In the Western the town's sheriff is either required to stand alone or has to depend on a small band of misfits to help him out. In tone Jaws is closer to Rio Bravo than High Noon, and the comic element is never far from the surface. Hendricks stands outside the hut, cheerfully observing the mayhem around him and returns a similarly cheery wave of acknowledgment when Brody attracts his attention by throwing tacks at the window pane. When reprimanded by his boss, the deputy's complaint ('I'm all by myself out there!') has the petulant tone of a child with no one to play with, and when Hooper interrupts the conversation with a prediction that none of 'the guys in the fan-tail launch' are going to get out of the harbour alive, he does so with a big grin on his face.
The crowd milling round the dock never suggests a sense of true mob anarchy, which you do get from crowd scenes in later Spielberg movies such as Empire of the Sun and War of the Worlds. In fact, the sense of panic and confusion is conveyed more by Brody's reactions to the situation than the actual numbers of bumbling fishermen who eventually set sail with their firecrackers and buckets of blood.
