Jaws III: Monster

This was an outstanding fan edit and very professional in it's overall presentation. The extra's on disc two were top draw.

Most of the new footage and shark effects were integrated well. I particularly liked when the squid first surfaces further enhanced with an excellent music cue. The ending is a huge improvement over the original and the same can be said about the rest of the film.

Only thing that didn't work for me was the opening credits montage which featured way too many CGI sharks for my taste and simply went on too long. Personally I prefer the underwater shots as used in the originals where it's left to the music to set the scene and nothing is shown.

The video quality wasn't particularly good however I believe this was mostly a result of the source material. In any case the new footage was downgraded to match perfectly.

Overall this edit is highly recommended and deserves all the accolades it's received!

After a visit to my local Cex store I was able to pick up Jaws 3 and 4 for a bargain £1.50 each. The first Jaws film has long been a favorite of mine while I consider Jaws 2 to be a rather underrated sequel. Parts 3 and 4 however I haven't revisited to often as their barley screened here in the UK. I knew part 3 was set within a theme park but had no idea that the Brody family from the first two films were involved. I was also surprised to see Dennis Quaid starring in Jaws 3

Given my lack of knowledge to Jaws 3 I didn't take a look at the changes Last Survivor made but knew the edit would include a new monster and remove some dated 3D effects. After seeing the edit it was hard to see just what else he had done to this film. This is the biggest complement I can give to the editor as the commentary goes into great detail the various changes made I just presumed this to be how the film was originally released.

The added Squid monster fits in perfectly though maybe a bit of back story to the monster would have made for a stronger sub-plot. However seeing the footage on the deleted scenes I think the right de-session was made as it's clear that both films have some years between them. The film it self is a enjoyable B movie flick, a little more family friendly than it's predecessors but it's well acted and the characters are likable.

The bonus feature includes a great documentary with narration by Last Survivor in which we see some interesting ideas / stories regarding Jaws 3. Last Survivor also explains why he wanted to edit the film which is very insightful and I’d recommend to anyone who is just starting out or thinking about becoming a fan editor. The Ghost Shark short film is another welcome inclusion, as with Jaws 3 I haven't seen Jaws 4 in over 20 years but I’m well aware of what people's opinion on the film is. Last Survivor is able to salvage something from the film and turn it in to something watch-able and it looks great in black and white. As with the main feature another entertaining commentary is well worth checking out.

Now that I have Jaws 3 and 4 will I be watching these films in the future? Simple answer to that is NO. why would I when I can just re-watch Jaws 3: Monster. The only criticism against the edit is that maybe you don't get the shear size of the shark given that footage was removed.

So do what I did and get a big bowl of popcorn and enjoy some monster one on one action :)

April 16, 2012

The only problem I see with this edit is that its intention is a little vague – most of the 3D is fixed, and the ending is changed, but it’s still corny and stupid; however, I can’t say it isn’t entertaining.

Technical quality – 9/10 – well, the video quality was very poor, full of grain and blocky solids, but I’m pretty sure this was the fault of the original DVD and not LS.

Editing – 10/10 – the color correction, for the most part, was very nicely done.

Presentation – 10/10 – oh. My. Gosh. The extras. Ghost Shark was BRILLIANT. It didn’t have a real clear story progression, but it was still brilliant. It was entertaining and emotionally engrossing. It may have been better if the end was more ambiguous, and if Ellen had somehow confronted the shark in her own mind and overcome her fear or something. But, man oh man, that build-up of paranoia and what’s-real-what’s-not was incredible. Then there was a set of interesting deleted scenes and a MAGNIFICENT documentary. Cannot recommend that enough, it probably is one of my favorite parts of the edit. LS, you did a splendid job keeping the docu entertaining and informative. I never got bored, I learned a lot, and it was a really fun watch. I wanted to get this review posted soon, so I didn’t listen to the commentaries yet, but I have no doubt that they will be splendid. The cover art left just a tiny bit to be desired, but I won’t go into that in a review of the edit itself. Menus were very nice (great that you had scene selection even for the extras).

Entertainment – 8/10 – I never really finished watching Jaws 3. I watched about half of it and then never really got back to it. This time, I sat down and watched LS’s edit in one sitting without really getting bored at all. The opening flowed nicely, but the fact that it was in Amity and completely unrelated to the rest of the movie seemed kind of weird. Personally, I think the title sequence gave too much shark away – I guess you were trying to capitalize on the B-movie feel, but any and all mystery that could have been retained wasn’t. One of the things LS said was that he was trying to keep the shark’s presence less obvious so early on, and this was completely ruined by showing a huge, over-the-top shark montage during the opening credits. The rest of the film plays like a cheesy Jaws rip-off. I guess my problem with it was that it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be the next Sharksploitation Edit or whether it actually wanted to improve the film. But either way, it was entertaining, and I completely forgot I was watching a fanedit because the cuts were so smooth. The other problem with it is that it could have done with a few more [SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER] Octopus scenes to build up to that incredibly well-edited and corny B-movie climax that was a nice callback to the end of the Sharksploitation Edit [SPOILERS OVER]. I noticed the repeated octopus scenes, but my mind didn’t really register that they were meant to be part of the plot for some reason. The re-edited attack on the scuba divers was cool, though, and I think this edit can’t really be much better – I mean, the editing is completely perfect, and it really does feel like a very entertaining B-movie. I would give Disc One 8/10 and Disc Two 10/10, so that balances out to 9/10.

Overall – 9/10

April 15, 2012

A fun little B-fest; amazing sound work and impressive editing make this a very fun fanedit. Not everything works perfectly; I thought the new opening montage felt a little random and the ending was a little confusing but to the editor’s credit, they’re much, much better than what the original was offering.

As a bonus we get a full length commentary track which is extremely informative and very contagious in its love for the movie.

As an even bigger bonus we get a full DVDs worth of special features; deleted scenes which show the various stages and progress of the fanedit, a short film called “Ghost Shark” which is a fanedit of Jaws 4 (suprisingly good, considering the source material) and most impressive of all a “making of” special feature that details the making of Jaws III as well as its subsequent fanedit, all narrated by the faneditor. Honestly, the most impressive special feature I’ve ever seen for a fanedit.

Overall, a true model of how fanedits should be released.

9/10

April 13, 2012

I started watching this edit take shape at the beginning and was incredible curious to sit down and watch it. Jaws 3 is a film that, for a lot of understandable reasons, is very maligned. However, I’ve always enjoyed it. I like a lot of what I think Last Survivor liked about it. It’s a fun little disaster movie. Only this time instead of being a fire, or an earthquake, the disaster was a monster shark. And That’s just pretty awesome to start with. So Last Survivor’s attempts to bring that aspect of the movie more to the forefront and really play up it’s B-movie nature, despite having been a rather large A-Picture, was a very interesting concept for me from the start. Now that I’ve had the chance to sit down and watch it I’m happy to say that I’m very pleased.

This edit takes this movies original narrative and weaves it into a whole new story, culminating in a brand new ending, and it does it superbly. The biggest change here is the incorporation of a lot of footage taken from other movies to build new sequences with the shark and rid the movie of it’s biggest Achilles heel – it’s special effects. While there’s some instances where it doesn’t quite work in my opinion, as the CGI is rather obvious, it ultimately makes the movie much more “watchable.” No it doesn’t necessarily match it’s 1980′s release date, but it doesn’t really matter. It feels right when you’re watching it, and that’s the only thing that I really care about.

I will admit that once and a while I was very aware that new effects and such had been used, most specifically towards the ending which I won’t reveal here for want of avoiding spoilers, but never once did that really bother me and more often than not the new effects seemed to fit perfectly. I could go on and on forever about this stuff and why I liked it, but I’d just end up repeating myself. Bottom line, while the editing in of the new footage wasn’t always seamless, and sometimes far from it, it just works. It’s enjoyable and fun, and I couldn’t ask for it t do more than that. So, the edit itself gets itself an 8/10 or maybe a 9/10.

Visually speaking this edit is great. That’s not to say that it looks like a spotless, faultless, 1080p Criterion Bluray release. It’s by far not that. But any problems with the look of the film has nothing to do with the edit itself, but rather the source material. So, given what LS had to work with, this is a great looking edit and looks no different from my official DVD. 10/10 there.

The audio is the most incredible thing about this edit. I don’t necessarily know what was done to which scenes, and I wouldn’t know that without going back and watching the original movie again to see if I could tell the difference. But I do know that there was a lot of work done just based on conversations in the forum. And never once could I hear where anything felt out of place, or that audio had been rebuilt. It felt absolutely perfectly synched and appropriate for the film. Stellar work. 10/10

And the presentation. Good God, this was great. I’ve loved this film for a long time, so the second disc of this DVD is an absolute must in it’s own right. It’s the closest thing we’ll probably ever come to a full fledged professionally produced special edition of this movie. The documentary provided a lot of insight into the amount of hard work and dedication that went into this, and the deleted scenes were fun just to see how the edit evolved over time. Of course, I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Ghost Shark, the special edit of Jaws 4. Incredible work, and easily the only way I’ll ever watch Jaws 4 again.

All and all I’ll give this edit a 9/10. It’d get a 10 out of 10 straight up, but I personally just have issues with giving anything a perfect score.