Movie Review: Examining 'Jaws 3'

Jaws 3-D (1983)

aka Jaws 3

Directed by Joe Alves

Written by Richard Matheson and Carl Gottlieb, based on a screen story by Guerdon Trueblood. Suggested by Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkingdale, Louis Gossett, Jr., John Putch, Lea Thompson

The third dimension is terror

Jaws 3-D is a 1983 horror/thriller and the second sequel to Steven Spielberg’s 1975 Jaws.  It was one of several films produced during an ill-advised attempt to reintroduce 3-D movies, along with such fare as Amityville 3-D, Friday the 13th Part 3-D, and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.

Released in July of 1983, Jaws 3-D is also best known for three things:

• It is the only Jaws sequel that was not produced by Universal. Alan Landsburg Productions bought the rights to make it. Universal retained the distribution rights, however.
• It marked the film debut of actress Lea Thompson.
• It marked the end of Carl Gottlieb’s screenwriting career.
• It also marked the beginning and end of Joe Alves’ directorial career.

Calvin Bouchard: Was it the shark?

Kay Morgan: It was a shark. It was a shark with a bite radius about a yard across.

Philip FitzRoyce: Don't be silly. That would indicate a shark of some 35 feet in length.

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In this underwhelming shark vs. humans flick, co-writers Richard Matheson and Carl Gottlieb take the story away from the open ocean off Amity Island to the enclosed waters of a SeaWorld theme park in Florida.

The plot: In Jaws 3-D, Mike Brody (Dennis Quaid) and his brother Sean (John Putch) have grown up. Big brother Mike now works at Sea World, while Sean is in the Sunshine State for a visit. Mike is dating Kay Morgan (Bess Armstrong), a marine scientist who also works for SeaWorld owner Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett, Jr.) Sean is single, but he has his eye on Kelly Ann Bukowski (Lea Thompson).

The horror begins when a white shark follows a group of water skiers to Sea World. The shark tries to attack the skiers, but is thwarted when the ski boat driver manages to restart the vessel’s stalled engine and makes a last-minute dash into the park. The shark pursues, damaging the underwater security gate as it bulls its way into the tunnels that connect SeaWorld to the open Atlantic.

This incident goes undiscovered until Kay notices that the park’s dolphins are uncharacteristically reluctant to leave their sea mammal enclosure. Eventually, the damage to the gate is discovered and diver Shelby Overman (Harry Grant) is tasked to repair it.  

The unlucky Overman is killed by the shark, as are two shady characters who sneak into the restricted waters near SeaWorld to steal coral samples they hope to sell on the black market.

When Overman seemingly vanishes, Mike and Kay take a small sub to search for him. They don’t find the missing diver; however, they do see a small white shark as they explore a Spanish Galleon exhibit, The shark tries to attack Mike and Kay, but they’re saved by the intervention of two dolphins, Cindy and Sandy.

Like Amity’s in-denial mayor Larry Vaughn, SeaWorld’s Calvin Bouchard doesn’t think Mike and Kay saw a shark. He changes his mind, however, when he sees that the gate to Cindy and Sandy’s dolphin pen is badly damaged.

The baby shark is caught and nursed back to health. Bouchard wants to add it to the park’s menagerie of marine wildlife. So, before Kay and her assistants can make sure the baby is healthy enough, the greedy Bouchard has it transferred to a small holding tank where visitors can gawk at it. Shortly afterwards, the baby white shark dies.

Calvin Bouchard: You mean we talkin' about some damn shark's mutha?

Eventually, parts of Overman’s shark-bitten corpse make their way into the glass park’s underwater tunnels, scaring an unwary tourist and prompting an autopsy. After examining the remains, Kay deduces that the three-foot wide bite radius indicated that the baby shark wasn’t Overman’s attacker, but a larger, 35-foot white shark.

My Take

Jaws 3 is a good example of what happens when studios and production companies take a hit stand-alone movie and make exploitative, unnecessary sequels. All the major studios, including Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros., are guilty of this practice. It just seem like Universal  has done it a lot, especially with the Jaws and Airport franchises.     

Unlike Jaws 2, which at least had a better script and the presence of some of the 1975 original cast members, Jaws 3-D has no redeeming qualities in the storytelling department. Quaid’s character, Mike Brody, is mostly a passive bystander throughout much of the film. Mike eventually comes to the fore during the third act of the film, but the story just doesn’t work well.

The script, which was credited to Richard Matheson (Psycho) and Carl Gottlieb, may actually have been written by others. It’s hard to believe that two veteran writers could have given Alan Landsburg Productions such a tepid, unbelievable shark tale. The notion that sharks have parental instincts is pure cinematic crap, yet Jaws 3-D’s villain is a mother shark seeking revenge for her dead baby.

The script also spends too much time delving into the two Brody brothers’ personal lives rather than on the people versus shark elements of the story. Yes, some character development is necessary in any movie, but do viewers really care about Mike and Kay’s relationship, or Sean’s attempts to  get lucky with Kelly? No, they want  to see the humans face off against “Jaws.”  

Joe Alves deserves no praise for his directing style in Jaws 3-D, either. Unlike Jeannot Szwarc (who at least created some good scenes with Roy Scheider), Alves only gets cheesy performances from his all-new cast. His sense of pacing is also poor, especially compared to Szwarc’s in Jaws 2.  As the director, he could have asked the writers for a better script with more action, but he chose not to.

Jaws 3-D (or, as it is known for standard home media releases, Jaws 3)  may please some fans of the Jaws franchise. I found it drearily tepid and unbelievable, definitely not worthy of the Jaws brand name.

DVD Specifications:

• Format: Multiple Formats, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Subtitles: French, Spanish
• Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired: English
• Region: Region 1
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: June 3, 2003
• Run Time: 99 minutes