1978

Jaws is generally recognized as an amazing film that basically created the summer blockbuster movie model.  Summertime was not traditionally the time for audiences to stay indoors to watch movies, and Jaws changed that.

The Jaws sequels don’t have any positive reputation at all.  Jaws 3 was in 3d, a fad that died a pretty horrible death in the 80s, and Jaws 4 was reviewed as one of the worst movies in memory.  But that leaves Jaws 2 as kind of a middle child that got lost in a shuffle.  Not fair.

In the seventies, mainstream horror movies were more supernatural than slasher movies.  From “The Exorcist” to “The Omen” to “Carrie”, it too devils and demons to be scary enough for Hollywood to invest serious money into the genre.  The “escaped lunatic” with a knife wasn’t enough.   Films like that were relegated to the independent, low-budget filmmakers to spend a few hundred thousand dollars and hope to make it back in drive-ins and such.

Norman Wexler, the reason I love Saturday Night Fever. He suffered from mental illness most of his life and was rumored to be the inspiration for Tony Clifton, Andy Kaufman’s stage alter ego.

But he turned a movie about nightclub dancing into a social commentary.

He was a screenwriter who twice was nominated for the Oscar for “Joe” and “Serpico”, two films dealing with the darker side of social commentary.  Then Wexler was tasked with turning a magazine article about Saturday night disco dancing into something more than a dance movie.