Summer of Fear: Terror From the Depths - The Shark (Part I)

"It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."
-Hunter S. Thompson 


You know, to most people nothing says 'summer' quite like a day at the beach. To horror fans, 'day at the beach' usually translates into 'get attacked and eaten by a big fucking shark' thanks to the Jaws movies and the genre it birthed. Sure sharks have always fascinated and terrified us and not always in that order.

Freud might have a few words
about how this shark looks and
killing a woman shortly after sex

I grew up right on the water and so naturally that meant I spent a fair deal of time in it. I did so fearlessly until Jaws basically.  It was only then that I learned to fear what may have been lurking in the depths. Or just behind me as I jumped off the Dash Point dock (hey I was too young to know that sharks preferred warm water... only later to further learn that some sharks DID inhabit the deeper parts of the same body of water). This was thanks in part to the original Peter Benchley novel that I spied on my Aunt Melinda's bookshelf. The first chapter was pure nightmare fuel from the deep reading the graphic demise of poor Christie Watkins on that fateful summer night.

Sometime later (before one I was actually allowed to see the movies), one day I happened to wander into the playroom where some of the older kids were watching Jaws 2 with my older sister just as  poor Marge died tragically.




 This one stuck with me for some time to come. Seeing it 'for real' gave me even more nightmares. The worst that my bed was floating in the ocean like a raft and I had fallen into the water and like in the movie "couldn't get up" into the bed. The scariest was the sudden pan-away to zoom shot of the shark swimming up from the depths like a fanged torpedo toward my flailing body.

So with that, here's the first installment of a new series of my favorite selections about everybody's favorite finned swimming terror in a new series I'm calling: Terror From the Depths


First up, the obvious choice: Jaws for being the progenitor of the deep water terror. Every movie with a shark as the antagonist owes some credit to Bruce (Spielbergs name for the seldom functioning mechanical shark). Jaws has been adapted into books, comics, video games and even had a ride at Universal Studios up until recently (Pardon me as I choke back tears on that one). The theme has been spoofed time and time again and is about as famously known as Santa Claus and James Bond.

Yup, no doubts about it
That kid got fucking ate

I hope my boater's insurance will cover this

I picked up a comic adaptation of Jaws 2 at my first ever comic book convention in the early 90's, while not as scary as the Benchley novel, it was well done for a 70's Marvel comic. Though there aren't many Jaws comic books to compare against, there was a Japanese  gekiga comic I saw and missed once. They did it a bit differently and a bit better than we did but talk about the one that got away!
 

'Do Not Insert Hand Here', I warned him...
(You ever notice a trend in sharks going up to the left here?)

 Next up on the list is Deep Blue Sea, the first shark movie I remember eagerly anticipating in the post-Jaws era. The chumfest starred Thomas Jane, Michael Rapaport, LL Cool J, Stellan Skarsgård and Samuel L Jackson... briefly
*SPOILER* Didn't you see the Chappelle's show sketch? *END SPOILER*

 This movie was the first instance of 'smart sharks' which has me intrigued at it's mere mention.
The plot is quite simple as a team of scientists fuck with sharks and the sharks end up fucking with the scientists as Rapaport's character summarizes the plot for us in his dialogue. These sharks have been genetically engineered to have a larger brain mass so their tissues can be harvested as an Alzehimer's treatment. Except as you can see in the picture above it all goes to hell and the sharks orchestrate the biggest prison break since Clint Eastwood in Escape From Alcatraz. In the end all the sharks are disposed of in all the same fashions as in the Jaws sharks, ho-hum. Though first time around they do make it interesting. LL Cool J does make for some comic relief in the film as the drinking-turned-religious-cook and offers a decent song to the soundtrack:



 Next up is Steve Alten's Meg series. Most everyone knows about the Carcharodon carcharias (Great White), but fewer people know of it's larger nastier prehistoric cousin Carcharodon megalodon.
 

Yes kids, that's the King of the Lizards being eaten by a shark

Suddenly swimming with Jaws
seems like swimming with dolphins
on a trip to Sea Worl-... oh wait...

  Jonas Taylor was the United States Navy's most experienced deep sea diver working in the Marianas Trench when he suffered a serious accident that cost him his crew and his career. Everyone thought he was crazy babbling on about a giant shark lurking in the depths but everyone attributed it to severe oxygen deprivation. Unfortunately he's right and a large pregnant female Megalodon ascends from the depths and rampages across the Pacific rim stopping to terrorize the Hawaiian, California, Oregon and Washington coasts. The series continues on in The Trench (where I started) and Meg: Primal Waters, Hell's Aquarium, Night Stalkers and Origins. 

I thought the mother shark in Jaws 3-D was horrifying, the Meg makes Mama Bruce look like a sushi roll in contrast. I mean the original cover art for Meg shows the shark eating a Tyrannosaurus Rex for a snack. The series was supposed to be made into a movie at one point but fell into developmental hell and went the same unfortunate route as Duke Nukem Forever, Aliens: Colonial Marines or a decent American Godzilla movie (all examples have since been made, so maybe there is hope yet).

Discovery channel even joined in the Megalodon craze trying to pass of their attempt at a Corman SyFy picture with a faked docu-drama about a mythical shark of sorts named 'Submarine'... yep... not making this up... I'll get to the big fucking shark mythology more in a bit.

"Mein Führer!  Großes verdammtes haifisch!"
(Translation: My Führer! Big fucking shark!)

Next up in the list isn't even a shark movie at all but an Orca in the 1977 film entitled...
Orca: The Killer Whale... catchy title huh?

When a fisherman named Nolan kills a pregnant Orca, he leaves her mate swearing revenge on the fisherman. The Orca begins a vicious vendetta against him attacking his boat, his crew, even his entire fishing village and even goes so far as to bite the leg off his wife (that scene fucked with my head since Shamu and Free Willy never showed the Killer side to these whales). I never saw one marine mammals capable of such destruction or sentience to pinpoint anything related to this one guy. So Nolan goes Moby Dick and sets out to the frozen ends of the ocean to track and kill the animal. This was one of the first of many Jaws knockoffs to come down the pike, and in my own opinion one of the better ones.

Shamu sez: "Let's play 'Penguin', you go first!"

So that's it for this edition of Terror From the Depth, next up more sharks, more teeth and more blood in the water!