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Back in the early nineties, Brisbane was home to the Metro Cinema on Edward Street. The Metro was only a small cinema, setting about 120 people, and the screen wasn’t all that big. Even so, it was a nice little cinema with pretty comfy seats (and Dolby Digital sound was setup, though only months before it’s eventual closure :(

The Metro use to have special movie screenings of a weekend, so I quite often drove into town for their latest screening. It was great to be able to actually Films like Star Treks 1 through 7 on the big screen, and they even had several re-screenings of The Crow . But my favourite was the 3-Double billing of Friday the 13^th Part 3D and Jaws 3D. Both of these Films where of course shot in 3D, and for at least their 1995 re-screening used a single film print with the Polarised tint for the 3D effect rather than 2 film prints running simultaneously and projected. The end result for both films was actually pretty crappy and the image was really just a big blur with some really nasty convergence errors, but there was the odd moment where everything lined up properly and gave some great 3D effects! Even with all these image problems, the whole audience seemed to be having a blast.

After the Brilliant first film and it’s faithful sequel, what were the chances of #3 being any good? NONE! So the only way to get audiences out of the water for a 3^rd time and back into the cinemas was to shot in 3D (as it seemed to make a resurgence in the early 80's..especially with horror and sci-fi). And the gimmick obviously worked as Jaws 3 did pretty well at the box office.

This time around, we’re still involved with the Brody family. But the story (okay you can stop laughing now) focuses on the 2 boys, Michael (Dennis Quaid) and Sean (John Putch). Both are now grown men (even though it was only 5 years since Jaws 2 was released). And Michael is working at Sea World with his girlfriend Kathryn (Bess Armstrong). Sean is on holidays and has decided to come and visit his big brother.

Before you know it, a great white has gotten inside Sea World, and is munching on the Sea World Employees. So it’s up to the Brody Boy’s to save the day…

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VIDEO
Jaws 3 was shot using 2 cameras simultaneously to achieve the proper 3D effect for theatres (so there’s 2 virtually identical negatives, one for each camera)

For the DVD transfer they’ve sadly dropped the 3D effect and used only one half of the 2 negatives, and it would also appear this Anamorphic Widescreen Transfer is only about one half the quality it could have been. It’s pretty damn average, and is sure to disappoint many :(

Not only is this picture overly soft showing poor focus, it also rather ironically results in a rather flat looking picture (at least for a movie shot with 3D in mind :)

Colour Saturation actually isn’t too bad,, but the image constantly suffers from an incredible amount of image bleeding/blurring with many object edges being a hazy blue or red. Given this movie was shot in 3D one might be inclined to think this red and blue edging is for the 3D effect of the movie, but I tried on my Freddy’s Dead 3D glasses and sadly, this is not the case :)

Click HERE for a screen shot showing the red/blue image bleed/blur 72kb in size

The many optical shark effects come up very grainy and the print is often riddled with grit.

Black Level is also a bit too low, so your shadow detail suffers as well.

Jaws 3 may well be the worst of the sequels, but it deserves better treatment than this.

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AUDIO
Unlike 1 and 2, Jaws 3 was originally released to theatres in Dolby Stereo. The DVD has been encoded with a Dolby 2.0 mix, but works fine in Dolby Surround mode. There are actually a few good surround effects (an explosion at one point is very much surround heavy)

Dialogue sounds a little thin, but generally comes through clear enough, with only a little bit of obvious ADR work at hand.

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EXTRAS
Theatrical Trailers – Jaws 2, 3 and 4

Given the extreme lameness of this film, maybe taking Jaws 3 into the 3D realm for DVD would have been a good selling point, given the less than stellar treatment this particular DVD has received. Strictly for the Fans only.  Are there any for #3?

Review Equipment
TV: Pioneer SD-T50W1 (16:9 RPTV)
DVD: Pioneer DV717  (using RGB outputs)
Receiver : Denon AVC-A1SE THX Ultra (Dolby Surround EX, DTS-ES Discrete)
Speakers:-
     Mains: Quadral Amun
     Centre: B&W CDMC-SE
     Surrounds Left/Right: M&K SS500 (Dipole)
     Surrounds Back : Polk RT/fx (Diplole)
     Subby: M&K V125 

- Review Posted 30th October 2001

*  jpeg files for internet promotion use only. Copyright© exists on all aspects of these files by Universal Pictures