Jaws

1 9 7 5 (USA)

Above all other scary movies of the 70s (and there were many), Jaws went way beyond . . . touching on deep fears in each of us and making us scared to death (to this day) of the deep blue sea. After Spielberg's box-office blockbuster was released, most people had problems even swimming in the deep end of the pool, especially alone.

It was heavily pre-sold and took off in a most spectacular way. It frightened its summertime audiences off the beaches and into movie theatres - within six weeks of opening, one person in eight in America had seen it!

The movie is basically the tale of a White Pointer shark (the 'great white') hunting human prey off the coast of a Long Island (NY) summer resort, and the three men sent to catch and kill it.  The stars of the movie were Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw . . . and of course, a 25-foot mechanical shark. 

Shaw plays an expert shark hunter, Dreyfuss is an ichthyologist (look it up), and Scheider is the town's aquaphobic police chief.  The unlikely trio ultimately set out to sea for a showdown with the rogue Great White.

Adapted from the novel by Peter Benchley, the movie Jaws dropped the sexual sub-plot which runs through the novel, and no doubt made Benchley a very rich man. A number of sub-standard sequels followed, beginning with Jaws 2 in 1978.

TRIVIA NOTE
The mechanical shark was nicknamed 'Bruce' by the cast and crew, while the "shock" scene in which a head suddenly appears in a submerged boat was actually shot in the swimming pool of editor Verna Fields.