MovieChat Forums > Blue Water, White Death (1971) Discussion > Great Movie, but DID NOT Inspire 'Jaws'

Great Movie, but DID NOT Inspire 'Jaws'

posted 15 years ago by nowhereman-4
5 replies | jump to latest

To set the record straight, "Blue Water, White Death" wasn't remotely involved in inspiring Peter Benchley to write "Jaws". Benchley's inspiration came from reading accounts in the 1960's of large great whites being caught off Long Island by famed shark fisherman Frank Mundus. Benchley also drew inspiration from the series of attacks, in 1916, along the New Jersey shore.

So - if someone else claims that "this is the movie that inspired 'Jaws'", then they are very much misinformed. At least two of the comments in the "Reviews" section make this erroneous claim.

[–] VWstarwars 14 years ago

Wow, I'm at CBS and just opened a box that was the promo stuff(Decided to look this film up on here) and behind the scenes photos for this. Seriously, there are radio spot announcements on records and lobby cards for this in here. Some pretty intense photographs, a bunch of them. 8X10's or something. Anyway, there's bunch of stuff, including a book called "Blue Meridian" and it shows that couple that did the underwater stuff for "Jaws," Ron and Val, of the live shark shots. There are many stills of a guy or guys in a cage . . . Because of that I am thinking that this movie and book could have inspired the ending to "Jaws." I know about the 1916 New Jersey Shore incident, being the main source of inspiration, but you know how works are often inspired by multiple things. Just throwing that out there, since I was looking this up and then saw your thread.

For part of the initial treatment that was presented to CBS there is a copy of an article for the NEW YORK TIMES in summer of 67 entitled "Control for Diver's Cage Devised." They even call it an Anti-shark cage in the article.

[–] henrimaine 8 years ago

To me it seems quite obvious that this documentary partially inspired the 1974 book Jaws and the 1976 movie Jaws. Perhaps the documentary was not the main inspiration, but it definitely had some effect on the book and movie. For instance, throwing blood into water to lure sharks, using underwater cages. These elements were probably taken from this documentary.

[–] nickm2 8 years ago

Then again, the novelty of luring a white shark close enough to be filmed/photographed was probably the creation of the Taylors & Rodney Fox.

Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure that Spielberg had the "Blue Water, White Death" guys film some second unit footage for Jaws -- the attack on Hooper in the cage duplicates the material in this documentary.

[–] R_Kane (15828) 3 years ago

Yeah, because nobody knew about those things before the movie—except for every SCUBA diver on the face of the earth.

But never let sheer ignorance get in the way of your invented opinion.