Jaws (1975)

There is a creature alive in the ocean who has survived millions of years of evolution. Without change, passion and logic, it lives to kill. It is a mindless eating machine that will attack and devour anything. It is as if god created the devil, or basically it’s based on author Peter Benchley’s bestselling 1974 novel and was later adapted into a feature film by a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg (E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan), who was chosen by Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, to direct Universal Pictures’ 1975 horror/thriller classic JAWS. Before codifying with 1977’s Sci-Fi classic STAR WARS, This was the film that set the standard for the new Hollywood popcorn blockbuster while frightening moviegoers out of the water and would become one of the greatest movies of all time. In the summer resort Town of Amity Island, swimmers are being killed by a gigantic great white shark. In order to stop this horrific monster from killing more victims, it will take Amity’s water hating Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), grizzled local shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw), and wisecracking Marine scientist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) to hunt it down. The film also stars Murray Hamilton (The Graduate) as Amity’s ignorant Mayor Larry Vaughn, Lorraine Gray (1941) as Martin’s wife Ellen Brody, and author Peter Benchley making a cameo appearance as a television interviewer. My parents were around their early 20’s when this film came out that summer, and I would never see it till I was eleven years old on the year of its 25th anniversary in 2000. It scared me a little bit when I first saw it, and as I grew up, It’s not that much scary to me at all. Shot in 159 days from June to September of 1974 in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; the filming of JAWS was a disaster from delayed shooting days, an unfinished script, bad weather, and three nonfunctional mechanic sharks that forced Spielberg to shoot most of the scenes of the shark only hinted at. The great white shark, nicknamed “Bruce” by the production team after Spielberg's lawyer Bruce Raimer, was made by Production Designer Joe Alves and Special Effects artist Bob Mattey. When they were completed, they were shipped to the shooting location, but unfortunately they had not been tested in water, and when placed in the ocean, the full model sank straight to the ocean floor. When it was released in 464 theaters on June 20th, 1975, the release was subsequently expanded on July 25 to a total of 675 theaters, the largest simultaneous distribution of a film in motion picture history at the time. During the first weekend of wide release, JAWS grossed more than $7 million, and was the top grosser for the following five weeks. During its run in theaters, the film beat the $89 million domestic rental record of the reigning box-office champion THE EXORCIST, becoming the first film to reach more than $100 million in U.S. box office receipts. Famed Music Composer John Williams, who had previously scored Spielberg's feature film debut THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS and went on to collaborate with him on almost all of his films, contributed the film’s score that won him the Academy Award for Best Music - Original Score and went on to rank #6 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years of Film Scores. Director Steven Spielberg’s JAWS is an absolute favorite to all movie lovers. See it before you go swimming!