Do you remember Jaws III? It was a little off the mark from the beginning, but if it had gotten the treatment written by National Lampoons, the film would have been much more comedic.
The film we saw focuses on Mike Brody, the son of “You are going to need a bigger boat” constable Martin Brody from the first two films.
Mike works for a new Sea World park in Florida. A small great white shark has swum into the park and is captured and put on display. Eventually the shark dies while in captivity and its mother decides to seek revenge on Sea World. If you haven’t seen it just head to Wikipedia and read the description.
The movie was 3D, and you can still watch some of the 3D moments on YouTube by crossing your eyes, which amazingly worked for me. Be forewarned, the effects are rough. The shark just glides and doesn’t use his or her tail to swim. The film was generally panned for its plot holes and story line.
The version that we almost got, was super corny and more in line with Airplane or The Naked Gun, which isn’t too surprising as it was a Lampoon version. Writer John Hughes who is known for the Vacation films, Weird Science and a ton of others awesome 80’s movies help revise the script. The working title for the film was National Lampoons Jaws 3 people 0.
Basically, the whole Lampoons plot revolved around the cast and crew being killed by sharks as they filmed a shark movie. Although the premise sounds like it might have been a hilarious film, once Steven Spielberg got hold of the script it was all for not. Apparently, the director was so upset with the premise he threatened to quit Universal if they went forward with the project.
National Lampoons Matty Simmons told IGN “The studio had already spent $2.5 million on pre-production. It was a great script written by John Hughes and Todd Carroll based on a story I had written, it starred Richard Dreyfuss and a young woman named Bo Derek, who would have been fabulous, and Spielberg walked into [Universal chairman Sid] Sheinberg’s office and said ‘you make this movie and I’m walking off the lot,’ because what happened is it made fun of the director.”
Luckily the script survived and can be read in full at Forces of Geek
Related: have you ordered your Jaws action figures yet?
