Today, for no particular reason, I've found myself troubled by Ben Gardner's head. It's the one thing in the film that I don't buy.
Don't get me wrong, I'll happily believe that the shark somehow devoured the rest of his body while leaving the head. I'll even go along with the notion that the head somehow ended up bobbing about in the boat's hull, just waiting for Hooper to find it.
But what
really bothers me is how Hooper's find is not mentioned again, even though it's pretty significant evidence that something sinister is going on. I mean: even if it wasn't definitive evidence of a shark attacking people, a severed head is never good news, is it?
Think about it. Hooper is a scientist interested in evidence. He knew where the head was. It would have to be retrieved. It would need to be reported. And the Chief Of Police was there at the scene. Did Hooper even tell Martin about it? There's nothing to conclusively suggest either way, but why wouldn't he? Even if he was panicked by finding it, there's no good reason why - after climbing aboard and calming down - he wouldn't simply tell Martin the reason he re-emerged looking terrified. Anything else is just too contrived.
In the next scene, where Hooper and Brody are having a conversation with Larry Vaughn, neither of them mentions the head. They're trying to prevent Larry opening the beaches for the Fourth Of July, so this information may have been slightly useful, don't you think? They even discuss the tooth he found at the scene but when Larry asks Hooper if he still has it, Hooper just casually mutters that he lost the tooth. And that's it! Wouldn't one of them mention that he dropped the tooth because he had the crap frightened out of him by a disembodied head?! Call me old fashioned, but the head of a local fisherman they all knew seems at least as important as the tooth he lost.