JAWS [1975]
Directed by Steven Spielberg
USA / Color / English

Based on Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 shark saga set the standard for the New Hollywood popcorn blockbuster while frightening millions of moviegoers out of the water. One early summer night on fictional Atlantic resort Amity Island, Chrissie decides to take a moonlight skinny dip while her friends party on the beach. Yanked suddenly below the ocean surface, she never returns. When pieces of her wash ashore, Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) suspects the worst, but Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), mindful of the lucrative tourist trade and the approaching July 4th holiday, refuses to put the island on a business-killing shark alert. After the shark dines on a few more victims, the Mayor orders the local fishermen to catch the culprit. Satisfied with the shark they find, the greedy Mayor reopens the beaches, despite the warning from visiting ichthyologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) that the attacks were probably caused by a far more formidable Great White. One more fatality later, Brody and Hooper join forces with flinty old salt Quint (Robert Shaw), the only local fisherman willing to take on a Great White–especially since the price is right. The three ride off on Quint’s boat “The Orca,” soon coming face to teeth with the enemy.

Rated PG; 125 min.

In addition to the well-known nickname of “Bruce”, Steven Spielberg also called the shark “the great white turd” when he really got frustrated with the troublesome animatronic fish.

Brody’s dog in the movie was actually Steven Spielberg’s real dog.

After the shark was built, it was never tested in the water, and when it was put in the water at Martha’s Vineyard, it sank straight to the ocean floor. It took a team of divers to retrieve it.

The mechanical shark spent most of the movie broken-down, and was unavailable for certain shots. This led Steven Spielberg to use the camera as the “shark”, and film from the shark’s point of view. Many think this added to the “chilling/haunting” quality in the final release saying that it would have made it too “cheesy” had they shown the shark as much as originally planned.

During pre-production, director Steven Spielberg, accompanied by friends Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and John Milius, visited the effects shop where “Bruce” the shark was being constructed. Lucas stuck his head in the shark’s mouth to see how it worked and, as a joke, Milius and Spielberg sneaked to the controls and made the jaw clamp shut on Lucas’ head. Unfortunately, and rather prophetically, considering the later technical difficulties the production would suffer, the shark malfunctioned, and Lucas got stuck in the mouth of the shark. When Spielberg and Milius were finally able to free him, the three men ran out of the workshop, afraid they’d done major damage to the creature.

THE WARRIORS [1979]
Directed by Walter Hill
USA / Color / English

A prominent New York City gang leader named Cyrus (Roger Hill) wants to wage an all-out battle against the police, and as part of his strategy he calls upon Gotham’s gangs to set aside their turf wars and come together at a summit. At the meeting, a rival leader kills Cyrus, but a Coney Island gang called the Warriors is wrongly blamed for Cyrus’ death. Before you know it, the cops and every gangbanger in town is hot on the Warriors’ trail.

Rated R; 93 min

Loosely based on Xenophon’s “Anabasis”, the account of an army of Greek mercenaries who, after aligning themselves with Cyrus the Younger in the battle of Cunaxa (401 BC) in his attempt to seize the Persian throne, found themselves isolated behind Persian enemy lines.

The name Ajax came after the Greek Warrior.

Newcomers were cast to create the feel of “real people caught in dangerous situations”. The cast felt like they were a gang before filming started. James Remar even spent time in Coney Island so he could observe real individuals to base his portrayal of Ajax on.

The Homicides were a real Coney Island gang, and they didn’t approve of fictional gangs wearing colors on their turf. The wardrobe department made sure nobody walked off location wearing The Warriors colors. The actors were safe during the cemetery scene in Brooklyn because of a fence surrounding it.

Crew members were sent death threats because local gangs weren’t cast. Thousands of dollars worth of equipment were damaged when one gang tore through the set during a lunch break.

The film trucks were “protected” by a real gang called The Mongrels for $500 a day.

The crew once got urinated upon from a tower block due to the noise they were creating in the night.

The Baseball Furies were created due to Walter Hill’s love of baseball and the music group Kiss.

Walter Hill is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Hill is known for male-dominated action films and revival of the Western. He said in an interview, “Every film I’ve done has been a Western,” and elaborated in another, “The Western is ultimately a stripped down moral universe that is, whatever the dramatic problems are, beyond the normal avenues of social control and social alleviation of the problem, and I like to do that even within contemporary stories.”

THE GOONIES [1985]
Directed by Richard Donner
USA / Color / English

Mikey Walsh and Brandon Walsh are brothers whose family is preparing to move because developers want to build a golf course in the place of their neighborhood — unless enough money is raised to stop the construction of the golf course, and that’s quite doubtful. But when Mikey stumbles upon a treasure map of the famed “One-Eyed” Willy’s hidden fortune, Mikey, Brandon, and their friends Lawrence “Chunk” Cohen, Clark “Mouth” Devereaux, Andrea “Andy” Carmichael, Stefanie “Stef” Steinbrenner, and Richard “Data” Wang, calling themselves The Goonies, set out on a quest to find the treasure in hopes of saving their neighborhood.

The treasure is in a cavern, but the entrance to the cavern is under the house of evil thief Mama Fratelli and her sons Jake Fratelli, Francis Fratelli, and the severely disfigured Lotney “Sloth” Fratelli. Can The Goonies survive Willie’s boobytrapped cavern, the Fratelli crooks, and each other in order to find the treasure and save their homes?

Rated PG; 114 min.

Director Richard Donner has a cameo as the gray-haired sheriff on the quads as the Goonies exit the cave with the ship.

The Goonies Oath that was cut out goes as follows: “I will never betray my goon dock friends / We will stick together until the whole world ends / Through heaven and hell, and nuclear war / Good pals like us, will stick like tar / In the city, or the country, or the forest, or the boonies / I am proudly declared a fellow Goony.”

The pirate ship was entirely real. All the shots were filmed in the ship. After the film, it was offered to anyone who would take it. No one wanted it, so the ship was scrapped.

According to Sean Astin, he was allowed to keep the treasure map used in the film. Several years later his mother discovered it, thought it was just a crinkled piece of paper, and threw it in the trash.

When the boys are sitting in the living room watching MTV, they weren’t actually watching the Cyndi Lauper “Good Enough” video, which was developed six months after filming wrapped up.

The cast was not allowed to see the pirate ship before the scene was shot. When they did see it, some of the kids said “Holy shit!” The scene had to be re-shot without them cursing.

When rocks are falling from the cave ceiling, Jonathan Ke Quan (Data) screams “Holy S-H-I-T!” He said he spelled the expletive because his mother made him promise not to use any bad language in the movie.

“Shit” or “bullshit”is uttered 19 times, not counting the line “Holy S-H-I-T!”

When Chunk and Sloth head down through the grate to follow the gang and the Fratellis, Sloth is wearing an Oakland Raiders T-Shirt. John Matuszak, who played Sloth, was a former Oakland Raiders football player.

RICHARD DONNER
Working briefly as an actor in the late 1950s, American director Richard Donner first wielded the megaphone for a group of TV commercials, then graduated to the weekly western Wanted: Dead or Alive. Some of Donner’s best early work was concentrated on the fantasy anthology Twilight Zone, including the imperishable 1963 episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Donner also worked for Hanna-Barbera, directing several episodes of “Danger Island”, a component of the 1968 kid’s series The Banana Splits; there was, however, very little that was “kiddie” about “Mystery Island,” a hallucinatory symphony of hand-held camerawork. A film director since 1961 Donner turned to movie work full time with 1968’s Salt and Pepper. The Omen (1976), a demonic-possession opus, was Donner’s first major moneymaker, leading to his directing assignment on the first Superman film in 1978. Superman was popular enough to inspire three sequels, the first of which contained so much uncredited Donner-directed footage that the director was compelled to sue. Donner has struck gold at the box office several times since 1978, notably with the three action-packed Lethal Weapon films starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, and more recently with another Gibson vehicle, Maverick (1994) —allmovie guide