Growing up in Athens, Georgia, in the 1970s, I spent a lot of time at the movies. VCRs did not yet exist, so you had to go to the theater if you wanted to see a movie. We still had several movie theaters to choose from in Athens in those years: The Classic Triple (downtown); Beechwood Cinema (at Beechwood Shopping Center); Alps Cinema (at Alps Shopping Center); the Palace Theater (downtown); and the Paris Theater (also downtown). There was also Alps Drive-In, but the only driving we could do was on our sparkly banana seat bikes.
In the summer of 1975, I went with my next-door neighbor, Margie Hodges, to see a movie at Beechwood Cinemas. Margie was 9. I was 11. Here's what you need to know about going to the movies in 1975: our parents just dropped us off. They gave us some money and said, “See you in 3 hours.” Nobody cared what we saw. Nobody cared what we did while we were there. They just dropped us off and ran errands or perhaps just went home to lie down in a quiet room.
Either my mom or Margie's mom (it doesn’t matter which because neither of them stayed) dropped us off at Beechwood Cinema with money for a matinee ticket and snacks. Yippee. We bought popcorn and Raisinets and Junior Mints and Coke Icees, then wandered into the sweet cool air of the dark theater. Our sneakers squeaked on the sticky floors as we picked the best row – half way down, seats in the middle.
“What’s this movie?” Margie asked me.
“Not sure," I said. Something about summer vacation? or going to the beach? I don’t really know.”
Neither of us cared. We had candy and popcorn and 3 hours of freedom in an air-conditioned space. The movie was superfluous. If we had bothered to look at the movie poster on the way in, we would have seen the words on the top of the poster that said, “The terrifying movie from the #1 terrifying best seller” written ABOVE THE GIANT SHARK. But we didn’t read it. And our moms certainly didn’t read it. They never even got out of the car. Or if they did, they didn’t tell us about it. They had errands to run. No one was concerned that Margie and I were about to see one of the most terrifying movie that I had ever seen to this day. In our parents’ defense, Jaws was rated PG. PG-13 would not be invented until 1984. So they thought it was okay for a 9-year-old and an 11-year-old to see “The terrifying movie from the #1 terrifying best seller” by themselves. It was not. I am still not okay.
I was fine for the first part of the movie. I was fine when John Williams’ notes first played on the tuba. I was fine when they found pieces of Chrissy Watkins washed up on the beach. I was even fine when Alex Kintner got eaten in a spew of blood and rubber raft. Also, we lived inland so none of it mattered. However, I began to not be fine when Ben Gardner’s bodyless head rolled out of the bottom of the boat onto Richard Dreyfuss who was scuba diving below. When the crab crawled out of Ben Garnder’s eyeball socket, I began to question things. A lot of things. Should I be here? Did my mom think this was Ok for me? And if so, why?
Despite our growing terror watching “the terrifying movie from the #1 terrifying best seller”, Margie Hodges and I stayed. We stayed in our seats with our popcorn and Coke Icees and Junior Mints tumbling out of our laps every time we jumped. I spent the rest of that movie in the seat with Margie Hodges. Not just next to her, IN THE SEAT WITH her. Mostly on top of her because she was a lot smaller than me. As we all know, John Williams’s music gets louder and faster and scarier to signal when the shark gets closer and closer. Every time this happened, which became more frequent as the movie goes on, I would put 2 fingers into my ears and mash 2 fingers into my eyeballs until I saw explosions of light. I’m amazed I still have vision.
My only saving grace was near the end of the move when Quint gets eaten by the shark as the boat is sinking. Even though Quint had blood squirting out of his mouth while he was being chewed up by the shark, this scene was the first time when the shark wasn’t scary to me. As an astute 11 year old who had never seen a shark in real life, I remember telling Margie, “See, it’s not even real.”
When the shark exploded at the end of the movie, Margie and I cheered triumphantly despite the fact that we were covered in spilled Icee and Junior Mints. We were happy, not because Richard Dreyfus and Roy Scheider had survived – but because WE had survived. We never left our seats (mostly because were afraid to) and we never gave up. We may have permanently damaged our ocular nerves and now have unreasonable fear swimming in lakes, but we remained victorious at Beechwood Cinemas that day in July of 1975.
I have no memory of being picked up from the movies that day. No memory of my mom or Margie’s mom asking, “How was the movie?” and probably answering “Fine.” I do remember that for the rest of the summer and many more to come, we only went swimming at the lake or the pool. And even then, we were total wrecks.
