By Mark Arnold
When JAWS was released 50 years ago, it wasn’t the first motion picture to get the extensive parody treatment, nor was it the last. Just a few years earlier, The Godfather (1972) and its sequel (1974) were subjects ripe for parodies, and were also both highly popular and helped change the culture.
On television, Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC on October 11, 1975. Soon after, the show started its long line of recurring characters. One of the first of these was of comedian and series regular Chevy Chase donning a rubber shark outfit and naming himself the “Landshark”.
The first appearance of this character was on the November 8, 1975, episode in a sketch called JAWS II, with Candice Bergen as host. The character proved to be funny and popular and returned twice more in season one, twice each in seasons two and three, and a few random times after that over the show’s 50+ year history.
The Carol Burnett Show (1967-1978) also regularly did movie parodies on its episodes with its regular repertory cast of Carol, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence and Tim Conway. Traditionally, older movies from the 1930s and 40s were parodies, but by 1975, the show started parodying current films with more regularity. The 11-minute sketch was called “Jowls” and originally aired on October 18, 1975. The highlight of the sketch is Harvey Korman as Quint trying to fish out the shark from the toilet.
Even Bob Hope joined in the fun. Normally, Hope’s TV specials would have a loose thread or theme such as football or Christmas, but this time Hope hosted an all-star cast in a murder mystery called “Joys” featuring a human shark committing murders of various comedians. Unlike the previously mentioned parodies, Hope’s parody had the most tenuous of links, if any at all. The special originally aired on March 5, 1976.
A shot from Bob Hope’s Joys
Cartoons were and are a prime source of parody. Very soon after JAWS came out, two animation series were developed. One was Jabberjaw, produced by Hanna-Barbera, the makers of such shows as The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo. 16 episodes were produced, and the series originally aired from September 11, 1976, through December 18, 1976, with repeats shown on Saturdays through September 3, 1978.
Jabberjaw sounded like Curly Howard of The Three Stooges and played drums for a band called The Neptunes.
Misterjaw was another animated series, this one by DePatie-Freleng, best known for The Pink Panther. This shark wore a top hat and spoke with a German accent voiced by Arte Johnson, with the catchphrase of “Gotcha!”. His sidekick was a fish named Catfish, voiced by Arnold Stang.
34 episodes aired originally as part of The Pink Panther Laugh-and-a-Half, Hour-and-a-Half Show during the 1976-1977 season with reruns shown on The Think Pink Panther Show during the 1977-1978 season.
Besides TV and cartoons, movies easily took shots at JAWS. The opening of 1980’s Airplane! comes to mind with their cold opening right at the beginning of the film with an airplane roaming through the cloudy skies through the strains of John Williams’ memorable JAWS theme.
A year earlier, JAWS Director Steven Spielberg sent up his own movie with his 1979 World War II comedy called 1941. He even cast the same actress, Susan Backlinie, who was the first victim in JAWS to become a victim of a certain obtrusive Japanese submarine.
Novelty records used to be a “thing” and many spoken word and singing JAWS parodies came out in the wake of JAWS’ popularity.
The most popular of these was a double-sided single of “Mr. JAWS” b/w “Chomp Chomp” by Dickie Goodman. Goodman was known for his “break-in” records which used brief clips of current hit records to answers posted by the record’s narrator. The most popular of these types of records was Goodman’s “The Flying Saucer”.
“Right from the Shark’s JAWS (The JAWS Interview)” by Byron McNaughton and his All News Orchestra followed closely in Goodman’s footsteps, but was not by Goodman with the same “break-ins”. The B-side was an instrumental song called “JAWS Jam” by The Chief.
“Do the JAWS” by The End was another record tie-in, though not really a novelty record as such and more of a Disco Funk record. A group called Love Bite also recorded a Disco Funk record called “Killer JAWS”.
Of course, composer John Williams put out a 45 of his JAWS theme, and another composer named Lalo Schiffrin, best known for composing the Mission: Impossible TV theme, put out a Disco Funk cover of the JAWS theme.
Comedians Cheech & Chong were wildly successful in the 1970s with their numerous comedy albums until they eventually switched over to movies. One JAWS tie-in that somehow eluded inclusion on one of their albums for many years was a 45 rpm single called “(How I Spent My Summer Vacation) Or A Day at the Beach with Pedro and Man”. It’s a typical Cheech & Chong skit where their characters Pedro and Man decide to have a little fun at the beach with a fake shark fin.
The parodies kept coming through the 1975 holiday season and “Santa JAWS” was issued by Homemade Theatre, which was a spoken word record parodying not only “JAWS”, but the famous Clement C. Moore poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”.
Finally, humor magazines were still quite popular in the 1970s and the four of the five prominent titles published at the time, each took their turns parodying the film.
MAD #180, January 1976, had “Jaw’d” and #182, April 1976, had “The Shark and I”.
Cracked #129, November 1975, had “Jawz”, and #131, March 1976, had “If Hit Movies Were Combined”, plus a “9th Annual Super Cracked” contained a free Shark Hunt Game. Cracked also seemed to put a shark on the cover of almost every issue at the time. There was also a Cracked Collectors’ Edition devoted to Sharks.
Crazy #15, January 1976, had “Jawbones!” and Sick #107, December 1975, also had a parody called “Jawz”.
Strangely, National Lampoon didn’t do anything with JAWS at the time, but many years later, considered doing a comedic feature film called National Lampoon’s JAWS 3, People 0, but nothing came of it and JAWS 3-D came out instead and wasn’t a comedy.
This overview of JAWS parodies barely scratched the surface of what came out in 1975 and over the next decade as JAWS 2, 3 and The Revenge were released. Fans of the movie and of parody would be well-rewarded to investigate further.
ABOUT MARK ARNOLD:
Mark Arnold is a Pop Culture Historian with over 21 books to his credit on subjects as diverse as Harvey Comics, Underdog, The Monkees, The Beatles, Pac-Man, The Pink Panther, Cracked, MAD, Crazy, Plop!, The Turtles, and Disney. He also hosts his own Fun Ideas Podcast.
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