it’s filled with visitors, the direction of the plot starts to clear up a little. Fix the tunnel, save the guests, kill the shark.

This leads me to an important question about the premise of this film: What in the hell was Sea World thinking? Granted, the underwater tunnels were a thing of fiction back then (though they are a part of Sea World today) but why on earth would you want the movie-going public to associate your park with things like bursting aquarium glass and sea creatures on a killing rampage? An ill-conceived PR move though I’ve been unable to find any news stories or articles about the decision.

Anyway, the film culminates in one of the most hilariously, ridiculously awful effects shots I’ve ever seen. I understand that something was probably lost in translation since I was having to view this sequence in 2-D when it was especially created as a 3-D effect. Still, I can’t imagine it plays any better with added depth of field.

This stuff makes the Spacehunter 3-D effects I whined about seem pretty decent. Jaws 3-D is the kind of film that can only be enjoyed on a purely ironic level in 2011 but unlike the SyFy Channel original movies that it seems to have inspired, the filmmakers behind Jaws 3-D truly thought they were making a good movie. Every idea in the film is so ill-conceived and poorly planned out from the ridiculous opening 3-D shot of a floating fish head to the ending which asks us to immediately stop worrying about the potentially lost human lives and suddenly care about whether or not an obnoxious dolphin survived the ordeal. With Jaws 3-D behind me, I feel confident that I have nothing but solid entertainment ahead of me for the final 14 films of this journey. Hopefully.

Next Up: Sean Connery takes his final turn as James Bond in Never Say Never Again. Sorry girls, it’s not the sequel to the Justin Bieber movie.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

While it’s still pretty far down the list of the top-grossing movies of 1983, I would say that All the Right Moves is the first relatively iconic film on our list. It seems to have grown in stature over time since its initial release, probably because of the eventual superstardom of its star Tom Cruise.

By the time All the Right Moves hit theaters in October of 1983 (one week before I was born, by the way) Cruise was already one of the hottest young stars in Hollywood thanks to the massively successful hit Risky Business released just two months earlier. In fact, most theaters were probably still showing Risky Business at the time that All the Right Moves premiered. Nearly every review written at the time mentions Risky Business so it was clearly a major cultural phenomenon that probably affected the way a lot of viewers approached All the Right Moves and almost certainly affected the film’s gross.

Cruise plays Stefen Djordjevic, a high school football player from the town of Ampipe, Pennsylvania (the town is named after the fictional American Pipe Company which employs nearly the entire town). The town of Ampipe serves as the villain of the film, essentially. It’s a depressed, stagnant Rust Belt town that represents the opposite of the cinematic American dream, a place where no matter how hard you work, you have no chance of making a better life for yourself. Stefen’s only way out is a college football scholarship, a longshot for him considering his diminutive stature and limited physical talent. But against the odds, Stefen has started to receive a little bit of attention from smaller colleges, though his desire to go to the best engineering school possible leads him to spurn an offer from an unnamed state school at the beginning of the film (the school’s recruiter is played by a very young Terry O’Quinn aka John Locke from Lost).

When Ampipe High School’s season takes a turn for the worse, the road to a college scholarship gets a little bit tougher for Stefen. The film follows the always-reliable dramatic path of tragedy unfolding from a series of misunderstandings, misdirected emotion and unfortunate coincidences. The series of events that leads to Craig T. Nelson’s Coach Nickerson jeopardizing Stefen’s college career never comes off as forced, since each character is given enough screen time for the audience to truly understand all of their actions and the motivations behind them. It’s a classic example of well-written drama, a scenario in which the characters end up hurting each other and themselves despite having the best of intentions at the story’s outset.

Nelson and Cruise both do a great job of adding real sympathy and emotional depth to their roles but it’s two supporting performances that gave the film its most interesting dramatic moments. Chris Penn is absolutely heartbreaking as Stefen’s teammate and best friend Brian, the team’s most talented player who is forced to turn down a scholarship to USC after impregnating his girlfriend. A lot of fans and critics went after All the Right Moves for wrapping up its story too neatly and happily but Penn’s character arc to me balances this out and gives us a taste of the tragedy Stef would face if he never got out of Ampipe. There’s a moment where Penn’s character is trying to enjoy himself at a party with his classmates just before heading off to his honeymoon in Pittsburgh and the look on his face as he tries to convince everyone that he’s happy with his situation is absolutely devastating.

The other real gem in the film is a young Lea Thompson, another bright young talent nabbed that this film caught just before she took off. Thompson’s resume was virtually blank coming into All the Right Moves but in the two years following the film she would star in Red Dawn and Back to the Future, two of the most iconic films of the 1980s, and it’s not surprising to see why her career took off after this film. She exudes girlish charm and while she’s a beautiful girl, she’s comes off as identifiable rather than intimidating. To apply my 2010 perspective, she reminds me a lot of Rachel McAdams, a girl that is certainly attractive enough to be a romantic lead but gets most of her appeal from her friendly, girl-next-door personality rather than raw sex appeal. Thompson’s role as Stefen’s girlfriend mostly reiterates the same themes present throughout the rest of the film (she wants to be a musician but can’t afford college) but the biggest asset she brings to the film is the addition of yet another pressure on Stefen’s life, the pressure of maintaining a relationship. She’s a supportive girlfriend to be sure but she has needs too and Stefen’s lack of emotional maturity creates more problems for him to deal with throughout the film.

Director Michael Chapman hadn’t done much directing before this film, and didn’t much after either, but real film nerds know him as one of the great cinematographers of the late ’70s and early ’80s. His work on Taxi Driver and Raging Bull put him in the pantheon of great DPs and though he didn’t continue to work at that level going forward in his career, it should be noted that when he took on All the Right Moves, he was at the absolute top of his game and I think it shows. Chapman had the foresight to hire a then-unknown Jan de Bont to shoot All the Right Moves and it’s interesting to see de Bont working with such subtle material knowing that he would later go on to become one of the leading names in blow-stuff-up-real-good filmmaking. The bleak, depressed setting of the film is crucial to telling this story and that setting is brilliantly synthesized by de Bont’s blue and gray-toned photography.

Is the ending of All the Right Moves ham-fisted and too convenient? Absolutely it is. It’s a little odd to see a film like this so hesitant to end things in a more logical, if more depressing, way particularly when it takes its inspiration so obviously from one of the most dark, depressing dramas of the 1970s, The Deer Hunter. I suppose in the end the fact that our subject matter is football rather than the Vietnam War probably led the filmmakers to opt for a happier ending. Still despite the rather gutless resolution, the film stands up today as a really effective portrayal of a classic story of teenage angst. It works particularly well set against today’s backdrop of economic depression and seemingly bleak outlooks for the future.

All the Right Moves might be remembered today because of the big names who got their start in the film but it continues to endure as a watchable film because of truthfully it depicts its characters and their hopes, fears and desires.

Next Up: Valley Girl starring Nicholas Cage.