Sir, Kindly Remove Your Teeth from My Thigh

Every year, ever since she was eighteen, Mrs. Dalloway watched Jaws, most commonly in early spring.

She adored Jaws. For all intents and purposes, for her, it was the perfect movie: exciting and surprising, the story was meticulously constructed and balanced and evenly carried out, Richard Dreyfuss looked so fine he reminded Mrs. Dalloway of a young god. The characters were complex and interesting, the atmosphere genuinely frightening, and the legendary theme music of the creature ingenious, inspired and economical. It included an exceptional opening scene: the predator from the deep, completely disguised by the waves of the sea, mauls and kills an unsuspecting summer girl gone swimming. Jaws pioneered in coming up with interesting cinematographic solutions concerning filming in water, and the shooting was altogether marvelous. It was also a wonderful, heart-melting time capsule, and there were countless fantastic stories documented about the making of the film. And last, but not least: it introduced the most terrifying bad guy in the history of film, a monster Mrs. Dalloway loved to fear despite the creature being so obviously fake.

As a matter of fact, the fakeness of the shark was part of the charm. The mechanical shark, Bruce, named after Steven Spielberg’s lawyer, brought with him an element of the handicraft arts, an aspect that meant a lot to Mrs. Dalloway, a component she sought for in all creature features. She was a hundred percent aboard with the idea of the willful suspension of disbelief, first brought to her attention by Stephen King, an idea of the reader/viewer ignoring the endearing zipper visible all through the monster’s back in favor of concentrating on the purposeful feeling of dread.

Furthermore, according to King, horror as a genre was the most conservative out of all the genres; the reader/viewer was sitting on her safe easy chair or inside a comfy movie theater while experiencing the violent emotions of horror and terror, all the while perfectly aware that after she slipped back into her normal life, nothing of the sort would ever happen, monsters would remain hidden, and status quo reign. Despite considering herself a nonconformist, Mrs. Dalloway, unfortunately, had to agree with this, too.

Her very first experience with Jaws happened the year she started elementary school. There was a late-night special showing of Jaws on TV, but mother had told Clarissa Alexandra to go to bed, claiming the movie way too exciting for a little girl. Her parents turned down the volume, but not all the way down. To this day Mrs. Dalloway was able to bring back the ultimate, paralyzing fear of hearing, not seeing, Jaws for the first time; the vague yet distinctive sounds of ominous music and women screaming, the splashing of water, the terrible, imagination-provoking, pure terror of a world of sound without picture to go with it. She was petrified in horror, lying in her bed as straight as a stick figure, mouth dry, eyes wide open, concentrating hard to hear a little bit better, a little bit more, blanket tucked up to her ears so that the unspeakable monster wouldn’t grab a hold of her toes or elbows. She would sleep like this, her whole body covered in sheets, in the most fearful, superstitious, dread, a long way into her adulthood.

There was another factor that contributed into her sleeping as if she was Boris Karloff as the Mummy. There was an often-told urban legend going around in high school, about a girl who had had a twilight visitor while she was fast asleep, a giant, awful, fat spider, who had crawled into her ear, and one day, when she least expected it, little tiny baby spiders began crawling out of her ear in one long line. The story always managed to freak out everybody attending the slumber parties and had everyone wrapping up the corner of the blanket real well around the ear at bedtime. This was how one was safe, at least for a little while, from the horrifying jaws of both the toothy sea monster as well as the offspring of the disgusting hairy eight-legged fiends.

Mrs. Dalloway’s workmates were sometimes surprised by her enthusiasm for monsters and bloodshed: they would instead picture her with a glass of fine Riesling in her hand, dressed in an expensive vintage dress watching Polish arthouse cinema while discussing existentialism with Sartre in French. Be that as it may, there was something about both the hilariously funny and the genuinely blood-chilling Eighties horror flicks that appealed to her. And the Seventies! The Seventies were the absolute golden age of horror movies for Mrs. Dalloway.

Hanks shared her love for the genre, and on quiet days they would have endless conversations on John Carpenter or Sam Raimi or the Alien-quadrilogy. It was nice to enthuse with another believer, and they would really throw themselves into it, eyeballs and entrails.

“Ooh, and what about the scene in The Thing where the guy’s stomach suddenly morphs into this giant evil mouth with fangs that bites the arms off the man trying to resuscitate him! Oh man!”

Or

“Did you know that the blue lights inside the huge chamber with all the unhatched eggs on Alien were borrowed for the scene from The Who, who were practicing their laser show in the adjoining studio?”

Or

“The tiny blob of pus dangling from the man’s gaping wound looked so gross.”

And

“But what about the so-called blood, oozing from the tendrils? Now that was just - lame!”

Or

“If we all were sea monsters, which one would you be?” Mrs. Dalloway’s choice was self-evident. Hanks thought about it for a while and ended up with the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Roberts, who joined in, was not a friend of the genre, and used a long time considering the various possibilities. It was a tough one, and they kept cataloging the pros and cons of many a monster with great gusto, while going about their business and serving customers what they needed. In the end, Roberts made her choice: the giant octopus from Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster. It made no difference that she hadn’t even seen the movie itself; the long, appalling tentacles of the squid would revolve in the most horrifying way around her head that would be cleverly hidden inside an orb marking the animal’s round body.

They were all thrilled. The discussion took on a whole new life from there, and they ended up making plans to start a mariachi-style musical combo, wearing their costumes to events and weddings and parties, playing the classic songs from their favorite movies, because who wouldn’t want a sea monster -themed band at their function? Since none of the participants in the conversation could actually play an instrument, they were able to really give it their all, planning some extremely ambitious and grandiose setlists.

Another iconic Seventies horror classic that gave Mrs. Dalloway lots of sleepless nights was The Exorcist. Mrs. Rougemont, an avid hater of horror movies, once explained the storyline of the most terrible film she ever saw to the girls at dinner table. She couldn’t bring back the name of the film for the life of her, but her narrative about the story made chills run through both the girls’ spine; it was absolutely terrifying, and made Clarissa Alexandra slurp her Coca-Cola from an over-sized yellow tea mug as noisily as possible, goosebumps all over her arms, her hair standing on end. Mrs. Rougemont poured herself another cup from her French press – she worked most times until very late, and slept at least till noon – and continued with some carefully chosen horror stories about the isolation ward at the insane asylum, pleased she had obviously made quite an impression. Stabbings. Eyes rolling manically on heads. Slashings. Maimings. Murder. Oh lord how the girls were jazzed and scared, and retold each other these stories, juiced up a little here, varied a tad there, until the wee small hours of the morning, their young girls’ bodies lying safely next to each other on Peri’s single bed. Mrs. Rougemont telling these gruesome stories to the innocent, impressionable youth like there was absolutely nothing wrong with it was one of the reasons Clarissa Alexandra loved her: she was entirely different from the other mothers.

When, years later, Mrs. Dalloway saw The Exorcist for the first time, she very early on realized that here, finally, was the nerve-wracking, horriblest, most disturbing movie Peri’s mother had so eloquently and vividly described to the girls that time. Poor Regan’s head, grinning insanely, turning a full 180 degrees while under the torture of the demon. The bed shaking and jiggling and levitating by itself. The violently disturbing mockery of masturbation with a crucifix; this image, in its bare and simple, almost banal brutality and sadism, still managed to shake up Mrs. Dalloway every time she watched the film.

An important point about Jaws, one of the reasons that made the movie so special for Mrs. Dalloway, was the way it depicted humanity: the everyday life of people trying go about their routines, their fears, and not merely the fear of the monster, the joys and sorrows of life; the human condition. The movie was so much more than a rollercoaster ride made out of women screaming and effects and cheap thrills. There was something so profoundly compassionate about the movie that Mrs. Dalloway’s eyes teared up from immersion. The scene with Chief Brody and his youngest, Sean, at dinner table and how the child kept imitating his father’s gestures. Quint and Hooper comparing their various scars on Orca, and the subsequent rowdy singalong. Quint’s legendary monologue about dropping the bomb and the drowning of U.S.S. Indianapolis. Of course, they were all classics.

But there was other stuff, too. Small things, life-things, pieces and inklings here and there to deepen the story without necessarily being its inherent parts; little, almost insignificant features that were captured on film, and those almost insignificant features were the secret ingredient of the whole movie. Brody tossing a handful of small floats at the window, trying to attract his deputy’s attention. The old man going on and on about how the kids had karate’ed his picket fence while Brody walks through the Fourth of July marching band rehearsals on the street. Brody’s kid, Sean, constantly prodding his father’s sleeve while he is trying to have a phone conversation, and the grown-up’s impatient “What?!” mid-call, in response to the tugging. Hooper tossing the knot back to Quint, who had seconds before arrogantly asked him to tie a sheep shank, only to wipe the rope aside without even glancing at it when the younger man defiantly obeys him. The lived-in feel of the Brody residence, with dish brushes and other utensils.

Mrs. Dalloway held thoroughness in high regard in the display of props and sets, and she felt she could almost always tell if the movie was shot on location, her favorite kind of shooting. Documents didn’t reveal if the Brody residence was built for the sole purpose of Jaws, or if it was an existing house, but she wanted to think it was the latter; at least the rooms didn’t seem too done up or fake. One of her pet peeves was noticing small unnecessary flaws in otherwise seamlessly propped sets made to look perfect and real. The fact that in Beautiful Girls, Willie’s old boyhood room was decorated with supposedly old football posters and pennants that were not only so spanking new they were downright gleaming, but also pinned on the walls as if by with the help of a level did not perhaps worsen the wonderful film in the least, but still Mrs. Dalloway noticed the goof every time she watched it and was subsequently annoyed. God, famously, was to be found in the details.

Tom Hanks declared in Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail that from the Godfather trilogy one was able to find the answers to every single question one might ever have in this life. Mrs. Dalloway believed the same thing about Jaws.

Was she serving a rude and pompous customer?  - I don’t have to take this abuse much longer!

Did she feel like being rude? – I want my cup back!

Was the undertaking looking overwhelming, almost impossible? Naturally – You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

There was a whole cavalcade of expressions for different moods and stances.

To communicate disbelief and reproach: This was no boating accident!

To be ironic and anti-authority: Aye aye, captain, arrr!

To insult: That’s some bad hat, Harry.

To be insulted: I don’t need this Working Class Hero -crap!

To flirt: Wanna get drunk and fool around?

To panic: Charlie, take my word for it, don’t look back!

To be part of the group: Oh, I’m an islander.

To be left out of the group: When do I get to become an islander?

The list went on and on.

The single most frightening scene for Mrs. Dalloway in Jaws was the one during the first third of the movie: the shark attacking the Kintner boy who is floating near the shore on an inflatable raft. For the briefest moment the viewer is shown an immense tail splashing above water, a freeze frame almost, and right after the blood starts gushing. The way the scene was negotiated was brilliant in its unadornedness and simplicity, especially since so many of these disturbing scenes happened due to the production almost going haywire with the mechanical shark not working for the longest time, thus forcing the crew to come up with alternative solutions to make the creature’s presence known. It was a blessing in disguise, really: the unknown, the invisible enemy, was the most terrifying enemy of them all, and the short appearance of the huge tail above water was in Mrs. Dalloway’s mind every time she went swimming.

Every. Single. Time.

Jaws, 1975, directed by Steven Spielberg