Horror Film Review: Unsane (dir by Steven Soderbergh)

Posted on October 5, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, Steven Soderbergh.

Seriously, I know that everyone in the world is always going on about how brilliant he is but I have to admit that I always approach his film with a bit of trepidation.

I mean, yes, Soderbergh can be brilliant. He’s made some legitimately great films, some of the best that I’ve seen. The Informer! holds up brilliantly. So does Traffic and The Girlfriend Experience. Even a film like Logan Lucky remains amusing on a second viewing.

And yet, at the same time, he can be one of the most annoyingly pretentious directors around. Contagion was a raging bore and, with Haywire, Soderbergh squandered the potential of Gina Carano. Che started out strong before turning into a dull Marxist tract. With the exception of Out of Sight, his friendship with George Clooney always seems to bring out the worst instincts in both men. And don’t even start with me about the Ocean’s films. Have you tried to rewatch any of them lately?

Whenever I start a new Soderbergh film, I find myself wondering which Stephen Soderbergh am I going to get. Am I going to get the Soderbergh who is a crafty storyteller and a good director of actors? Or am I going to get the pretentious Soderbergh who always seems to think that he’s doing all of us favor by lowering himself to make a genre film?

With Unsane, which was released way back in March, I got both.

Claire Foy plays Sawyer Valentini. A year ago, Sawyer was working at a hospice when the son of one of her patients became obsessed with and started stalking her. Fearing for her life and realizing that the police weren’t going to be much help, Sawyer moved away from home and tried to restart her life.

Seeking help for dealing with her trauma, Sawyer makes an appointment with a counselor at the Highland Creek Behavioral Center. What she doesn’t realize is that Highland Creek is a scam. The papers that she signed at her appointment allow her therapist to hold her for a 24-hour evaluation. When Sawyer resists and attempts to call the police, her stay is extended by seven more days. Every time that Sawyer demands to be released, she’s judged to be a threat to herself and others and more days are added to her stay. As another patient explains it, Highland Creek basically holds onto its patients until their insurance runs out.

If that wasn’t bad enough, things get worse when Sawyer meets the new orderly (Joshua Leonard). He says that his name is George Shaw but Sawyer swears that he’s David, the man who has been stalking her. Of course, no one listens to her when she tries to tell them. After all, she voluntarily committed herself to Highland Creek….

Unsane received a lot of attention because Soderbergh shot the film in secret with an iPhone. The end results of Soderbergh’s experiment were mixed. At its best, this technique gives the film a gritty look and it visually captures the shaky state of Sawyer’s sanity. At its worse, it’s a distraction that leaves you feeling that you’re supposed to be more impressed by how Soderbergh made the film than by the story being told.

Fortunately, Soderbergh gets two wonderful performances from Claire Foy and the reliably creepy Joshua Leonard. Foy brings just the right combination of fragility and strength to the role of Sawyer and she gives such an empathetic performance that you get involved in her story even if Soderbergh’s style is often distracting. As for Leonard, you’ll recognize him as soon as you see him. He’s a character actor who specializes in playing off-balance people and he’s memorably menacing in this film.

I probably would have liked Unsane more if I didn’t always have the feeling that the movie was mostly made so that Soderbergh could show off. Whenever I see one of Soderbergh’s “genre” films, I get the feeling that he’s looking down on the material and that my reaction is supposed to be one of, “Soderbergh’s such a genius that he can even make crap like this entertaining!” (You get the feeling that Soderbergh might be willing to make a B-movie but he’d never be caught dead actually watching one.) That said, regardless of the motives behind it, Unsane was actually an effective and twisty psychological thriller.

If nothing else, it was better than Haywire….

Horror on the Lens: The Lodger (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on October 5, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A serial killer known as “The Avenger” is murdering blonde women in London (which, once again, proves that its better to be a redhead). And while nobody knows the identity of the Avenger, they do know that the enigmatic stranger (Ivor Novello), who has just recently rented a room at boarding house, happens to fit his description. They also know that the lodger’s landlord’s daughter happens to be a blonde…

Released in 1927, the silent The Lodger was Alfred Hitchcock’s third film but, according to the director, this was the first true “Hitchcock film.” Certainly it shows that even at the start of his career, Hitchcock’s famous obsessions were already present — the stranger accused of a crime, the blonde victims, and the link between sex and violence.

Also of note, the credited assistant director — Alma Reville — would become Alma Hitchcock shortly before The Lodger was released.

Book Review: The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Lou Ford is 29 years-old, the deputy sheriff of a town in Texas that’s so small that Fort Worth is viewed as being the “big city.” Lou is friendly. Lou appears to be popular among the citizenry. Lou has a sweet and wholesome girlfriend named Amy. Lou speaks in a cheerful clichés and seems to be content with his reputation for being a dependable but slightly slow-witted good ol’ boy.

Of course, we know the truth about Lou. We know the truth because Lou tells us. In Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel, The Killer Inside Me, Lou narrates his story to us. Underneath his friendly exterior, Lou is an ice-cold sociopath who is proud of the fact that he could literally beat someone to death if he wanted to. He speaks in clichés only because he’s mocking his listeners and even Amy is ultimately expendable to his plans. Most disturbing of all, Lou knows that he’s a sociopath. He even reads a book on the subject. He knows but he doesn’t care.

Lou has plans, most of which involve blackmailing a local construction magnate. His partner in his blackmail scheme is the local prostitute, Joyce Lakeland. Lou’s been having an affair with Joyce and, as far as Lou knows, she’s the only person who is aware of his true nature. Lou’s solution to that problem is to not only frame Joyce for murder but to also beat her into a coma. While Lou waits for Joyce to die, he’s busy covering his own tracks and committing additional murders. Through it all, Lou struggles to keep everyone else in the world from catching a glance of the killer inside of him.

The Killer Inside Me may be over 60 years old but it’s still one of the most intense and disturbing portraits of a sociopath ever written. Secure that he will be forever protected by his status as a member of law enforcement, Lou Ford feels free to pursue every sadistic whim that pops into his head. Jim Thompson traps us in Ford’s mind but interestingly, the best parts of the book are the parts that suggest that Ford may not be correctly interpreting what’s happening around him. Towards the end of the book, it starts to become evident that Ford may not have been as clever as he insists that he is and we’re force to consider that we just spent several chapters taking the word of a sociopath.

You may be tempted to watch the 2010 film version instead of reading the book. Don’t do it! The book is a hundred times better and the movie totally screwed up the ending.

Italian Horror Spotlight: Cannibal Apocalypse (dir by Antonio Margheriti)

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1980 film Cannibal Apocalypse begins in Vietnam.

Sgt. Norman Hopper (John Saxon) leads his troops into a Vietnamese village. A dog approaches. One of the soldiers starts to pet it.

“Watch it, asshole!” Hopper shouts.

Too late. The dog explodes and takes the soldier with him. That’s just the first of many explosive events in the film. Minutes after the dog blows up, Hopper discovers two American soldiers being held prisoner in an underground cage. One of them is named Charles Bukowski (yes, I know) and he’s played by the great Italian actor, Giovanni Lombardo Radice. The other one is named Tommy (Tony King).

“Hey,” Hopper says, “I know these guys! They’re from my hometown!” He reaches down to help them out of the cage. Charlie and Tommy promptly take a bite out of his arm….

Suddenly, Norman Hopper wakes up in bed, next to his wife. He’s been having another nightmare. In the years since returning from Vietnam, Hopper has married, started a family, and bought a nice house in Atlanta. He seems to have his life together but he’s still haunted by what happened that day in Vietnam.

Charlie and Tommy are also still haunted. Unlike Hopper, they haven’t been able to get their lives together. Charlie’s a drifter and, when he shows up in Atlanta and calls Hopper at his home, Hopper isn’t particularly happy to hear from him. After talking to Hopper, Charlie goes to a movie where he watches a couple make out in front of him. Soon, Charlie is trying to eat the couple while panicked movie lovers flee the theater. (“What type of cinema is this!?” one man cries out.)

Forced to eat human flesh while being held prisoner, Charlie and Tommy are both cannibals today. However, as the film makes clear, cannibalism travels like a virus. Anyone who gets bitten by Charlie and Tommy becomes a cannibal themselves. That includes Hopper. For years, Hopper has managed to resist the craving but, as soon as he gets that call from Bukowski, he finds himself tempted to take a bite out of his flirtatious neighbor.

With the authorities determined to eradicate not only the cannibalism plague but also those infected, Hopper finds himself forced to go on the run with Charlie, Tommy, and an infected doctor (Elizabeth Turner). Eventually, everyone ends up in the sewers of Atlanta where people are set on fire, one unfortunate is literally chopped in half by a shotgun blast, and the rats turn out to be just as hungry as the humans….

And here’s the thing. You’re probably thinking that this sounds like a really bad movie but it’s actually kind of brilliant. I may love Italian horror but, for the most part, I’m not a fan of cannibal movies. But, thanks to the performances and the energetic direction of Antonio Margheriti, Cannibal Apocalypse transcends the limits of the cannibal genre. Obviously, gorehounds will find what they’re looking for with this movie but far more interesting is Cannibal Apocalypse‘s suggestion that war (represented by the cannibalism that Hopper, Tommy, and Bukowski bring back from Vietnam) is an infectious virus. Once someone gets bitten, it doesn’t matter who they are or what type of life that they’ve led. The infection cannot be escaped.

In an interview that John Saxon gave for the film’s DVD release, Saxon said that making this film actually left him feeling suicidal. It wasn’t just the fact that the film itself presents a rather dark view of humanity. It’s because it upset him to know that there was an audience that was as rabid for violence as Norman Hopper is for human flesh. Saxon said that he had never seen the film and, in the interview, he had to be reminded what happened to Norman Hopper at the end of the film. It’s a bit of a shame because Saxon gives a brilliant performance as Norman Hopper. Saxon plays Hopper as being a sad man, a man who knows that he can’t escape his fate as much as he wants to. There’s a tragic dignity to Saxon’s performance, one that gives this cannibal film unexpected depth.

Also giving great performances are Giovanni Lombardo Radice and Tony King. As played by Radice, Charlie is a living casualty of war, a man who served his country and came home to be forgotten. You understand Charlie’s anger and his resentment. (When Bukowski finds himself in a stand-off with the police, one the cops explains away Bukowski’s actions by dismissively saying, “He’s a Vietnam vet,” a line of dialogue that not only explains Charlie’s anger at America but also calls out America for not taking care of its veterans,) Meanwhile, Tony King gets one of the best scenes in the film when, seeing Hopper for the first time in years, he grins at him and yells, “Remember these choppers!?”

As strange as it may seem to say about a film called Cannibal Apocalypse, this is a film that will bring tears to your eyes. It’s one of the classics of Italian horror.

Horror Film Review: A Quiet Place (dir by John Krasinski)

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As a film viewer, I am sometimes guilty of taking sound for granted.

That was the first thought that I had while watching A Quiet Place, a horror film that came out earlier this year. The film takes place in the near future, after the Earth has been invaded by aliens who track their prey by sound. Lee Abbott (John Krasinski, who also directed), his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), and their children (including Millicent Simmonds) have learned that the only way to survive is to do everything in silence. They communicate with sign lanague. They walk carefully, knowing that even the sound of a footstep could lead to doom.

If ever the old cliché about echoing silence was true, it’s true while watching A Quiet Place. Because Krasinski starts the film by showing us what happens when one forgets to be silent around the aliens, we know what will happen if Lee or his children make the slightest amount of noise and what’s interesting is that those of us watching find ourselves not making any noise as well. Krasinski, Blunt, and Simmonds give such effective performances that you’re drawn into their story. You don’t want them to get killed by the invaders so you make sure to remain quiet yourself.

That doesn’t mean that A Quiet Place is a silent film, of course. Since Lee spends the majority of the film in the woods with his children, there’s the occasional sounds of nature. And towards the end of the film, when someone finally speaks, it’s jarring both because we’ve gotten used to the silence and because we know what’s going to happen next.

My second thought while watching A Quiet Place was “Who knew John Krasinski was capable of this?” I’ve always liked Krasinski as an actor but his previous films as a director leaned a bit towards the pretentious side. There was nothing about his previous films that suggested Krasinski had it in him to direct one of the most creative and tension-filled horror movies of the year. Krasinski proves himself to be an unexpected master of suspense.

But it’s more than horror that makes A Quiet Place effective. A Quiet Place is a film about family. Despite the circumstances, Lee and Evelyn have managed to create a safe household for their children. It may be a silent household but it’s also a loving household and, with Evelyn being pregnant, it’s about to get bigger. Blunt and Krasinski are married in real life and their chemistry is evident every time that they exchange a glance. The film celebrates not only the love of family but the sacrifices that parents make for their children. It’s probably the most pro-family of the year.

A Quiet Place is a short and efficient film. At a time when the average film usually clocks over two hours, A Quiet Place is only 90 minutes long but it achieves so much in those 90 minutes! A Quiet Place is a powerful movie, one that will make you appreciate both families and the noise that they make.

Horror on the Lens: Cast a Deadly Spell (dir by Martin Campbell)

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, we have a real treat!

Produced for HBO in 1991, Cast a Deadly Spell takes place in an alternate 1948, where magic is used regularly and zombies are used as slave labor but the streets of Los Angeles are just as mean as they’ve ever been. Fred Ward gives a fantastic performance as Harry Phillip Lovecraft, a hard-boiled P.I. who refuses to use magic on general principle. Lovecraft, however, may have no choice when he finds himself embroiled in a case involving a magic book, Julianne Moore, and Clancy Brown!

Enjoy!

(If you want to know more about the film, check out this review that I wrote for Horror Critic.)

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 2.1 “Delusion” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on October 3, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond.…

A young woman (Suzanne Pleshette) desperately needs a blood transfusion. Fortunately, the police have managed to track down one of the only people to share her blood type, an accountant named Harold Stern (Norman Lloyd). Harold seems like a nice, rather mild-mannered guy and he has a long history of donating blood. However, when the police approach him, Harold refuses to donate.

“What type of crumb are you!?” the police demand.

Harold explains that, whenever he gives someone blood, he develops a psychic connection with that person. He can see their future. And that’s simply a burden that he can no longer shoulder….

This episode of One Step Beyond originally aired on September 15th, 1959. Norman Lloyd, who plays Harold, got his start as a member of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater and he also played the villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur. (Speaking of Hitchcock, Suzanne Pleshette played the doomed school teacher in The Birds.) When Lloyd appeared in this episode of One Step Beyond, he was 44 years old.

Today, Norman Lloyd is 103 years old and guess what? He’s still acting! He had a role in Trainwreck and still occasionally appears on television.

Enjoy!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Bait (dir by Kimble Rendall)

Posted on October 3, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What happens when you take The Mist and combine it with Jaws?

Well, you’d probably end up with a movie that’s a lot more interesting than 2012’s Bait.

Bait opens in an Australian supermarket and it’s nice to see that supermarkets in other countries are just as bad as supermarkets in America. Two teenagers make out in the underground parking garage. A former lifeguard stocks the shelves. (The lifeguard, incidentally, was previously traumatized when he saw a friend of his eaten by a shark.) The sister of that friend who got eaten by a shark shops with her new boyfriend. The store manager gives people orders. Two masked men try to rob the place, which leads to shoot out with the police. It’s just a typical day!

Until, of course, the tsunami hits!

Now, on the one hand, the tsunami hit at the perfect time because it kept the masked men from shooting anyone else. On the other hand, the tsunami hit at absolutely the worst time because apparently, sharks can survive anything. Not only is the supermarket flooded but now, there is now a giant shark swimming through the aisles!

Our survivors all scramble to the top of the aisles, where they find themselves stranded. Not only is the water shark-infested but there is also the risk of being electrocuted by broken wires! The survivors are going to have to set aside their differences and work together if they’re going to escape the deluge of sharks and bad feelings!

Of course, if you know anything about these type of movies, you know that a group of people can never set aside their differences and work together until at least a handful of them have been eaten. At one point, our survivors attempt to escape by building a makeshift shark cage out of grocery carts. That actually might not a bad idea but it just looks so silly!

Anyway, the main problem with Bait is that the film, much like the characters, has no place to go. The idea of a shark invading a supermarket has potential but once everyone’s stranded on top of their aisles, the action slows down to a crawl and we spend way too much time listening to thinly drawn characters shout insults at each other. The characters are trapped but, unfortunately, so is the audience.

I was actually far more interested in the couple that was stuck in the flooded parking garage. Those scenes, of the two of them trying to figure out how to escape from their car, had a claustrophobic intensity that the scenes in the supermarket lacked. Lincoln Lewis and Cariba Heine were fun to watch as they bickered with each other and debated who was more to blame for their predicament. Perhaps because they were separated from all of the noisy drama in supermarket, Lewis and Heine actually seemed to be having fun with their roles.

Anyway, Bait is one of those films that tends to show up fairly regularly on the SyFy network. It’s not a particularly good movie but it is a reminder that the cinematic legacy of Jaws will outlast us all. To be honest, if the sharks ever get together and form some sort of anti-defamation league, the film industry is screwed.

Book Review: The Zero Factor by William Oscar Johnson

Posted on October 3, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Consider this.

William Henry Harrison was elected President in 1840. A few months later, he became the first President to die in office, the result of giving a rambling inauguration speech in the rain.

Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860. He was assassinated by an actor in 1865.

James A. Garfield was elected in 1880. He was shot and subsequently died of medical malpractice in 1881.

William McKinley was reelected in 1900. He was assassinated by a leftist in 1901.

Warren Harding was elected in 1920 and was murdered by his wife in 1923.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected in 1940. He died of natural causes in 1945.

John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960. He was assassinated by a lone gunman in 1963.

The second President to die in office, Zachary Taylor, was elected in 1848 but died in 1850! (In his case, he was either poisoned or died of natural causes. It depends on which book you read.)

That is the Zero Curse. For a period of 120 years, any president was elected in a zero year died before the end of his term. Some people thought it was a coincidence. Some people thought it was a supernatural occurrence. Whatever it was, it was a strange piece of American history.

In fact, it even inspired a novel! The Zero Factor was published in 1980, presumably to capitalize on that year’s presidential election. The Zero Factor tells the story of Augustus “Gus” York, a Republican governor who is nominated for President after the convention deadlocks. Gus is honest, homespun, and naive. To everyone’s shock, Gus narrowly wins the election.

Gus is an ethical President whose moderate political stances manage to alienate every powerful person in the world. Not surprisingly, a group of evil rich people hire an assassin to take out President York. Will Gus be able to survive the zero factor!?

So, this may seem like a strange book to review for October and I’ll be the first to admit that I nearly scheduled this review for November. However, the book does feature three rather odd scenes where Gus is haunted by the ghosts of the zero year presidents. Those scenes are actually a lot of fun. I especially liked the description of Franklin Roosevelt’s ghost rolling around the Presidential bedroom while his eyes glow a ghostly yellow. Best of all, Gus gets advice from the ghost of my favorite scandalous president, Warren G. Harding! Thanks to President Harding and the gang, The Zero Factor can be classified as a book for October.

As for the rest of the book, it’s a well-written political thriller. At times, the book’s politics can be rather heavy-handed (why write about a Republican President if you’re just going to make him act like a Democrat?) and the portrayal of the gay assassin is dated and a bit cringe-inducing. But Gus is a likable character and I appreciate any book that takes the time to rehabilitate Warren Harding.

As for the Zero Curse, it was broken by the President who actually was elected in 1980, Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush continued to break it in 2000. (That said, both Bush and Reagan were targeted by potential assassins during their presidencies.) The next zero year election will be 2020, an election that looks like it’s going to involve a record number of elderly candidates.

Horror Film Review: Jaws 3 (dir by Joe Alves)

Posted on October 3, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, this is a strange one.

As the title states, this 1983 film is the third sequel to the Jaws. As I pointed out in my reviews of the first film and Jaws 2, the first two films all starred Roy Scheider and took place on Amity Island. In fact, it can be argued that Amity Island was almost as important to the success of the first two films as the shark. When Martin Brody conquered his fears and got out on the water, it wasn’t just to destroy a shark. It was also to protect a community under siege.

Well, there’s no such community like Amity Island in Jaws 3. And there’s no Roy Scheider either. Instead, our hero is Martin Brody’s son, Mike. Mike is all grown up and working as the senior marine biologist at SeaWorld Orlando. Mike is now played by a very young and very bearded Dennis Quaid. This leads to an interesting situation where Mike — who grew up in New England and whose father was a former New York City cop — has a very pronounced Texas accent. That’s not a complaint, of course. I’m from Texas so I’m always happy to see (and hear) a fellow Texan in a movie. Plus, Dennis Quaid’s a likable actor. Still, it somehow seems appropriate that the third installment of the Jaws franchise would feature a New Yorker growing up to be a Texan. I mean, if we’re going to accept that the same outlandish event can keep happening to the members of the same family then I guess anything’s possible.

The other Brody son, Sean, is also featured in the film. Sean is now played by John Putch and, when he first shows up to visit Mike, he’s dressed like he just got off work at the rodeo. You have to kind of wonder if maybe the trauma of nearly getting killed in Jaws 2 led to both of the Brody boys rejecting their New England roots and embracing the ways of the west. Say what you will about Texas and all the states in between El Paso and Los Angeles, we’re pretty much shark free.

Anyway, this is a Jaws films so you can guess what happens. A big shark ends up getting loose in SeaWorld and Mike tries to close the park down, just to be overruled by the park’s manger, Calvin Bouchard (Lou Gossett, Jr.). Meanwhile, a hunter named Philip Fitzroyce (Simon MacCorkindale) announces that he will personally track down and kill the shark. As you might guess just from the fact that his last name is Fitzroyce, Philip is arrogant and speaks with a posh accent. Mike takes an immediate dislike to him but I was happy whenever Philip showed up, mostly because Simon MacCorkindale gave a performance that was so over-the-top that it was fun to watch. Whenever MacCorkindale and Gossett got together in the same scene, the film stopped being about the shark and instead became a contest to see who could overenunciate their dialogue with the most style.

(In the end, MacCorkindale won, but only narrowly. A few years after Jaws 3, Gossett would co-star in The Principal and would go on to secure his spot in the Overenunciation Hall Of Fame by pronouncing the word “drugs” in such a way that I first thought he was talking about druids.)

One of the reasons why Jaws 3 seems odd when watched today is because it was originally released in 3-D. (In fact, the film’s original title was Jaws 3-D.) As a result, there’s a lot of scenes of people either walking towards or pointing directly at the camera. Whenever anyone holds up a pole or a harpoon or anything similar, you know that they’re going to end up pointing the end of it straight at the viewer. At the start of the film, when the shark bites a fish in half, the fish’s head ominously floats closer and closer to the camera. There’s a lot of scenes that were obviously designed to make audiences says, “Oh my God! I feel like I could reach out and touch it!” but, in the non-3D version, those scenes are just weirdly paced and slightly out-of-focus. (At one point during the film, the picture was so blurry that I actually checked to make sure I had my contacts in.)

Add to that, there’s more than few scenes where it’s obvious that the shark has been superimposed into the action. If the first two Jaws films featured big sharks, Jaws 3 often seems to feature a cartoon shark. In short, what may have been impressive in a theater in 1983 to an audience wearing special glasses is far less impressive when you’re watching the movie at 3 in the morning on AMC.

The other weird thing about this film is that it was actually filmed at SeaWorld Orlando. I’m going to guess that the film was supposed to serve as a 99-minute advertisement and a lot of time is devoted to people talking about how much they love SeaWorld. At the same time, this film also features the park’s manager refusing to shut down the park and basically putting everyone’s life in danger. If anything, the film’s main message seems to be, “If you go to SeaWorld, you’ll die.” You have to wonder if some executive lost his job after Jaws 3 came out.

Anyway, Jaws 3 is a silly movie that never quite comes to life in the way that both Jaws and, to a lesser extent, Jaws 2 did. Yes, the shark’s ruthless and we get to hear the familiar music and there’s some cute dolphins but otherwise, the movie itself is just kind of bland. Rumor has it that Jaws 3 was originally going to be a comedy called Jaws 3 People 0. That probably would have made for a more memorable movie but, at the same time, I got some good laughs out of the scene where the tourists in an underwater tunnel realized that a shark was watching them so, in the end, everything worked out for the best.