JAWS: Book VS. Film

The Book: JAWS
Author: Peter Benchley
Year released: 1974

I do not, and have never, understood why this book was a bestseller. It is not a good book. It's trashy, and not in an enjoyable Jacqueline Susanne sort of way either. It's just sordid, superficial trashiness.

Peter Benchley took a great, rock solid focal point - a 25 foot long, six thousand pound great white shark, i.e. an eating machine - and surrounded it with an utterly unlikable cast of characters, doing rotten things to everyone around them.

Basic plot: A HUGE great white shark swims into the waters just off of the fashionable New England coastline and starts eating people: skinny dippers, fisherman, little kids on inflatable rafts, etc. A lone Everyman (in this case, the town police chief, transplanted from the Big City) tries to close the beaches and is met with opposition from the town council, who depend on vacationers to keep their economy afloat.

Good, simple story. Right? A community coming together to fight a common foe. Strength in numbers, Us against It.

Yeah, that's what it should have been. Instead, Benchley populates the fictional coastal community of Amity with people so despicable and shallow and self serving that you really don't give a sodden sackful of dog diarrhea if they live or die. In fact, by the time the shark is identified, you're fucking rooting for the goddamned fish to pulverize every single scumbag resident into bone powder between its ginormous serrated teeth. Hell, I was ready to push them all headfirst into the black, gaping, razor lined maw of stinky death myself. Eat it up, sharkie. There's plenty more where that came from. And save room for Benchley, because he is the entire fucking dessert cart.

Please dispose of unlikable characters here.

Sheriff Martin Brody is just kind of There. His wife Ellen is slutting around with Matt Hooper from the Oceanographic Institute, meeting him in cheap hotels for really oily 1970s sex. She may also have fucked the greaseball mayor who is in bed with The Mafia as well. Benchley doesn't seem to think much of gay people either, as he employs the word "faggots" and trots out a lesbian named Daisy Wicker, who is never introduced, described or allowed to speak, but simply serves as a foil for Matt's liason with Brody's wife. Women only exist to wear bikinis, be ogled at and screw. Even the kids are turdy little bastardos. There is no one to root for and nothing that feels threatened. They all deserve to be eaten by a goddamned shark. The ending is limper and lamer than overcooked pasta and the whole thing is just so clunky and seedy that it makes me wonder if there was an excess of soulless scumbags alive and reading in 1974.

The Film: JAWS
Director: Steven Spielberg
Year released: 1975

Long before Spielberg turned into a movie machine, swallowing originality whole and shitting out sleek, polished family safe fare, he was a filmmaker, and not a bad one either. Before E.T. The Extraterrestrial gave us all diabetes, Stevie was cranking out flicks like Duel and The Sugarland Express. Oh, and Jaws, which marked the birth of the Summer Blockbuster. A dubious honor indeed considering the current, soulless state of American cinema, a meat grinder that endlessly cranks out sanitized and shiny chunks of empty action and unrealistic sex and tries to make us believe it's fucking art.

But anyway.

Stevie took a bestselling book and turned it into an even bigger movie. Jaws was the movie of 1975. It was a deep sea version of The Exorcist. People were afraid of being attacked by sharks in their living rooms, for fucks sake.

But Spielberg also did the impossible - he made the characters likable. Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) was now a slightly goofy but sincerely dedicated Chief of Police, as well as a faithful husband and loving dad to his two boys. His wife was a slut no longer, but a no-nonsense yet sweet woman, totally devoted to and in love with her husband. She also had a great big butt, much appreciated by us modern fat-bottomed girls. Matt Hooper, while still a bit of an elitist dick, has no interest in fucking another man's wife and lives to the end of the film. There's no mafia shadow looming over this beach, just a nostalgic, Kodachrome summer in the 70s. You actually want to see everyone live to the end, even the greaseball mayor with his terrible suits that make him look like a used car salesman/creepy ice cream peddler.

You care about these people. They're flawed but forgivable, united against a common enemy and totally normal. Well, except for Quint. Quint was a weirdo. But if you don't feel any sympathy for him following his retelling of the harrowing USS Indianapolis incident, you're not human.

This is a very rare case of the movie being vastly superior to the book, but hey - it happens occasionally. About as often as shark attacks do.

The VVhat?

No less than three people have recently approached me over the past month or so, asking me what the hell The VVitch was about. They didn't get it, what was the point, where the fuck did the goat come from, why is that kid always checking out his sister's titties, etc.

"What's to get?" was my stock, dismissive and snobby answer. "It's just a collection of New England folk tales, lumped together into one big plotline. The end."

But that wasn't cutting it.

And it was at that point I realized that not everyone is: 
A. Catholic
B. Readily familiar with Chaucer and/or Dante
C. Capable of discerning underlying metaphors without Morgan Freeman's verbal assistance:

William Somerset: "There are seven deadly sins. Gluttony, wrath, greed, envy, sloth, pride and lust.  Seven."
~ Se7en, 1995

K. Imma break it down for ya'll. Check it out.

1 - PRIDE: a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.

The embodiment of Pride in this film is William (Ralph Ineson), the father, who - in the film's opening scene - dares to question authority, resulting in his banishment from the village, along with his entire family.

Governor: Must you continue to dishonor the laws of the commonwealth and the church with your prideful conceit?
William: If my conscience sees it fit.

William is convinced that he's morally superior and that he and he alone, should be shepherding the flock and that it his example which should be followed. Clearly, William - despite his love for The Holy Bible - has forgotten Proverbs 16:18 - "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

2 - GREED: intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.

More concerned with the whereabouts of her cherished silver cup (sold by her husband for hunting supplies), Mother Katherine is Greed here. Kathy is the 17th century version of the girl with the most cake. Honest to god, she loves that fucking missing silver cup more than her own children. She's willing to sell her daughter out as a scullery maid to bring in the bling. Her pinched face and piggy eyes are always surveying, measuring, sizing up, seeking out the pros and cons of every situation, and how best to work it to her advantage. To paraphrase Charles Dickens, she measures everything by gain. If a situation doesn't result in a profit, whether it's monetary or social rank, she quickly passes the buck, or ignores it altogether.

3 - WRATH: strong vengeful anger or indignation. retributory punishment for an offense or a crime.

Teenager Thomasin is pissed. Righteously pissed. She bridles at her mother's sternness and balks at her rules. She deeply resents being forced to mind her younger siblings and be responsible for the bulk of the chores. She's disgusted by her father's hypocrisy. She'd totally smack a bitch if she could get away with it, namely her annoying little sister Mercy. In other words, she's a typical teenage girl. One can hardly blame her for exploding in frustrated fury about an hour into the film. She'd been simmering slowly for the first half, setting her jaw and biting her tongue. You just know she's a walking volcano, trying to hold in all of her anger and making an eruption all the more imminent.

4 - LUST: uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite; lecherousness.

Duh. There's nothing at all subtle about Brother Caleb. This kid is a walking, talking erection. He's a hormonal jelly donut of a boy. Thoughts of sex torment him all the livelong day, sweaty and humid, ready to Blow Thy Load into Thy formal breeches. Unfortunately, it's sixteen-forty-fuckall and our boy can't just slouch down to the mall to eyeball the girls. He shares a bedroom hayloft with his three siblings and can't exactly rub one out in privacy. There's not even a shower stall in which to Yank his Doodle. Shit, there's not even any girls to fantasize about, except for his sisters. Sister Mercy is a rotund little ball of Annoying. Mom is just Ick. That leaves pretty Thomasin and her white linen bodice which has a tendency to gap when she leans forward, rewarding him with a quick flash of creamy cleavage. So no big shock really when the sexy, red-garbed Witch of the Woods is able to seduce him within forty seconds. Even his deathbed ululations are of an explicit sexuality, more orgasm than expiration.

5 - SLOTH: reluctance to work or make an effort; laziness

Little Mercy, one of a set of twins, is a feisty little shit toad. She's spoiled and bratty. She won't mind. She won't work. She doesn't listen to anyone. She's stuck in her Terrible Twos at the age of six. She turns a deaf ear to her mother's demands for obedience and diligence. She spends her days playing and singing, her nights eating and sleeping. Her mother can't control her and so shifts the responsibility and blame to Thomasin, who can no more control Mercy than a Taco Bell CEO can control their flatulence.

6 - GLUTTONY: a limitless appetite for food and drink.

Gluttony goes along with Sloth, because one cannot have the one without the other. Not much is made of little Jonah, twin brother to Mercy, except that he's just another bottomless pit, consuming everything and returning nothing. Lazy and spoiled, he is never without his sister and his chubby moonface is evidence of his love for one thing and one thing only: dinner.

7 - ENVY: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck.

Unbaptized baby Samuel is the only innocent character in the entire film. He has done nothing wrong in the eyes of God, nor is he capable of sin. But being the child of Pride and Greed, he is the object of envy by all of the characters. He is carried and coddled as a baby should be. He is fed and sung to and sleeps without care. He is fat and pink and glowing with ruddy health. He is the prize pig in the brood. Who wouldn't want to trade places with a cherished baby, all of your needs tended to and no responsibility? But only The VVitch acts on her envy, stealing away baby Sam for his blood and plump fatty tissue. Smeared along the length of a broom handle, it is the magic potion bestowing flight. Patience might be a virtue, but 200 years is a long time to wait for the invention of the airplane.
 
So, there you have it. The VVitch is about The Seven Deadly Sins, and the ways in which they lead people - even people who started out as pure and God fearing - to ruin and damnation.

*And here I edit, and mention the fact that my podcast buddy Erik was totally hip to the Seven Deadly Sins thingie too, and we did almost a whole entire podcast dedicated to it. Which you can listen to right the hell HERE.  Sorry Erik, I suck.

Or some such shit.
You're welcome.

A Ray of Hope

Who the hell was Ray Dennis Steckler?

He was the cat that never copped out when there was danger all about. Yeah, he was one bad muther...shut my mouth! He was the gimp, the goon, the shame-filled brother, the hapless geisha and the pull- apart voodoo Kenny who dared posed nude with the Frisky Kitten Revue! He was the Unburnt King of the B Movies, the 8mm, and of the wiggle-jiggle go-go brigade, Bongo Drum Rum God of the Great Freaky Tiki BeBop A Lula, Breaker of A-frames and lover of hooded sweatshirts. He was Sven Christian, Sven Hellstrom, Cash Flagg, Harry Nixon, Michael J. Rogers, Wolfgang Schmidt, Cindy Lou Steckler and Cindy Lou Sutters.

He damn near killed Alfred Hitchcock, trespassed on Harpo Marx's backyard and won an argument with Stanley Kubrick. But he also gave a job to a homeless, drunken Coleman Francis when no one else would.

Twenty years before MTV was even a legit Thing, he was directing music videos for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Nazz, Frank Zappa and - most famously - a little song called White Rabbit by a band known as The Jefferson Airplane.

Ten years before The Rocky Horror Picture Show exploded all over the midnight movie circuit like a big, juicy cock blowing its load in a dirty little booth, he directed, wrote and starred in a film called The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies, aka Diabolical Dr. Voodoo, aka Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary. The camera operators on this film were two virtual unknowns named László Kovács and Vilmos Zsigmond.

After that film was released (and quickly forgotten), Steckler popped out another film called The Thrill Killers starring a sexpot honeybomb named Liz Renay, who would go on to star in John Waters' Desperate Living as Muffy St. Jacques. I was about to tell you all about the time she spent three years in prison for refusing to rat out her mobster boyfriend, and the fact that she was the "Mother" half of the first ever Mother/Daughter strip show, but this article is about Ray Dennis Steckler. Lizzie needs her own damn article. Later.

Ray Dennis Steckler made forty films during his career. Yeah, so, half of them were porno flicks, so what? A lot of them were really dirty, gritty, grimy, nasty, seedy, sticky seventies porno films starring tasty young bunnies!

In 1997, a by-then nearly forgotten Ray Dennis Steckler was suddenly shoved back into the spotlight when his monster musical The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies, aka Diabolical Dr. Voodoo, aka Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary popped up on cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 and became a huge hit, even inspiring the MST3k gang to permanently install one of Steckler's characters (a horribly filthy, scabby, chainsmoking troll named Ortega who looks like the half aborted result of a one night stand between a drunken Peter Falk and a really moldy potato) into their own cast of B-movie creeps.

In the early 2000's, Ray Dennis Steckler was a hefty, bespectacled, jovial man sitting behind a folding table at a northern California movie theater, signing autographs and giving me a look of utter gobsmackedness when he asked me if I'd ever seen his 1966 hilarious superhero spoof Rat Pfink A Boo Boo and I told him yes, that I did in fact own a copy. He signed a clamshell VHS copy of Thrill Killers and a Spanish movie posters for The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies, aka Diabolical Dr. Voodoo, aka Teenage Psycho Meets Bloody Mary, and then came around the table, handheld movie camera in hand, aimed right at me and my friends, laughing and joking and always and forever filming, filming, filming. He called me "dear" and thanked me for being a fan and I got to tell him that I loved him.  No, not in that way, you pervy jerkoffs. I respected him. He was an indie filmmaker in a time when Indie wasn't even a real word.

Just a few years later he was gone. He left the shimmering desert of Las Vegas behind forever and joined that big, sticky, slightly grubby video rental store in the sky. I cried for three days.

Ray Dennis Steckler is often lumped in with Ed Wood and Coleman Francis as one of the all-time worst film directors of all time. I've seen all of Francis's and Wood's films; they were monochrome, flat and staler than a two week old slice of burnt toast. Ray's films were colorful, even when they were black and white. They pulsed with frantic energy and sparkled with electric enthusiasm. They were superfun and extra jiggly, lipstick smeared and soapy bubbled, rockabilly beach dancing, circus ponies on rollerskates crazy. Fuck the plots, or the lack of one as the case may be, just watch it all unfold in its reel-skippy, cigarette burn flashy, badly deteriorated & shitty tinted slices of celluloid glory and know that you are not watching a film per se, but a lifelong love affair as tawdry and bawdy as any backroom bouncy wiggle in a kiddie pool full of coconut oil and glitter can possibly be.

This isn't a belated obituary. This is just a long overdue love letter to the filmmaker who introduced me to the wonderful underground world of guerilla grindhouse. I am forever grateful. And I am forever a fan.

The VVitch (screencaps)

 So I couldn't resist screen capping the hell out of this one. Unfortunately, the copy that was uploaded was not the best and was so dark that I had to do some shitty HD tweaking on my lame-ass editor, and a lot of it still looks like the inside of a woodchuck's asshole. Several couldn't be saved, so into the trash they went. I should have waited for the BluRay but I've never been known for my patience. Sorry, did my best.