The Greatest Guys’ Movies: Jaws

Steven Spielberg's 1975 narrative of a remarkably rapacious Great White Shark (and the impetuous triumvirate of dudes with nut-numbingly, scrotum-shrivellingly appalling facial hair that hunt it) was a global phenomenon. This spectacle endures as one of the most revered movies ever made, and was unleashed on Blu-ray earlier this month, still replete with boob-swinging runs on the beach, leg-chewing and all the inherent wonderment we demand. Affix a clothes peg to your nose to mitigate the stench of chummin' this shit and cork your asses, because we're proceeding back in the water.

Most are indubitably acquainted with the plight of Amity Island. A woman elects to take a bracing sans-apparel swim in the ocean. A shark surreptitiously advances for a quick ogle of her ladyparts, one thing leads to another, and Chrissie is reduced to a grotesque heap of meaty viscera and half an arm, kept in a drawer (which is presumably labelled, 'HOLY SHIT. This business is so damn ghastly, we can't even show it on camera when that dick with the shocking beard comes by to examine her'). This is exacerbated by a fleeting series of subsequent attacks, which galvanize our hairy heroes into pursuit to curtail this marine menace. Modus operandi: smoke too much, bellow excessively, get pissed and sing badly, dick around with some barrels, and shoot its face innumerable times.

Verily, this undertaking was foolproof.

In the interim, the mayor of Amity Island is safely ensconced in his office, gleefully touching himself or something, having elucidated the fact that he doesn't give half a rat's testicle how many of the island's denizens get their ACTUAL LIMBS CONSUMED; the beaches must be open for the fourth of July frolics. ("Danger? Shark, you say? What is this errant nonsense? There's no shark. That's mere... seaweed. oftentimes, seaweed can cleft one's body in twain, leaving naught but a bloody mess and a finger or two. I'll send a dude in a shit-stained dinghy to take care of it. ...Of course I'm not bullshitting you! Such audacious insubordination! I'M THE GODDAMN MAYOR! I could sell your eyeballs if I wanted!")

The great bastard.

Jaws is the proud proprietor of some of film's most iconic shenanigans. Most pertinently, those of Robert Shaw's Quint. From his inaugural blackboard-finger-scraping appearance ("I'll find him for $3,000, but I'll catch him and kill him for $10,000,") to his hideous demise at the dramatic denouement (pictured here), the man was a veritable ballistic missile fabricated from charisma, remarkable sideburns and excessive profanity. (It's a tenuous analogy, as such an explosive would nary achieve any kind of velocity, but we shan't be pernickety.) His harrowing recounting of the beleaguered USS Indianapolis in 1945 is a celebrated celluloid scene indeed; incorporating that illustrious eleven hundred men went into the water monologue. We'll concede, though, that the movie's most acclaimed line was uttered by the comparatively-innocuous Police Chief Brody. (Innocuous when he isn't engaged in rupturing the flesh of a Great White Shark in a ghastly conflagration of bleeding chunks and death.) For that, and further toothy splendor and piss-taking, hit the gallery above.