REEL LIFE / FILM & VIDEO FILE : After 20 Years, Is It Safe to Go Back Into the Water? : For Ventura resident and former stuntwoman Susan Backlinie, the first time she met ‘Jaws’ up close and personal was her last.

Looking back on it, you could say that the summer of 1975 was characterized by uncrowded beaches. Twenty years ago, Universal released Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” and forced ocean lovers to high ground with ominous music and that eerie opening sequence: a shark’s-eye view of a woman’s legs treading water.

The legs belong to a woman who is an avid scuba diver, Susan Backlinie of Ventura, a stuntwoman cast as the great white’s first victim. But Backlinie, now 48, wasn’t too freaked out when she saw the movie.

“I saw ‘Jaws’ in the theater,” Backlinie said. “It didn’t give me the chills anymore than I already have. You just don’t think about those things when you go in the water.”

Not long after “Jaws,” Backlinie left Hollywood and spent eight years sailing around the world before landing in Ventura. She worked on dive boats here for three years before quitting to study at Ventura College.

In 30 years of diving, Backlinie said, she’s never seen a great white shark in the water.

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San Francisco filmmaker Jon Moritsugu, known as the bad boy of punk film, is an on-the-edge, over-the-top, take-no-prisoners filmmaker. Variety called “Terminal, USA,” his 54-minute melodrama about an imploding Japanese American family, “a post-punk, psychedelic picnic brimming with wholesome depravity and playfully twisted stereotypes.”

The movie aired last December on public television, with offensive words bleeped out. But the original uncut, uncouth version will be playing at 8 tonight at UC Santa Barbara’s Multicultural Center. Moritsugu will discuss his work with the audience afterward.

Admission is free. For information, call 893-8411.

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UCSB’s Surreal Animation Night features eight short films ranging from an East European classic to the works of the brothers Quay.

The first short, “The Cameraman’s Revenge” (1912), is an imaginative 12-minute work of stop-motion puppet animation filmed in Russia.

It will be followed by several shorts from the Quays. Long popular on MTV, the Quays own the Gothic motif for stop-motion animation.

Their decaying puppets made of discarded parts perform on a stage draped with lint, insect wings and mold. This ain’t Disney. Think twice about bringing the little ones along.

The show starts at 7 p.m. Friday at the Isla Vista Theater. Tickets are $5. For information, call 893-3535.