Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait made his directorial debut with this black comedy about a unsavory clown, which has been given a bit of polish for its release on DVD. Shakes the Clown has been given a letterboxed transfer to disc in the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1, which is also enhanced for anamorphic playback on 16 x 9 monitors. The original English-language soundtrack appears in Dolby Digital Surround, while a dubbed Spanish version is in Dolby Digital Stereo. Optional subtitles in English and Spanish are also included. As a bonus, this edition also includes biographies of the leading cast members and the film's original theatrical trailer.

This third sequel to the 1975 mega-hit Jaws returns Lorraine Gary to the role of Ellen Brody, widow of the Roy Scheider character from the first two films. When her son Sean, the current police chief of shark-plagued Amity Island, is killed by the beast, Ellen goes to the Bahamas to comfort her surviving son. Michael Brody (Lance Guest) and his friend Jake (Mario Van Peebles) are marine biologists there to help, but in the end it is up to Ellen and her new beach-bum love -- played by Michael Caine -- to put a halt to the fishy horror. Director Joseph Sargent concludes the series with an ending chosen from several alternate possibilities.

Though it makes up for some of the previous edition's mishaps, the Jaws: 30th Anniversary Edition is an almost-perfect DVD that suffers only from a bit of laziness on the part of Universal. Released in 2000 as one of director Steven Spielberg's first blockbusters unveiled on DVD, the Jaws: Collector's Edition was a big seller in the stores, yet still managed to fall short thanks to the studio's unwillingness to include the full two-hour documentary from the laserdisc, long thought of as the definitive look back on the troubled production. So now here comes this two-disc set celebrating the crowd-pleaser's pearl anniversary and the good news is that the documentary has indeed been reinstated to its full glory. Those who have only seen the previous hour-long cut are in for a big treat here, thanks to the incredible detail that was culled from the various sources in the production, including John Williams, Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Peter Benchley, production designer Joe Alves, and, of course, Spielberg himself. Another bit of good news involves the inclusion of a never-before-available nine-minute interview on-set with the director from 1974 that gives the audience a rare glimpse of the young director on just his second day of shooting, no doubt already feeling the constraints of the sea-bound production. For aficionados, it's the kind of engaging footage that is endlessly interesting, given the kind of Vietnam hell that followed Spielberg on the rest of the shoot. Other new bits of goodness involve the inclusion of both 5.1 DTS and Dolby tracks (previous versions included either one or the other) along with the infamous original theatrical mono audio track, which will please the hardcore fans out there to no end (many were not happy with the enhanced 5.1 tracks). What isn't pleasing about this edition is the exclusion of the famed theatrical trailers that figured prominently into the success of the film. This lone exclusion will prevent most customers from getting rid of their previous version, which makes little sense in the grand scheme of things given that the rest of the still archives were carried over, including other marketing pieces such as posters, books, T-shirts, and much more. This, along with the fact that no new menus were designed for this edition, just makes Universal look bad. It's like they listened to the gripes about the documentary on the last one, but didn't feel the need to dedicate more money into an anniversary edition of one of the biggest films of all time. The result is yet another DVD that gives the same "play all" feature to the deleted scenes, with the added annoyance of outtakes being thrown into the same feature as well. Though no one will miss the trivia game or the shark facts from the previous version, there will be those who will resent the silliness involved with the loss of the very integral trailers. Still, with the full documentary and the reinstated original mono mix, many will pony up for this release, which comes with a nice commemorative booklet and the same fine 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer carried over from the Widescreen Collector's Edition.