Jaws Of Death

  

I for the life of me cannot possibly fathom why this woman seems to be shrieking in terror. She's not the apex predator here. Look at how much goddamned bigger she actually is than that shark. She should just turn around and eat him, quite frankly.

The look of absolute "I can't draw a screaming face" on her...face, is pretty hilarious. I laughed pretty damn hard the first time I saw this, about 15 minutes before writing this post. And honestly, it's not just her, there's actually a lot to love about this entire box, front and back. First of all, let's get the obvious out of the way and, can't believe I even have to state this but I will, this film is CLEARLY an attempt to capitalize off the popularity of Jaws, which released only a year prior in 1975. I mean, for fucks sake, they put the words "jaws" IN the title. What more proof do you need? Honestly, the plot sounds cool enough. A man working for the marines learns he has the ability to telepathically communicate with and direct sharks. That sounds pretty awesome, not gonna lie, and apparently it also was a subversion of the trope because the sharks wind up being the heroes and the humans are portrayed as the villains. Also pretty cool.

But no matter how good the movie might allegedly be, and I can't say one way or the other as I've never seen it, that doesn't excuse this awful god damned box art. Not only do they give you only two screenshots on the back, but they aren't even remotely interesting, they're merely headshots of the actors in the film, and the most barebones plot synopsis I think I've ever seen. And why are the cages considered a "benefit"? That's not a benefit. That's a safety precaution. You're literally out here putting your actors in harms way for the sake of your movie. That's not very cool, man. But! This is, thankfully, one of those rare instances where I managed to scrounge up an alternative box art!

Frankly, this is much better. Now instead of "whoopsie pooped my pants" woman, you've got a dude bleeding next to a much more terrifying giant shark, plus a cornucopia of screenshots to choose from on the backside, many of which are much more interesting to look at. It still comes with a rather succinct description of the flick, but at least this time around it's not random vague jargon that ultimately makes you more confused than interested. This time it's at least semi coherent and intriguing. Not to mention the font here isn't "baby's first font" and is actually indicative of the movie it's portraying. All in all, this second box is vastly superior. Once again this raises the question of why movies wound up with such varying degrees of box art, ranging from frankly quite superb to absolute dogshit. I guess the answer is something we'll never know.

Perhaps it has to do with the distributor, as I pondered before. We can see from the first one that it was released via United American Video Corp. That name just sounds made up, doesn't it? Meanwhile, the second one was released via CIC, which, from what we can tell from this box alone, isn't an anagram and instead just their name overall. So do each distributor have an artist on hand, or multiple artists for that matter as having one person do all the work seems cruel, and therefore one distributors artwork is simply head and shoulders above the others? Or do they, after obtaining the rights to release the movie, simply go and search for someone, hire them sight unseen without even so much as asking if they can draw a stick figure, and await their glorious Van Gogh level artwork? Not gonna lie, each way sounds plausible, but I'm willing to bet it's much more likely the second for these lower level distributors. Now, if they were a much larger company, then they might have someone inhouse, but again, we'll never know.

Either way, Jaws Of Death sounds kinda cool, and the second box art isn't bad at all. I suppose we'll never truly know the secret behind the varying degrees of content quality, but perhaps that's not for us to know. Perhaps, all that matters in the end, is that we see people attacked by sharks. Telepathic sharks. Telepathic sharks who will one day be our overlords.

I, for one, look forward to serving our new finned, sharp toothed masters.