This Michael Caine Movie Was So Terrible the Actor Insists He’s Never Seen It
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British actor Michael Caine recently announced his retirement from the big screen, capping a remarkable career that began all the way back in the 1950s. The two-time Oscar winner has appeared in a number of acclaimed films, including The Italian Job (1969), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The Cider House Rules (1999), and more recently Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
And then there’s the 1987 horror sequel Jaws: The Revenge, which Caine candidly dubbed “one of the worst pictures I did.” The movie became such an infamous flop—it holds a 0 percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes—that the 90-year-old claims he’s never bothered to watch it.
The movie was the fourth and final installment in the series about killer great white sharks terrorizing beachgoers that started with director Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Jaws in 1975. But unlike its predecessors, Jaws 4 was panned from the outset because of its cheesy special effects and inane plot that suggested the titanic fish possessed telepathic abilities.
So why did Caine, who had already received three Oscar nominations by that point, even accept a role in such a doomed film? For the money, it turns out.
Caine used his salary to help his family
In Jaws: The Revenge, Caine plays Hoagie Newcombe, a charter pilot who becomes a love interest to Lorraine Gary’s character Ellen Brody, the widow of police chief Martin Brody from the original. Eventually, Hoagie helps Ellen battle the supernatural shark in the movie’s climax.
In a 2008 interview, Caine revealed he was offered a salary of $1 million for his minor part. “It was only a 10-minute role. It was only 10 days’ work. In Nassau. In the Bahamas. And they were going to pay me a million bucks for 10 days, and I said, ‘Hey, I’ll do that,’” he explained.
According to Screen Rant, Caine was also in the middle of an acting dry spell at the time and excited at the prospect of bringing his family along for a Caribbean holiday. The actor ended up using his earnings to buy a house for his mother, Ellen. But in the decades since, he has made it clear he harbors distaste for the project.
One possible reason is that Caine had to miss the 1987 Academy Awards—at which he won his first Oscar, for Best Supporting Actor for Hannah and Her Sisters—because he was in the middle of filming the horror flick. He has also said he feels he unfairly receives blame for Revenge’s failure despite his relatively unimportant part.
And so as recently as 2021, the actor has insisted he never watched the movie after its release. “Somebody said to me, ‘I saw that Jaws 4. It stinks,’” he told Australian television personality Andrew Denton. “I haven’t seen it, but I have seen the house it bought my mother, and it’s marvelous!”
Caine might have saved a co-star’s life
Although Caine might not have any lasting memories from his time on the Revenge set, his co-star Lance Guest certainly does. Guest, who portrays Ellen Brody’s son Michael in the film, revealed in a 2023 book by Mark Edlitz that Caine helped him escape a potentially dangerous situation. The two were filming a scene in a small boat, along with actor Mario Van Peebles, when their unbalanced vessel began to submerge.
“The battery pack that’s running the boat was huge, it’s about the size of a chessboard,” Guest told Edlitz, according to SYFY. “Mario jumps overboard, and the boat fills with water. So I’m sitting in a bathtub with a toaster. I feel this hand behind me, and I heard Michael scream, ‘Get the f–– out of the boat!’ With one hand, he pulls me out of the boat and onto the board because he didn’t want me to get electrocuted.”
In telling his harrowing story, Guest was sure to point out working conditions for the movie were never unsafe. Still, “I always say Michael Caine saved my life. And it’s a totally over-dramatic and overblown version of something that could have been disastrous,” he says.
Caine’s final movie, The Great Escaper, is now playing in the United Kingdom.
Watch Jaws: The Revenge on Prime Video
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