'Blue Water, White Death' TV spot (1971)

Several years before JAWS, filmmakers Peter Gimbel and James Lipscomb created this oceangoing documentary about their quest to capture the elusive Great White shark on film.

Have you seen 'Blue Water, White Death'?

[drk]

Spent a week on a live aboard dive boat in Kona Hawaii with Stan. Absolute gentleman and icon in the world of underwater photography. I got stories.

[chaoticiannunez]

Discovered this film via Peter Benchley. He brought it up as an inspiration in later introductions of his novel, Jaws and before that I heard him tell the story of how Blue Water's director co-director and expedition leader Peter Gimbel was approached by Zanuck and Brown to see if he could help them get live shark footage. Gimbel told them he'd rather direct Jaws. The producers were taken aback by this, and turned him down, since they already had Spielberg attached. When the deal with Gimbel fell through he did recommend them to call Ron and Valerie Taylor, both of whom were members of the Blue Water expedition. And the rest is history. But going back to Benchley, he maintained that it was the finest film ever made about sharks, regardless of what else had been done. And, I have to agree with him. It's one of the few films I've seen that presents the ocean as a truly alien place. Plus, the film kinda has a tone or vibe that's similar to Jaws. And Peter Lake's incident with the shark cage with the white shark at the end? Totally the inspiration for Hooper's death scene in the novel. Blue Water truly feels like a prototype to the Jaws story.

[davidprice]

Saw that with my mum at the cinema in london back in the 70s.brilliant film.

[sharkman]

I have this on DVD and I own one of Peter Lake's origiinal 8" x 10" black and white underwater photos from the filming of that movie.

[downunderrob]

It's a fascinating Doco, looking back at it. But I'm so glad attitudes towards Mr.white have changed over the decades.
I have this on DVD, and every time I see it now. I just can't work out how much trouble they had finding Great White Sharks in South African waters.
Or that Peter Gimbel, intimately familiar with Mr. White, as he was didn't take his team to the Farallon Islands off San Francisco.