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‘jaws’: thr’s 1975 review.

A blockbuster arrived in U.S. theaters on June 20, 1975.

By Arthur Knight

Arthur Knight

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A blockbuster arrived in U.S. theaters on June 20, 1975. The PG-rated, 124-minute feature adaptation of the best-selling novel Jaws quickly captured the attention of summer moviegoing audiences, becoming an enduring classic. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below.

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At bottom, however, lies an even stronger similarity. Both present as their central characters wholly demonic creatures — the Devil himself in The Exorcist , a 25-foot long Great White Shark in Jaws . Both attack their victims at random; it could be you, it could be me. Our fundamental belief in a logic of right and wrong is suddenly toppled; virtue here is neither rewarded nor recognized. We are all prey to the evil that walks the earth, or lurks in the waters just off our shores. And both demand as the price of their ultimate exorcism the life of at least one brave, believing soul.

Again, as in The Exorcist , there may be those too fainthearted to face the nightmarish terrors of this ordeal by water. Those who know going in that they will see bodies mangled, boats capsized, will be forced to peer down the throat and into the dead, bright eyes of the most fearsome creature of the deep, may well decide not to. Certainly, Jaws is not for the faint of heart.

The Peter Benchley /Carl Gottlieb screenplay, trimmed from the novel, sets up its characters well. Brody (Roy Scheider ) is Amity’s police chief, concerned, but at first willing to bow to the political pressure of Amity’s mayor (Murray Hamilton). There is Quint (Robert Shaw), a crusty ex-Navy man with a hard-earned hatred of sharks, who knows from the outset of the nature of Amity’s enemy and thirsts for the opportunity to dispose of the monster his way. And from the marine laboratory at Woods Hole comes Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss ), whose main commitment is to science, not to ridding the island of a scourge that could destroy its summer economy.

Ultimately, the three — the chief, the seaman and the scientist — set out in a 39-foot boat to kill the wily monster, and the last hour of Jaws becomes as gripping and terrifying an adventure story as has ever been put on the screen. But the screenwriters, while never permitting the underlying tension to slacken, find time to bring us closer to their protagonists, so that when the final onslaught begins, our fears and frustrations run as deep as theirs. And in the film’s climactic moments, one forgets everything he or she may have read or heard about synthetic, mechanical sharks used on the production. That huge, hideous head snapping at the bows, forcing its way onto the deck of the Orca is too palpable not to be real.

Above all, Jaws has been made in tremendous care and concern for the texture of life in a summer colony. Although not pursuing either the sexual or the economic entanglements of the islanders as fully as the novel (which, in retrospect, are made to seem a good deal more than absolutely necessary), it nevertheless quickly establishes the cross-motivations of humanism vs. mammonism that dominate its inhabitants and sets these against the increasingly selfless devotion of the Orca crew to their cause.

As the salty, cynical Quint, Robert Shaw easily dominates all of his scenes — flippant and profane but all pro when it comes to the business of hunting sharks. Roy Scheider is no less effective in a less colorful role; and Richard Dreyfuss , now bearded and scholarly in rimless glasses, demonstrates again how far he has come since American Graffiti . Nor should John Williams’ totally supportive score be overlooked.

All in all, Jaws should make Universal nothing but money — and maybe pick up a few Oscars next year as well, particularly in the special-effects department. What it may do to the value of beach properties in the meantime, however, is another story. — Arthur Knight

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Jaws Reviews

It’s a scrappy film that moves with complete and utter confidence, creating as much tension with all you don’t see as it does with what you do.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2024

It is a thriller, according to the classic distinction, of surprise rather than suspense. You feel like a rat, being given shock treatment, who has not yet figured out what to do to call off the buzzers.

Full Review | Jul 2, 2024

Spielberg touches that central mystery that has always drawn men to the last earthly frontier: the image of an unfathomable, impenetrable deep full of terror beyond our reckoning.

The film's punch doesn't rely on unmitigated gore. Spielberg is inclined to tease us with false alarms so that the real thing explodes with heart-stopping shock.

Most movies that come within a mile of this one's technical expertise hardly bother with such matters as logical human motivations, strong and unhammy acting and believable characters. Jaws, on the contrary, is rich in all of these.

In what may be the best example of the "disaster" movie trend thus far, the setting is not a towering inferno nor a crippled airliner but a quiet resort town terrorized by an ancient, primitive and universal fear.

The Marquis de Sade was offended by what he called the cruel indifference of nature... And it is this same indifference that makes Jaws so terrifying and sickening.

The novelty is thin; and if it weren't for the huge national publicity campaign which tells you I'm out of my mind, I'd say it's routine stuff.

The first of an anticipated series of summer blockbuster films, Jaws pricks a psychological nerve, and is commercial, gory, and well enough produced to draw turn-away crowds.

Unquestionably Jaws is going to be the summer's blockbuster. It's a terrifying experience and much of its horror lingers in your head long after you've seen it.

Ultimately, the success of Jaws, and it is surely going to be a huge hit, rests with Spielberg. He has given the film such a ruthless intensity that it wallops even members of the audience who know everything that's going to happen.

A movie that will jolt you out of your seat more than once. From beginning to end the suspense rarely lets up.

Jaws will make you go home and burn your bathing suits and stay away from the tub. But don't stay away from the film. It's a real blockbuster, alive with drama and excitement.

In directing Jaws, 27-year-old Steven Spielberg quickly thrusts himself into the front of the pack of skillful moviemakers. He attempts to balance the horror with humor, surprising us with terror at every other turn.

A good commercial movie is one thing, however, and a good movie is another thing entirely. Jaws, like very few other major screen efforts, is both.

One of the most terrifying films I have ever seen and one that could do for the Jersey Shore what botulism did for the Bon Vivant soup company some time ago.

There isn't an ounce of dead wood in it; it is the sum total of thousands of 'effects' (special and otherwise) tested and tuned to produce the desired response in the audience. Jaws is a landmark of modem cinematic engineering.

It is well played and exciting; it has the look of triumph. And it is by a young man, a director as yet scarcely tried.

Though it hardly merits its meteoric rise to the status of No. 1 box-office attraction of all time, Jaws is a perfectly acceptable, and sometimes genuinely exciting, entry in the disaster stakes.

Jaws isn't personal, it's slick as sharkskin. It is the work of a first-rate craftsman, however: harrowing, sometimes nasty to look at, but rousingly adventurous.

‘Jaws’: 1975 Movie Review

Getting right to the point, "Jaws" is an artistic and commercial smash. Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, and director Steven Spielberg, have the satisfaction of a production problem-plagued film turning out beautifully. Peter Benchley's bestseller about a killer shark and a tourist beach town has become a film of consummate suspense, tension and terror.

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Getting right to the point, “ Jaws ” is an artistic and commercial smash. Producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, and director Steven Spielberg , have the satisfaction of a production problem-plagued film turning out beautifully. Peter Benchley’s bestseller about a killer shark and a tourist beach town has become a film of consummate suspense, tension and terror. The Universal release looks like a torrid moneymaker everywhere.

Spielberg’s feature debut last year in “The Sugarland Express,” also a Zanuck/Brown pic, was greeted with a measure of critical ecstacy not echoed by the public; domestic film rentals on it were not even $3,100,000 after seven months in release. However, story considerations aside, Spielberg’s directorial abilities on that one as well as “Jaws” display a remarkable grasp of both logistics and drama. The assured success of “Jaws” will minimize the 100% budget overrun, to the neighborhood of $8,000,000.

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Author Benchley and Carl Gottlieb share adaptation credit for “Jaws,” and the literate screenplay moves easily from large-scale mob scenes to extremely intimate situations. There are three stars: Roy Scheider, very effective as the town’s police chief torn between civic duty and the mercantile politics of resort tourism; Robert Shaw, absolutely magnificent as a coarse fisherman finally hired to locate the Great White Shark; and Richard Dreyfuss, in another excellent characterization as a likeable young scientist.

Popular on Variety

The fast-moving 124-minute film engenders enormous suspense as the shark attacks a succession of people; the creature is not even seen for about 82 minutes, and a subjective camera technique makes his earlier forays excruciatingly terrifying all the more for the invisibility. The final hour of the film shifts from the town to a boat where the three stars track the shark, and vice versa. The creature is no less menacing when finally seen in a fight to the death wherein Shaw fulfills his Captain Ahab destiny.

Bill Butler’s Panavision-Technicolor cinematography is excellent; one can almost smell the Martha’s Vineyard location. In addition, Rexford Metz did the underwater lensing, while Ron and Valerie Taylor are credited for the live shark footage. The Australian Coral Reef was used for underwater shooting. Robert A, Mattey headed the crew for the diverse and exciting special effects work – including wrecked boats, piers, shark attacks, etc. (A mechanical shark’s inanimate temperament was a cause of some filming delays.)

The adroit casting extended through the ranks of supporting players: notably Lorraine Gary (a familiar inhabitant of Universal TV shows), very good as Scheider’s wife; Murray Hamilton, excellent as the temporizing town mayor; scripter Gottlieb as a newspaper editor; Jeffrey C. Kramer, great as Scheider’s harried assistant; and author Benchley himself as an eyewitness-type TV newsman.

Verna Fields, since moved on to a senior exec post at Universal, did the topnotch editing, while John Williams’ haunting score adds to the mood of impending horror. All other production credits are superior.

The domestic PG rating attests to the fact that implicit dramaturgy is often more effective than explicit carnage.

1975 Oscar awards: Best Sound, Original Score, Editing.

Nomination: Best Picture

• Production: Universal. Director Steven Spielberg; Producer Richard D. Zanuck, David Brown; Screenplay Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb, [Matthew Robbins, Hal Barwood, John Milius]; Camera Bill Butler; Editor Verna Fields; Music John Willliams; Art Director Joseph Alves Jr. Reviewed at Cinerama Dome Theatre, L.A., April 24, '75. (MPAA Rating: PG.)
• Crew: (Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Original review text from 1975. Running time: 124 MIN.
• With: Chief Martin Brody - Roy Scheider Quint - Robert Shaw Matt Hooper - Richard Dreyfuss Mrs. Brody - Lorraine Gary Mayor Vaughn - Murray Hamilton Editor Meadows - Carl Gottlieb Policeman Hendricks - Jeffrey Kramer Chrissie - Susan Backlinie Cassidy - Jonathan Filley Estuary Victim - Ted Grossman Brody Children - Chriss Rebello, Jay Mello Mrs. Kintner - Lee Fierro Alex Kintner - Jeffrey Voorhees Ben Gardner - Craig Kingsbury Medical Examiner - Robert Nevin TV newsman - Peter Benchley

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Metacritic reviews

• 100 Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert One of the most effective thrillers ever made.
• 100 Empire Ian Nathan Empire Ian Nathan It was the complete nightmare that invented the "summer blockbuster", launched the genius on a global scale and delivered an astonishingly effective thriller built on a very primal level: fear.
• 100 Entertainment Weekly Ty Burr Entertainment Weekly Ty Burr Steven Spielberg overcame the lumpy plotting of Peter Benchley's novel to create an efficient, graceful fright machine in Jaws.
• 100 ReelViews James Berardinelli ReelViews James Berardinelli The first is the best. When it comes to this kind of thriller, no movie has been able to top Jaws, although many have tried. And, as the years go by, it seems increasingly unlikely that anything will come close.
• 100 Variety Variety Robert Shaw [is] absolutely magnificent as a coarse fisherman finally hired to locate the Great White Shark; and Richard Dreyfuss, in another excellent characterization as a likeable young scientist.
• 100 CineVue John Bleasdale CineVue John Bleasdale Importantly, Spielberg instinctively knows exactly when to keep his camera still and allow what's in front of it to take precedence.
• 80 The New York Times Vincent Canby The New York Times Vincent Canby If you think about Jaws for more than 45 seconds you will recognize it as nonsense, but it's the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun, if you like to have the wits scared out of you at irregular intervals.
• 80 TV Guide Magazine TV Guide Magazine From the outrageously frightening opening--in which a beautiful young woman skinny-dipping in the moonlight is devoured by the unseen shark--to the claustrophobic climax aboard Quint's fishing boat, Spielberg has us in his grip and rarely lets go.
• 75 Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel What this movie is about, and where it succeeds best, is the primordial level of fear. The characters, for the most part, and the non-fish elements in the story, are comparatively weak and not believable. [20 June 1975]
• 40 Chicago Reader Dave Kehr Chicago Reader Dave Kehr Steven Spielberg's mechanical thriller is guaranteed to make you scream on schedule (John Williams's score even has the audience reactions programmed into the melodies), particularly if your tolerance for weak motivation and other minor inconsistencies is high.
• See all 21 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Jaws

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Common Sense Media Review

By Scott G. Mignola , based on child development research. How do we rate?

1970s shark horror tale still has scare factor.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Jaws is director Steven Spielberg's classic blockbuster about a great white shark that attacks swimmers vacationing in a New England beach town. Based on Peter Benchley's novel and released in the 1970s, the film is still nightmare fodder for more sensitive viewers. While the shark…

Why Age 12+?

Several people are graphically eaten by a shark, including a child. Lots of bloo

Many characters casually smoke cigarettes and pipes and drink beer, whiskey, win

"S--t," "son of a bitch," "damn," "bastard," and "half a--ed." "Jesus Christ" an

Couples kiss, talk in bed, and joke about "fooling around." People wear swimsuit

Any Positive Content?

Trust your instincts if you feel something is wrong. Human life is more importan

Martin cares about protecting people and takes responsibility for not acting fas

All characters are White, apart from a few Black tourists in the background. A W

Violence & Scariness

Several people are graphically eaten by a shark, including a child. Lots of blood (some human, some fish). Graphic displays of severed legs, hands, heads, and entrails. Photographs of human bodies injured by shark attacks. A dead body emerges from the inside of a sunken ship. Weapons used against the shark include explosives, guns, harpoons, and knives. People are trampled trying to escape the water. Talk of a historical tragedy where hundreds were eaten by sharks.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Many characters casually smoke cigarettes and pipes and drink beer, whiskey, wine, and moonshine. Several characters get drunk. The three lead characters drink heavily on a sailboat. Drinking in a bar.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

"S--t," "son of a bitch," "damn," "bastard," and "half a--ed." "Jesus Christ" and "for Christ's sake" used as exclamations. Name calling includes "kook." A character makes a rude arm gesture that means "up yours."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Couples kiss, talk in bed, and joke about "fooling around." People wear swimsuits on the beach, and men are shirtless. A character makes sexual jokes about "swimming with bowlegged women" and "rubbers." Brief nudity -- while skinny dipping, a woman's breast is shown from the side, but her body is heavily shadowed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Trust your instincts if you feel something is wrong. Human life is more important than money. Teamwork is sometimes the only way forward. On the flip side, the film sends a negative message that violence can be a good solution in scary situations.

Positive Role Models

Martin cares about protecting people and takes responsibility for not acting faster. Other main characters exhibit bravery and quick thinking in the midst of dangerous situations: Matt wants to stop the shark from hurting others and Quint helps, too, but for selfish reasons. Town leaders try to cover up the attacks for financial gain and encourage risky behavior.

Diverse Representations

All characters are White, apart from a few Black tourists in the background. A White character refers to someone as a "Chinese fella." Women fall into traditional gender roles as supportive wives, mothers, or secretaries. Class tensions are brought up in arguments between Matt -- who's wealthy and educated -- and working-class Quint.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Jaws is director Steven Spielberg 's classic blockbuster about a great white shark that attacks swimmers vacationing in a New England beach town. Based on Peter Benchley's novel and released in the 1970s, the film is still nightmare fodder for more sensitive viewers. While the shark itself doesn't look very realistic by today's standards, the discussions about shark attacks can be just as frightening as when characters are actually attacked, bitten, and killed. Expect to see severed limbs, lots of blood, and frenzied panic. There's also lots of casual smoking and drinking, and several characters get drunk. Language includes "s--t," "son of a bitch," "damn," "bastard," and "half a--ed." Men are shirtless on the beach, and a woman's breast is shown from the side (her nude body is heavily shadowed). People of color are absent from the film's main and supporting cast, and women are mainly there as supportive wives, mothers, or secretaries. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (106)
• Kids say (467)

Based on 106 parent reviews

Terrorized my 6 year old

What's the story.

At the start of JAWS, during a late-night beach party, a girl disappears while swimming. When her remains come ashore, Police Chief Martin Brody ( Roy Scheider ) believes it was a shark attack. The mayor ( Murray Hamilton ) is worried about the effect such news might have on the tourist trade and covers up the incident. After a few more high-profile attacks, some local fishermen catch a shark. The mayor ignores warnings from ichthyologist Matt Hooper ( Richard Dreyfuss ) that this shark was too small to have been the one in the attacks. Another fatality sends Brody, Hooper, and local fisherman Quint ( Robert Shaw ) off to find the great white shark. While they're an unlikely group to work together -- Quint is simply doing it for the money and clearly disrespects Chief Brody's inexperience, as well as Hooper's college education -- the three slowly begin to bond when they realize that the shark is larger and much more vicious than they could have ever anticipated.

Is It Any Good?

This film remains a horror classic that effectively transcends the genre and the time in which it was released. Though Jaws is one of Steven Spielberg 's early films, his adept building up of the tension -- heightened by the now almost universally known two-note "shark attack" music provided by John Williams -- shines in both the shark attack scenes and in the spaces in which the story and the characters have room to develop. Even with a shark that doesn't look terribly realistic by today's standards, the film still delivers suspense and terror and is a textbook study on how to escalate tension for maximum payoff.

In terms of the acting, the chemistry between Scheider, Dreyfuss, and Shaw is still a delight to take in. But the movie does feel dated due to its entirely White cast and cliched female characters. Nevertheless, at the time of its release, it was the highest-grossing box office movie of all time and it continues to remain a pop culture staple.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Jaws . Is it necessary to the story, or does it simply provide added scares and horror for viewers?

How is music used to build suspense in this movie? What are some other examples of well-known horror movie soundtracks?

Do you think this movie still works today, or is it too dated? Why?

Do you think it's scarier when you see violent things like shark attacks or when you only hear about them and use your imagination to fill in what you don't see?

Movie Details

• In theaters : June 20, 1975
• On DVD or streaming : June 21, 2022
• Cast : Richard Dreyfuss , Robert Shaw , Roy Scheider
• Director : Steven Spielberg
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Horror
• Topics : Adventures , Book Characters , Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires , Ocean Creatures
• Run time : 125 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : violence
• Last updated : August 26, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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L.A. Times’ original 1975 review of ‘Jaws’ unearthed: We hated it

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E ditor’s note: This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws,” a revolutionary film for the director, movie soundtracks and skinny-dippers everywhere. This beloved piece of cinema sits at the top of many critic’s favorite films list. So what did our critic, Charles Champlin, think of the fishy film? Not much.

Champlin was not swayed by the plight of the townsfolk of Amity Island. In fact, you could say he really, really disliked it.

“Jaws” was harpooned by the Los Angeles Times on many levels. Champlin labeled Robert Shaw “a poor man’s Captain Ahab,” slammed the script, but most of all, he detested the violence. To be fair, this complaint preceded the future PG-13 rating change in 1984. But perhaps the movie could have used a warning not to bring children under the age of 13 to a movie about a shark that eats a lot of people. And the first trailer was pretty devoid of red water. But it’s hard to get behind what he says about a young Spielberg that, “Intimacy is not yet his strength.”

Ah, well, I’ll drink to your review, Champlin.

Here’s the full review from then-Times entertainment editor Champlin, published on June 20, 1975, with the headline, “Don’t Go Near the Water”:

The first and crucial thing to say about the movie Universal has made from Peter Benchley’s best-seller “Jaws,” opening citywide today, is that the PG rating is grievously wrong and misleading. The studio has rightly added its cautionary notices in the ads, and the fact is that “Jaws” is too gruesome for children, and likely to turn the stomachs of the impressionable at any age.

A severed leg drifts toward the sea bottom, a severed arm and other shark-chewed remains are studied ashore, a man dies horribly in the jaws, spewing a last gout of his own blood; children die and the sea foams red.

Careful studies by the Children’s Film Foundation in England have confirmed what common sense suggests: Children identify most strongly with what happens to children on screen, are most impressed and terrified by the violence done to or endangering other children. “Jaws” is nightmare time for the young.

Even the mature are apt to be jolted harder by “Jaws” than by the earlier jeopardy films. Violence done to the helpless, always the hardest to watch, is here compounded because the victims are in the water, an alien environment, demanding and potentially dangerous at best. The inability to flee or fight back, as in a nightmare of paralysis, is real and only too easy to identify with.

It sounds, all of it, like a backhanded compliment for a potent and well-made movie. But while I have no doubt that “Jaws” will make a bloody fortune for Universal and producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown, it is a coarse-grained and exploitive work which depends on excess for its impact. Ashore it is a bore, awkwardly staged and lumpily written.

The opening sequence, an underwater camera giving a swift shark’s-eye view of the depths, over the ominous murmuring basses of John Williams’ good score, is excellent, carrying the promise of suggestive power. Then an abrupt and jolting cut takes us to a beach beer party to establish the great shark’s first victim. The tension rises again as we are allowed to imagine the evil lurking beneath the water’s placid, moonlit surface.

Land and sea quarrel thereafter. Peter Benchley’s story, which he adapted with Carl Gottlieb, has Roy Scheider as the sea-fearing resort town chief of police, trying in vain to close the beaches over opposition of the merchants led by Murray Hamilton. A reward offered for the shark evokes a comical flotilla of amateurs.

Most of this, despite an intense performance by Scheider, is flat-bush melodrama, broad and obvious. Richard Dreyfuss arrives as the rich boy who, after a childhood experience, has become a shark expert. Robert Shaw is the local shark hunter, more than half-mad, a poor man’s Captain Ahab who, having survived the shark infested seas after wartime torpedoing, is out to exterminate the species.

If the whole project from manuscript forward has been a commercially calculated confection, the tipoff in the movie is the stubborn refusal of the key characters to come in to sharp focus.

Hamilton is a caricature of greedy shortsightedness. Shaw, raking fingernails across a blackboard to gain attention, stewing shark bones and humming chanteys, is undeniably colorful but his actions, ranging from the shrewd to the suicidal, serve the needs of a pot to be kept boiling. They don’t reveal even the logic of madness.

Dreyfuss, in a lively, individual and sympathetic performance, comes off best, even if the demands of the plot make him alternately very wise and surprisingly inexperienced.

But at what seems long last, the three men set to sea in quest of their Nantucket Moby Dick and the adventure which is the heart of the movie begins. It is well and suspensefully done, the footage of real sharks joining indistinguishably with the chompings of the fearsome model. John M. Dwyer is credited with the special effects and Ron and Valerie Taylor the filming of actual sharks. Bill Butler was the cinematographer, and he must have had his hands full. Rexford Metz did the underwater work, including a sequence of the Dreyfuss character in a shark cage under heavy attack.

Young Steven Spielberg, who was the director, shows as he has before an uncommon flair for handling big action. He, and the script, are much less successful in the man-to-man confrontations than in the man-to-shark meetings. Intimacy is not yet his strength.

The ending is a pulp story hokum, calculated I suspect to affirm that it has all been in gory good fun; the nightmare was only a dream. Still, it would not be surprising if “Don’t go near the water” turned out to be the motto along the ocean beaches this summer. The frights, like those from “Earthquake” and “Towering Inferno,” are not put away by happy endings.

The argument has always been that tragedy, violence and terror, witnessed, purge us of them. The Grand Guignol theater of Paris, with its bloodlettings and eye-gougings ingeniously faked, was thought to have denatured shock by making it amusing. After “Jaws,” you do wonder what it was that was purged and what it takes to entertain these days.

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Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” is a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it’s populated with characters that have been developed into human beings we get to know and care about. It’s a film that’s as frightening as “ The Exorcist ,” and yet it’s a nicer kind of fright, somehow more fun because we’re being scared by an outdoor-adventure saga instead of by a brimstone-and-vomit devil.

The story, as I guess everyone knows by now, involves a series of attacks on swimmers by a great white shark, the response of the threatened resort island to its loss of tourist business, and, finally, the epic attempt by three men to track the shark and kill it. There are no doubt supposed to be all sorts of levels of meanings in such an archetypal story, but Spielberg wisely decides not to underline any of them. This is an action film content to stay entirely within the perimeters of its story, and none of the characters has to wade through speeches expounding on the significance of it all. Spielberg is very good, though, at presenting those characters in a way that makes them individuals.

Before the three men get on that leaky old boat and go forth to do battle with what amounts to an elemental natural force, we know them well enough to be genuinely interested in the ways they’ll respond. There’s Brody ( Roy Scheider ), the police chief, who came to the island from New York looking, so he thought, for a change from the fears of the city. There’s Quint ( Robert Shaw ), a caricature of the crusty old seafaring salt, who has a very particular personal reason for hating sharks. And there’s Hooper ( Richard Dreyfuss ), the rich kid turned oceanographer, who knows best of all what a shark can do to a man, and yet is willing to get into the water with one.

All three performances are really fine. Scheider is the character most of us identify with. He’s actually scared of the water, doesn’t like to swim and, when he sees the giant shark swim past the boat for the first time, we believe him when he informs Quint, very sincerely, “We need a bigger boat.” Shaw brings a degree of cheerful exaggeration to his role as Quint, stomping around like a cross between Captain Queeg and Captain Hook, and then delivering a compelling five-minute monologue about the time the Indianapolis went down and he was one of more than a thousand men in the water. By the time rescue came, two-thirds of them had been killed by sharks.

Probably the most inspired piece of casting in the movie is the use of Richard Dreyfuss as the oceanographer. He made this film soon after playing the driven, scheming, overwhelmingly ambitious title character in “ The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz ,” and the nice kid, college-bound, in “ American Graffiti .” Here he looks properly young, engaging, and scholarly, and introduces the technical material about sharks in a way that reinforces our elemental fear of them.

Which brings us to the shark itself. Some of the footage in the film is of an actual great white shark. The rest uses a mechanical shark patterned on the real thing. The illusion is complete. We see the shark close up, we look in its relentless eye, and it just plain feels like a shark. “Jaws” is a great adventure movie of the kind we don’t get very often any more. It’s clean-cut adventure, without the gratuitous violence of so many action pictures. It has the necessary amount of blood and guts to work — but none extra. And it’s one hell of a good story, brilliantly told.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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‘Jaws’ Is the Perfect Blockbuster, Saying Nothing yet Signifying Everything

The beauty of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic is that you can choose how to watch it: as a summery, shark-bitten thriller or as an allegory about the failed leadership of institutions

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2020’s summer blockbuster season has been put on hold because of the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the movies from the past that we flocked out of the sun and into air conditioning for. Welcome to The Ringer ’s Return to Summer Blockbuster Season , where we’ll feature different summer classics each week.

“Twenty-four hours is like three weeks!” That’s the complaint of a local woman ( for no reason at all , let’s call her Karen) at a town meeting after she learns that the nicely gentrified beach community of Amity will be closed by the mayor’s office following grisly evidence of a shark attack; it’s a shrill, high-frequency whine that cuts through the scene’s bustling, multitracked sound design like an air-raid siren.

For those of us who’ve seen Jaws more than a few times, even the film’s throwaway dialogue has been etched into our cerebral cortexes. For every one of the script’s enduring catchphrases—think “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” or “Smile, you son of a bitch”—there’s an exchange beloved by diehards: the idiot, bass-mouthed fisherman unable to comprehend that his friend’s latest trophy is a tiger shark ( “ A whaaat? ” ); the long-haired hipster searching in vain for his lost (and long since devoured) black Lab (“ Pippit…. Pippit! ”); the old lady complaining to Roy Scheider that the disenfranchised residents of a local children’s martial arts class have been “ karate-ing the picket fences.” But the line about keeping the beaches closed resonates the most, and not just in our current claustrophobic context. It’s a whine that clarifies what’s really at stake in Steven Spielberg’s industry game changer: the possibility, scarier and more voracious than any great white, of a lost summer.

Summer in Jaws is a character all on its own, even if the bare trees lining the streets betray the film’s late-fall production dates. (The continuity error was fixed by CGI on DVD, a less obtrusive bit of meddling than turning guns into flashlights in E.T. , but revisionist history nevertheless.) There had been iconic movie scenes set on beaches before: Think of the lovers rolling around in the surf in From Here to Eternity, or all the wholesome mid-’60s teenyboppers playing Beach Blanket Bingo. But Jaws ’ hunger for exposed, all-American flesh went beyond adolescent titillation or seasonal nostalgia. Spielberg’s vision of scantily clad revelers taking their chances in troubled waters was and remains definitive, escapism mixed with anthropology. Jaws is a thriller rather than a coming-of-age fable, but it feels like there are whole, sun-dappled short stories embedded in its recurring images of tanned middle schoolers lounging in dinky sailboats, or parents toweling off their sand-covered kids while standing ankle-deep in the surf. Relaxing—barely—in a beach chair during an off-duty afternoon, police chief Martin Brody observes the panorama from a far, paranoid distance. “You don’t go in the water at all, do ya?” he’s admonished by a constituent; his aquaphobia will soon be revealed to be simple common sense, even as it stands in opposition to the bottom line.

“Amity is a summer town. ... We need summer dollars,” declares Amity’s mayor, Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), a comically dishonest figure styled by Jaws and its witty team of screenwriters (Carl Gottlieb, Howard Sackler, and Peter Benchley, the author of the original source novel) after the parade of criminal bureaucrats on display during the Watergate scandal. (Hamilton was a master of playing guys who were slow on the take: He’s the bourgie fool cuckolded by Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate .) In an essay published in March in The New Republic , Alex Shephard analyzed how Jaws ’ barely submerged political allegory—a bumbling cover-up designed to save Amity’s economy in the face of a new, predatory threat—works both in the context of the movie’s 1975 release date and in a year where our collective, primal fears have been exploited from all sides, with no reliable protector in sight. “Ignored by politicians, [ Jaws ’ heroes] face off against an unseen enemy on a much too fragile, much too small boat,” writes Shephard. “They’re on their own—a feeling that is all too familiar.”

Spielberg’s trio of shark hunters comprises a cross-section of male types, with Robert Shaw’s Ahab-ish Quint holding things down for old-school machismo and Richard Dreyfuss’s monied ichthyologist Matt Hooper embodying well-heeled technocratic geekery (“You’ve been counting money all your life,” Quint says to his new frenemy, and he’s not wrong). Somewhere between them resides Brody, a recent big-city transplant whose investment in Amity’s survival as a tourist trap is strictly professional. What makes it personal, eventually, is a close encounter between the shark and Brody’s preteen son Michael (Chris Rebello), which steeps his hero-cop act in a protective, paternal empathy distinct from dead-eyed ’70s supercops like Dirty Harry or Popeye Doyle. (Brody’s more like Frank Serpico minus the beard, a straight arrow battling corruption in the system from within.) For Quint and Hooper, the quest into deeper waters aboard the Orca is similarly self-involved: They’re risking their lives not for civic pride but for a set of private obsessions. Quint survived the shark-infested wreck of the USS Indianapolis , and the hunt is a chance to assuage his survivor’s guilt and hook his own private Moby Dick; Hooper is in it for scientific progress, but he’s also a glib go-getter whose Cassandra act is accurately—if dismissively—sized up by the mayor as a stab at publicity: “Love to prove that, wouldn’t you?… Get your name into the National Geographic .”

As a horror movie released at the apex of the genre’s studio-subsidized rebirth in the 1970s, Jaws reroutes the trajectories and themes of classics like Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre— cautionary tales in which outsiders venturing into the Old Weird America get what’s coming to them via human monsters who’d be better left undisturbed. In Spielberg’s film, the great white is the outsider, constituting a threat that’s at once thoroughly existential and a matter of nickel-and-dime economics. What the shark and Amity’s ruling class have in common is the need for a steady food supply: The visitors who swarm into town on ferries, slathered in sunscreen with fanny packs full of disposable income, are just chum in the water.

These are ruthless ideas, but Jaws is, lest we forget, a pretty ruthless movie: Spielberg’s filmmaking style on his first big-budget production is carnivorous. By offing a pretty, naked blonde and that aforementioned Labrador retriever in the first 20 minutes, the director definitely establishes that he’s not fucking around, PG rating be damned. He also smartly imbues the staging and dialogue with just enough shell-shocked ambivalence to make audiences wonder what, if anything, all that bloody, unsentimental carnage is really about. Is the nubile, guileless hippie chick getting dragged underwater in lieu of a stoned bonfire hookup a symbolic figure, an emblem of the death of the ’60s? Did the little boy have it coming as punishment for his mom’s negligence? Did the dog get it because Steven Spielberg is a cat person?

Combine its not-quite-world-beating heroes with its faux-utopian coastal milieu and putatively metaphorical monster—whose fakeness when finally glimpsed full-on actually enhances its horrific presence, an accidental Brechtian effect lost to the onset of CGI—and Jaws would seem to have plenty going on under the surface. In addition to all the things that it does brilliantly—its efficiency as a scare machine; its effectiveness as a directorial showcase; its evocation of eccentricity filtered through a virtuoso populism closer to The Wizard of Oz ; the killer performances of its leads, especially Shaw, who doesn’t so much chew the scenery as swallow it whole — the film unfolds as a ripe bicentennial satire, a snapshot of a country at once on guard and susceptible to a semi-hidden enemy. In his new book, Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan , J. Hoberman perceptively pairs Jaws with one of its Best Picture rivals, Robert Altman’s Nashville , persuasively painting the two movies as structural and thematic twins, all-American epics in which mass patriotic gatherings are tinged with the threat of bloody violence.

Released in the fall of 1975 and riding a tidal wave of critical adulation via the one-woman hype machine of Pauline Kael—who watched an early cut and deemed it an epochal masterpiece— Nashville , for all its down-and-dirty comedy, was a prestige picture. Even if Altman usually managed to be artful and unpretentious at his best—and many consider Nashville to be his masterpiece—he was still the proverbial “filmmaker for grown-ups” who thrived in a moment when Hollywood was, according to a seductive and still enduring myth, more hospitable to adult cinema. Jaws , by contrast, was seen as embodying the tip of a very dangerous spear—the onset of the high-concept blockbuster, no less potent an emissary of encroaching populism than The Godfather , but even more accessible. Where Altman and Francis Ford Coppola were seen as thoughtfully critiquing American greed and spectacle, Jaws surfaced in the popular consciousness as a pure Hollywood by-product—“a perfect engine,” as Hooper describes its namesake, driven solely by its parent studio’s motives for profit.

A case can be made that Jaws ’ ostensible single-mindedness—its swift, gliding sense of momentum, which renders a two-hour running time almost subliminally quick—is still the best expression of its director’s skill set: that for all his later forays into history, morality, and future-shock social commentary, Spielberg’s best incarnation is as an orchestrator of believably visceral carnage, of the fantastic intruding roughly and entertainingly on the present day. And yet, while it’s true that Jaws is one lean, mean entertainment machine, it also contains multitudes in a way that’s as quintessentially ’70s as Nashville , with all those stray, memorable little one-liners and beautifully managed detours into character development, like the game of peekaboo between Brody and his toddler Sean (Jay Mello) that seamlessly embroiders the film’s reckoning with masculinity. The still-bracing aggressiveness of Spielberg’s scare tactics—those bobbing, mobile underwater perspectives; that lurking, omnipresent John Williams score—belies how consistently Jaws finds room for exchanges that deepen the psychologies of its protagonists and elevate the supporting characters around them into plausibly weird, funny bystanders. This sense of humanity gives heft to the script’s parable of a town trying—and failing, and trying again—to put its best interests over cold hard cash.

The double-edged tension of Jaws ’ plot versus its larger offscreen narrative is fascinating and funny. In the story, the shark’s appetite is such that only canceling the Fourth of July will suffice as a public safety measure; in the real world, Jaws ended up drawing crowds to multiplexes in unprecedented numbers. There’s much to say about the sublimated anxieties and (literally) projected fears that drove Jaws ’ popularity—the shark, like George Romero’s zombies, can be transformed into a symbol of anything you’d like—but blaming the film for the blockbusterization of Hollywood cinema, which happens often enough to be a cliché, is unfairly reductive.

The biggest difference between Jaws and Star Wars , which almost instantly toppled Jaws from its all-time box office perch two years later, is not one of style or genre but of ancillary possibilities. Star Wars was aggressively marketed across a variety of products and platforms, creating a template for the high-yield, posthuman studio properties of the ’80s. But with Jaws , a nice, cute Bruce plushie was not part of the equation. One way to look at E.T. is as Jaws ’ more benign twin, a film with a big heart as well as myriad opportunities for merchandising and product placement (the only things that gets eaten by its namesake are Reese’s Pieces).

But if Jaws is closer to The Godfather than to Star Wars —a film that awakened the inner child of an entire society, with arguably catastrophic consequences—it’s also a more self-contained movie than either. Many would argue that The Godfather: Part II and The Empire Strikes Back represent vital—and superior—extensions of their predecessors, while the desultory Jaws 2 , rushed into production without Spielberg’s participation, anticipated the mostly diminishing returns of the sequel generation. ( Jaws 2 peaks with its tagline—“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water”—and is all downhill from there.) Even if you don’t think that Jaws has much to “say” about anything, it says it eloquently enough the first time around that nobody asked for clarification; one reason the film’s final shot is so beautiful is because it shows Brody and Hooper reaching shore, a foregone conclusion removed of even a sliver of narrative ambiguity. And yet, depending on how you look at it, their safe return can represent either a heartwarming triumph of good over evil or else a cynically capitalist coda: Amity is once again open for business.

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Throwback Thursday: Jaws Debuted 40 Years Ago

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This photo accompanied Boston magazine’s August 1975 Jaws review.

On June 20, 1975, Jaws first lunged into theaters, thrusting Martha’s Vineyard into the spotlight for its role as the shark-terrorized Amity Island and earning Steven Spielberg’s film its hallowed status as the first summer blockbuster in history. As Jaws celebrates its 40th anniversary with a slew of special events and screenings , it’s easy to overlook how improbable it was that this film was ever made at all.

Spielberg, then 27, was a relative unknown, and his mission—to make what many in Hollywood initially dismissed as a glorified horror movie starring a 25-foot-long mechanical shark on a $4 million budget—was a daunting one. In 2005, we  rounded up former crew members , who remembered the shooting being plagued with bad weather, cost overruns, and NIMBY Cape Codders.

As production designer Joe Alves told us:

As big of a movie as it became, it was actually a rather small movie. There were only half a dozen key people pushing to get it done. Then there was a preview screening in Long Beach, and we were deathly afraid that they were going to laugh at the shark, because we used to laugh at the shark. We had never heard the John Williams music. We just heard the valves, and it was very mechanical. But when you had the music and the sound, they didn’t laugh. They screamed, and it was pretty horrendous. They released it on maybe 850 screens. We made about $100 million in eight weeks at $3 a ticket. It was pretty amazing.

Jaws ’s box office feeding frenzy was a huge departure from the rather lukewarm response Spielberg received for his previous (and debut) effort, 1974’s The Sugarland Express , and Boston magazine was among the publications to heap critical praise upon Jaws , with then-associate editor Michael Sragow hailing the film as “a nerve-cruncher and a smash” in our August 1975 issue.

Sragow wrote:

In its first five minutes Jaws grabs you somewhere beneath your sternum, and for nearly two hours it doesn’t let you go. Jaws is what The French Connection and The Exorcist only posed as—a horrific action story redeemed by inspired filmmaking. Jaws aims for the gut, but it doesn’t insult the intelligence on the few occasions when it is required.

Sragow did have some qualms about the film, pointing out that “Spielberg, though, is not an alchemist, and Jaws is not 14-karat gold.” In particular, he found fault with the “young filmmaker’s disdain for the unheroic aged.”

But for Sragow, the bottom line is this: “ Jaws displays such zest for the camera that if Spielberg ever takes on meatier material he might find that (like a shark) he has two extra sets of teeth.”

Jaws went on to rack up a lifetime gross of $470,653,000 worldwide. Sragow went on to become the film critic for Rolling Stone . Cape Cod is still famed for its shark sightings . And Spielberg did some other film stuff, we guess. And the shark? Well, it turned out to be three mechanical sharks collectively named “Bruce” (they’re named after Spielberg’s lawyer), and you’ll be able to meet one of them at this weekend’s Northeast Comic Con —along with a few non-ichthyoid Jaws stars.

Read the full version of Michael Sragow’s August 1975 review of Jaws originally printed in Boston magazine:

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Jaws (United States, 1975)

In addition to scaring the living daylights out of millions of movie-goers and putting a cramp in the revenue stream of nearly every North American beach resort, two significant developments can be attributed to Jaws . With its more than $250 million domestic theatrical gross (against a $12 million budget), this film laid out a blueprint for the summer blockbuster that has been followed ever since. Jaws was the first summer mega-hit, but, because Hollywood learns from its success stories, it has not been the last one. The picture also catapulted a lesser director by the name of Steven Spielberg out of relative obscurity and onto the A-list. Spielberg would quickly follow the success of Jaws with Close Encounters of the Third Kind , Raiders of the Lost Ark , and E.T. (His only failure during that period was the World War II farce 1941 .)

When he agreed to helm Jaws , Spielberg was perhaps blissfully unaware of the challenges facing him on the road to transforming Peter Benchley's best-selling novel into a major motion picture. He saw this as a water-based reworking of his made-for-TV movie, Duel . As he has stated in recent interviews, he was "young and fearless - or perhaps dumb." While the end result of Spielberg's labors was an engrossing, edge-of-the-seat thriller, the trials and tribulations to reach that point were nearly insurmountable. Today, with CGI technology in an advanced state, completing Jaws would be a far less imposing endeavor. But filming took place in 1974, when special effects meant animation, blue screen model work, and crude animatronics. Creating a convincing 26-foot great white shark was a behemoth task.

It is said that "necessity is the mother of invention," and never was this more true than in the case of Jaws . For the first hour, the only glimpses we catch of the shark are fleeting and indistinct. Even after the beast makes its first, harrowing appearance, the camera doesn't dwell upon it. Only in the final fifteen minutes, when it crashes onto the deck of a boat and snaps at the protagonists, are we treated to a lengthy look at the shark. From those concluding scenes, it's apparent why Jaws gets so little screen time - it looks fake. If Spielberg's film didn't have us so completely in its thrall by this point, we would be doubled over with laughter at the cheesiness of the animatronic creature.

Spielberg freely admits that, had the technology been better and had the mechanical shark worked more efficiently, he would have shown it earlier and more often. Ironically, it is this handicap that resulted in one of the film's great strengths - by keeping Jaws hidden from the audience, the movie builds suspense to a high level. Many directors after Spielberg have used this "less is more" approach to monster movies, but few have employed the technique in such a brilliantly successful manner.

In a general sense, Jaws follows the novel from which it derives its title, although Spielberg chooses to downplay certain aspects of the story in favor of suspense and action. Peter Benchley, who wrote the book, was the author of the original screenplay treatment (earning him co-credit for the final script), which was subsequently re-worked and tweaked by Carl Gottlieb and several uncredited helpers (including John Milius). Benchley also has a cameo playing a TV reporter.

Jaws introduces us to Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), the police chief of the small island resort community of Amity. Martin has come to Amity to get away from the hassles of New York City, but is finding it difficult to adjust to a less hectic lifestyle. That all changes about a week before July 4, when the mutilated body of a young swimmer washes up on shore. The coroner's stated cause of death is a shark attack. When the mayor (Murray Hamilton) and members of the town council refuse to allow Martin to close down the beaches, he puts in a call to the mainland for a shark expert. He gets Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), who seems to know just about everything there is about sharks.

Following several additional deaths, the mayor is forced to admit that something has to be done about the shark. Martin hires a fisherman and shark hunter named Quint (Robert Shaw), who claims that, for $10,000, he'll eliminate Amity's nautical nightmare. Accompanied by Martin and Matt, he heads out to sea - and into a life-and-death struggle with a creature the likes of which he has never encountered. For Matt, it's the chance to study a great white up close. And for Martin, the experience demands that he overcomes his fear of water.

Because the "star" of Jaws is the shark, Spielberg wasn't under pressure to sign a "name" actor for the lead role. Instead, he was accorded the freedom to go with a lesser-known individual suited for the role. Roy Scheider, who was near the pinnacle of his career in the mid-to-late 1970s, brings a sense of humanity to his character - it's easy to identify with Martin because he seems real. Richard Dreyfuss, not a star at the time, infuses Matt with charm, energy, and a dry wit. Robert Shaw was not Spielberg's first choice for Quint (that was Lee Marvin, who turned down the part), but he imbues the character with a larger than life quality that results in a cross between Captain Ahab and Popeye the Sailor Man. Lorraine Gary plays Martin's supportive wife, and Murray Hamilton is the oily Larry Vaughn, Mayor of Amity.

Jaws has two villains. During the first half of the film, the enemy isn't the shark; it's the face of bureaucracy, as personified by the mayor. More concerned with the economic bottom line than with the possibility of someone being injured, Vaughn muzzles Martin, allowing further deaths to occur. While Martin battles Vaughn and his puppets on the town council, the shark lurks in the background, ready to take over the role of antagonist when the mayor gives way. The second half of the film is the classic man against beast, with Jaws representing the rarest of movie monsters - something that exists in the depths of the ocean (albeit typically in smaller dimensions). This, of course, is the clash for which people watch the movie, and it is handled with great skill.

Much of Jaws is an exercise in elevating tension. During the scene when the little boy is killed, we are given a myriad of potential targets. We get the "shark's eye" view of many of the swimmers as Martin looks on anxiously, convinced that something bad is going to happen. The scene is full of red herrings, and we, like Martin, are prepared for tragedy. Spielberg primes us for it. He uses similar tactics for each of the shark attacks, including the first one, in which a skinny dipper is bitten, jerked back and forth, then pulled under.

The movie's final forty-five minutes are spent aboard Quint's boat. The men bond over "war wounds," with Matt and Quint displaying various scars, then Quint tells a chilling tale about a World War II experience when he and the crew of a sunken ship were hunted and savaged by sharks until the rescuers arrived. After those low key moments, it's pretty much all suspense-based action, as Jaws and the crew of the Orca engage in a bloody cat-and-mouse games.

The most memorable scene in the movie occurs when Martin gets an unexpected first look at his nautical nemesis. After casually throwing a few dead fish into the water, he momentarily turns his back. When he looks again, it's into the maw of the shark. He shakily stumbles back into the cabin and utters Jaws ' most oft-quoted line: "You're gonna need a bigger boat." This is one of numerous examples of Spielberg adding dark humor to the mix.

The music for Jaws is neither John Williams' best nor his most rousing score, but the shark theme, which has been used in countless spoofs, is one of the most recognizable cues in movie music history. The reason is simple - it is singularly effective. Combined with the "shark's perspective" camera shots, Williams' music is enough to evoke the approach of the creature, even when we don't see it.

Jaws ' huge success led to three sub-par sequels, each of which was worse than its predecessor. There were numerous copycat features as well, from Dino De Laurentiis' awful Orca: The Killer Whale to the entertaining Deep Blue Sea (which featured incredibly real sharks, but not nearly as much suspense). Nevertheless, the first is the best. When it comes to this kind of thriller, no movie has been able to top Jaws , although many have tried. And, as the years go by, it seems increasingly unlikely that anything will come close.

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• Rear Window (1954)
• Sleuth (1969)
• Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
• Neon Demon, The (2016)
• Left Behind (2014)
• Jade (1995)
• French Connection, The (1971)
• Rainmaker, The (1997)
• 2010 (1969)
• Punisher, The (2004)
• (There are no more worst movies of Roy Scheider)
• From Russia with Love (1969)
• Sting, The (1973)
• Man for All Seasons, A (1966)
• (There are no more worst movies of Robert Shaw)
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
• Night Falls on Manhattan (1997)
• Silver City (2004)
• Paranoia (2013)
• My Life in Ruins (2009)

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Every jaws movie ranked, worst to best.

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Visions of mana review: reminds me why i fell in love with this series in the first place, metaphor: refantazio preview: combining the best of smt & persona into the next big jrpg.

Steven Spielberg's classic Jaws birthed a franchise consisting of four movies to date, and here's how those shark adventures stack up, worst to best. When it comes to horror movies with killer sharks on the hunt, there's no question Jaws sits at the top of the ladder. With a future legend in Spielberg at the helm, Jaws was and is possibly the best made creature feature in history, featuring great acting, writing, cinematography, and a really cool looking mechanical shark monster, when it worked anyway.

With the Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park franchises being notable exceptions, Spielberg has never seemed too keen on sequels to his films, although that often hasn't stopped Hollywood from making them without his input. This was very much the case with Jaws, as Spielberg had no interest in making a follow-up, and quickly turned down the chance to direct Jaws 2. Still, Jaws 2 proved to be a big hit, and Universal pressed on with a third and fourth film.

Related: Jaws Deleted Scene Showed a Child Being Eaten

After a 30-plus year absence from the big screen, it seems unlikely they'll ever be another Jaws sequel, but what's not certain is if a remake will ever happen. One assumes it only could with Spielberg's blessing. For the time being, let's take a look back at the Jaws films that exist, and rank them worst to best.

4. Jaws 3-D (1983)

Lots of Jaws fans might be inclined to balk at Jaws: The Revenge not taking this bottom spot, and to be sure, The Revenge is an awful film. What makes Jaws 3-D just that much worse is some of the most shockingly terrible special effects to ever be shown in a studio-produced blockbuster film. It's also just plain boring, which is basically the kiss of death for a movie. A movie can be great, or so bad it's good, but boredom is hard to overcome. Not even the presence of Dennis Quaid, Louis Gossett Jr, and a young Lea Thompson can save this disaster.

3. Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

As mentioned previously, Jaws: The Revenge is unquestionably awful. It's poorly written, the characters are bland and mostly fail to make an impression, and the premise of a shark having a vendetta against particular people - explained away with a voodoo curse of all things in the movie's novelization - is just plain stupid. Putting this above Jaws 3-D though is a smattering of moments that are so bad that they cross the line over into being entertaining, albeit in a "laughing at it, not with it" kind of way. This includes the shark that stands up straight out of the water and roars like a lion, which no, is not a thing sharks do. Michael Caine is also fun to watch, even if one can't help but wonder what he's doing there.

2. Jaws 2 (1978)

While Jaws 2, directed by Jeannot Szwarc, is multiple steps down in quality from Steven Spielberg's original classic, it's not a bad sequel, and looks like Citizen Kane compared to Jaws 3-D or Jaws: The Revenge. The film benefits from the return of Roy Schieder as Amity's easy to root for chief of police Martin Brody, and Murray Hamilton as Amity's laughably selfish mayor, who - as has since become a meme - somehow managed to win re-election after serving up tourists as shark snacks by insisting the beaches remain open.

1. Jaws (1975)

This is one ranking where the #1 pick was never remotely in doubt, nor should it have been. Jaws is a great film more than 40 years after its original release, and will presumably remain great 40 more years into the future. Jaws is a fairly lengthy movie, but never feels it, and the shark-hunting trio of Brody, Quint (Robert Shaw), and Matt Hooper ( Richard Dreyfuss ) never fails to engage and entertain. It's a blast, as a horror film, as a high seas adventure, and as a dramatic summer blockbuster, and remains one of Spielberg's greatest works.

More: Jaws: Where Amity Island Is Supposed To Be (& Where It Was Filmed)

What It Was Really Like To See Jaws In 1975

Maybe you grew up watching "Jaws" every summer. Maybe you saw it once in your childhood and vowed to never see it again after enduring nightmares. Maybe you've never seen it at all but know its evocative music (composed by the legendary John Williams), often mimicked or even sampled in other films and television shows. Perhaps you even have memories of a giant shark attacking your ride at Universal Studios during a family vacation to Hollywood or Orlando.

Whatever your level of familiarity with "Jaws," Steven Spielberg's classic shark attack movie, the film is so integrated into the pop culture consciousness that it's hard to imagine a time when it was new. But when the movie debuted in summer 1975, the tropes of "Jaws" weren't tropes — they were first-of-their-kind experiments. The movie's story wasn't iconic, it was unknown. So what was it really like to see "Jaws" in 1975? Let's find out.

Jaws was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie

Today, if you hear Steven Spielberg is attached to a film, you automatically know what to expect from the project in question. That kind of news paints a picture in your mind and elevates your interest in the movie based on Spielberg's signature style of direction , which we've seen play out across decades and genres.

However, if we're not counting TV movies like "Duel," "Jaws" was only the second full-length film  Steven Spielberg had directed. He wasn't a household name yet. With just "The Sugarland Express" under his theatrical belt, critics and audiences wouldn't have been able to compare and contrast his movies or study them in great detail. This is unlike today, when we can chart his career and attempt to define what makes him unique.

As such, when "Jaws" hit theaters in 1975, audiences sought an established director they could compare Spielberg's work to. In the 2019 CNN docuseries "The Movies," Deadline Hollywood critic Pete Hammond pointed toward a director who was a household name at the time — one who Spielberg might've reminded audiences of. "He made this like the kind of shark movie that Alfred Hitchcock might have made," Hammond remarked.

From "Psycho" to "The Birds," Hitchcock's well-known filmography was the stuff of nightmares (in the best way possible) and certainly not for the faint of heart. In 1975, his was the perfect directorial style to use as a frame of reference when watching a town under siege by a very hungry shark.

It was as frightening as The Exorcist

In 1975, audiences would've definitely been familiar with "The Exorcist," a horror movie released two years earlier that told a tale of demonic possession. In other words, the textbook definition of a scary movie was on everyone's mind, and quite a few people compared William Friedkin's infamous classic to the newly released "Jaws." In his 1975 review of Spielberg's flick,  famed movie critic Roger Ebert wrote , "It's a film that's as frightening as 'The Exorcist,' and yet it's a nicer kind of fright, somehow more fun because we're being scared by an outdoor-adventure saga instead of by a brimstone-and-vomit devil." Oh, well as long as it's more fun than a brimstone-and-vomit devil, why didn't you say so?

Public word-of-mouth wanted to make it clear what audiences were getting themselves into when they went to see "Jaws." As the podcast " The Movie Bin " points out, there was no such thing as a PG-13 rating when "Jaws" debuted. Its violence, while foreboding, wasn't graphic enough to necessitate an R rating, and so it wound up rated PG — a benchmark that by today's standards is decidedly more family friendly than "Jaws" was ever going to be. Critics like Ebert using "The Exorcist" as a comparison sounded an alarm loud and clear: "Jaws" was s-c-a-r-y.

It was a shared experience

Anyone who saw "Avengers: Endgame" its opening week in theaters can tell you that movies have the power to unite strangers and elicit excitement. If an audience is invested enough in the story, their vocal response can make moviegoing a truly special shared experience. Audiences in 1975 weren't cheering on superheroes, though. They were screaming in terror. "Jaws" producer Richard Zanuck recalled to The New York Times , "People were ripping out the seats. The place went crazy."

A large portion of "Jaws" plays the long game. A general aura of fear is present in scenes much more often than actual jump scares or action-related violence. Still, there are a few moments when the shark's doll-like eyes and insatiable appetite lead to downright terrifying cinema. It was all part of Spielberg's master plan. He studied test screenings and made slight adjustments as needed to optimize those tense sequences for maximum scream factor.

The marketing machine was huge

Many aspects of a movie release are so commonplace today that we hardly think twice about them. If a new film is slated to debut, especially during the summer and especially from a major studio like Universal, audiences can expect a huge marketing campaign ahead of the film's release. That wasn't necessarily the case in 1975.

In the docuseries "The Movies," film historian Neal Gabler explained, "'Jaws' was the first real gigantic blockbuster. Heavily advertised, [it] opened on a 'billion' screens at the same time. It became a cultural milestone immediately. It changed everything." The word "blockbuster" itself was new language.

The New York Times detailed the meteoric rise of "Jaws," which involved a huge emphasis on TV ads — a relatively new method at the time. And as the newspaper explained, "Three days before the opening, [Universal] unleashed a massive national advertising blitz, centering on the image of the shark's mouth pointing vertically up at a swimming girl." The image showed up on everything from posters to the cover of the book "Jaws" was based on. Plus, the movie was released simultaneously across the country on the same date — a "wide" release — which was a relatively uncommon practice. All in all, the final price tag of the film's marketing push was $700,000, a record for Universal.

Jaws was box-office gold

For the time, Universal sunk a huge amount of money into the promotional blitz for "Jaws" ... and it massively paid off. The film  debuted in June 1975 with a domestic opening weekend of $7,061,513 in 409 theaters, for a per-theater average of $17,265. Movies today open in many, many more theaters than that, and the American dollar is worth a very different amount of money, but we can do some math to a modern blockbuster to figure out a fair comparison. 

In December 2021, "Spider-Man: No Way Home" debuted with a domestic opening weekend of $260,138,569 in 4,336 theaters , for a per-theater average of $59,995. Adjusted for inflation , the opening weekend of "Jaws" would've achieved a little over $90,000 per theater today. When considering the boom that "No Way Home" provided to cineplexes, it's wild to imagine "Jaws" rocking the per-theater average even more.

In the end, "Jaws" grossed $260 million during its original 1975 theatrical run ... or $1.3 billion when adjusted for 2022 inflation . In other words, when you take that inflation into account , "Jaws" is one of the highest-grossing films of all time, beating out the likes of "Avatar" and "Avengers: Endgame." To say the least, Universal had a hit on its hands.

A pop culture phenomenon

The combination of innovative filmmaking, positive word-of-mouth, and a huge marketing push was the perfect formula for "Jaws" to become a phenomenon in its opening summer. In an ABC newscast from September 1975 , anchor Peter Jennings described "Jaws" as "a movie executive's dream." 

Even beyond financial success, the movie's cultural impact took over America's summer paraphernalia. That aforementioned newscast highlighted scores of official and unofficial merch, from T-shirts, socks, and bathing suits using the movie's official poster to shark jewelry. Basically, if it was shark-related, consumers couldn't get their hands on it fast enough. (Etsy is quaking.) Peter Benchley, author of the novel that inspired the movie, remarked that it was "normal commercial instinct to ride the bandwagon while the bandwagon's hot."

Steven Spielberg recalled ( via The New York Times ) how he walked through an ice cream shop that summer and every conversation he overheard was about the movie. In other words, "Jaws" took the nation by storm, giving a taste of what was to come from Spielberg's forthcoming career.

It created a newfound fear of sharks

In addition to the movie's massive fandom, there was another real-world cultural impact as a result of "Jaws." The movie's terrifying depiction of sharks led many beachgoers in 1975 to be more hesitant and afraid of ocean activities. The fear, if objectively irrational, is understandable to anyone who's seen the film. Play in the ocean when that thing could attack? Pass! 

On July 13, 1975 — just a few weeks after "Jaws" was released — Los Angeles Times writer Robert E. Dallos ( via The Poughkeepsie Journal ) wrote about the "shark mania" that had come over beachgoers. Suddenly, people preferred the shore to the ocean. There was a lack of long-distance swimmers that summer. And, of course, there was an increase in shark-sighting reports. "Any fish in the water now becomes a shark," a Florida lifeguard said in the same article.

According to a 2021 study by Prof. Brianna Le Busque of the University of South Australia, the stigma still exists to a degree today, thanks to the film's lasting impact and similarly negative shark depictions it inspired in other movies. The conservation outlet Mongabay also described a "Jaws effect" coined by Christopher Neff from the University of Sydney, which is "the belief that sharks intentionally bite humans, that human-shark encounters are always fatal, and that sharks should be killed to prevent future attacks." And Prof. Le Busque found that 96% of shark representation in film and television was negative, stemming from the precedent set by "Jaws."

It was a breath of fresh air, literally

Something that seems like a given when going to the movies today is air conditioning. Believe it or not, before 1975, many theaters didn't have it. Summertime, no air, and a room packed full of people? No, thank you! That would make any moviegoing experience miserable, no matter how incredible the film was. However, HVAC companies cite "Jaws" as one of the first major motion pictures to be released when air conditioning was widely available in movie theaters, and they're proud to attribute part of the film's massive success to their installation of AC units. One can imagine that perhaps the popularity of "Jaws" was aided by moviegoers hoping to beat the summer heat by getting the scares on in a nice, chilled room. It's a reminder that every role is important in the movie business, even if at first glance it has nothing to do with filmmaking itself. So many different fields make the industry possible, and all work together to pull it off. 

Jaws was a filmmaking masterclass

"Jaws" wasn't just an exciting movie — it was a well-made movie in director Steven Spielberg's competent hands. "Jaws" inspired many future directors as a reference point for how to tell a story and how to visually thread a narrative, as shared in a Universal featurette . For example, M. Night Shyamalan was about to turn 5 years old the summer that "Jaws" debuted. He would one day direct such influential thrillers as "Signs" and "The Sixth Sense," and he said he "aggressively pursued 'Jaws' as a way to learn from the master. I saw the light, you know? I saw 'Jaws' and [thought], 'That's the promised land. That's what you have to aim for.'"

Robert Rodriguez — the man behind "From Dusk Till Dawn," "Spy Kids," and "Desperado" — said "Jaws" left him "wanting to make movies that were larger than life." And Eli Roth — who directed the director behind horror films like "Hostel" and "The Green Inferno" — had nothing but praise for Spielberg's classic, explaining, "I think that anyone that wants to make big Hollywood blockbusters movies was certainly inspired by 'Jaws.'"

There's a lot to study in "Jaws," and whether its pupils have gone on to helm huge Hollywood films or are simply inspired by the movie in a more subtle way, Steven Spielberg is proud. In the same video, he remarked, "I'm always grateful when anybody, especially a young director, comes over to me and tells me they were in some way strangely influenced by 'Jaws.'"

There were a few stray dissenters

It turns out you can't please everybody, even with what can be widely acknowledged as a classic like "Jaws." It sits at an admirable 98% on Rotten Tomatoes , which means there were at least a few critics who weren't impressed. In 1975, film critic Charles Champlin,  writing for the Los Angeles Times , called "Jaws" "a bore, awkwardly staged and lumpily written." Champlin claimed the movie had a "stubborn refusal of the key characters to come in to sharp focus," and he was especially taken aback by the horror-esque elements that Spielberg employed to scare the audience. Champlin closed by questioning "what it takes to entertain these days." One could maybe infer that he wasn't a fan of the film as a suspense thriller rather than the film itself, in which case, anything the movie attempted would not be his cup of tea, so the review might not be entirely fair. But hey, to each their own.

Jaws worked like a magic trick

Even if "Jaws" still holds up as a watchable — let alone incredible — film nearly 50 years after it debuted, technology has come a long way since 1975. If the movie were to be made today, it would likely include a heavy dosage of computer-generated imagery. If the director were to prefer a more practical approach to special effects, at the very least the shark animatronic would look a little bit better than the final version of the shark as it appeared in 1975. Today, we can pretty easily tell that most shots of the shark in "Jaws" are of a robotic figure. We're so trained by the special effects wizardry of modern filmmaking that 1975's best efforts feel archaic now.

We can look back on "Jaws" and maybe chuckle a bit at the shark's appearance, but in 1975, audiences completely bought it. Back in the day, Arthur Knight, a film critic for The Hollywood Reporter , commended the limited use of real shark footage paired with the animatronic and "masterful editing" to create an illusion in which it was "literally impossible to say for sure which one is which." Okay, so maybe today we can tell which one is which, but it's a testament to the film's effectiveness that the old tech isn't a distraction and the movie still works.

Jaws was cinematic perfection

Some commercially successful films aren't critically accepted at the time of their release and only become beloved after generations of adoration. Other films simply don't get much attention at all in their initial run and years later find a following and become something of a cult classic . Neither was the case for "Jaws." 

Instead, it hit a home run in every category possible from the very beginning. In 1975, The Hollywood Reporter  called it "perhaps the most perfectly constructed horror story in our time."​​ It was acknowledged almost immediately as a standard-setter and something that the 1970s era of filmmaking would be remembered by. It was even nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards . How often do you know, in the moment, that movie history is being made? "Jaws" achieved that rare feat.

There are few summer movies, or even movies, period, that stack up to "Jaws" in terms of critical acclaim, audience response, and legacy. It will be inspiring future filmmakers, scaring audiences, and making waves at the movies for decades to come.

Jaws' Original Ending Couldn't Be More Different Than The Steven Spielberg Version

At the end of Steven Spielberg's 1975 creature feature "Jaws," Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), Brody (Roy Scheider), and the grizzled Quint (Robert Shaw) have piloted a boat out into the ocean around Amity Island to apprehend a great white shark that has been eating the locals. Their initial plan is for Hooper to get in a shark-proof cage and shove a poison-tipped harpoon into the sea beast. The shark proves to be too powerful, however, and wrecks the cage. The shark also has the wherewithal to leap onto the stern of their boat, crushing it. The shark also eats Quint. Things are looking pretty bad. 

It's not until Brody drops a pressurized oxygen tank into the shark's mouth and shoots it with a rifle that the animal is killed. The tank blows up, and the fish is reduced to bloody chunks. Hooper and Body, the two survivors, begin paddling back to shore. 

"Jaws" was one of the first movies to be released nationwide on one day. Prior to 1975, most films still opened in big cities like Los Angeles and New York, and then toured the country, staying in theaters for months. Adjusted for inflation, "Jaws" has made over $1.2 billion to date. Something about the killer shark struck a chord with audiences, and "Jaws" ushered in the modern blockbuster as we know it.

The film was based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley, and it was a largely faithful adaptation. To streamline the story, Spielberg and his screenwriters cut out a few subplots (Hooper doesn't have an affair with Brody's wife in the movie), but the overall plot remained more or less the same. The ending, however, was altered quite a bit. Benchley conceived an ending that was bleak and lonesome, whereas Spielberg wanted to go out on a note of triumph. 

Hooper dies in the Jaws book

In Benchley's novel, Hooper also tries confronting the shark from inside a shark-proof cage. Just like in the film, the shark breaks through the cage and Hooper flees. However, as Benchley wrote it, Hooper wasn't able to completely get away from the shark and hide underwater. Instead, the shark bites him to death right at that moment. Spielberg knew how to tug on people's heartstrings, however, and understood that showing a still-living Hooper emerge from the water after his shark attack would have people cheering. Hooper was spared. 

Quint dies in both versions, however the circumstance of his death are very different in Benchley's version. As mentioned, Spielberg fed Quint to the shark , only to have Brody kill the beast himself. In the book, Brody is left stranded out in the water while Quint deals the Ahab-like deathblow. As the shark swims toward Brody, hoping for another snack, Quint fires harpoon after harpoon into it. While it swims, the shark eventually succumbs to its harpoon wounds and dies in the water. As the dead shark sinks to the bottom of the ocean, however, a rogue rope gets caught on Quint's foot, and he's dragged under with it. Quint drowns, killed by a shark that's already dead. 

This left Brody all alone out in the open water, something he always deeply feared. The monster had been killed, but its deadly legacy will remain forever. Benchley's ending is more appropriate for a horror story, leaving readers with a sense of deep, existential dread. 

What Benchley thought of Jaws

In Douglas Brode's 1995 book "The Films of Steven Spielberg," it was written that Benchley, as part of his contract, was allowed to write the screenplay to "Jaws." It was also handy for the studio, as Benchley wasn't part of the writer's union, and they needed a script in the middle of a writers strike. Benchley reportedly wrote three drafts of the script before handing it over to other, more experienced screenwriters. Benchley is credited as one of the writers alongside Carl Gottlieb, who co-wrote "Jaws 2," "Jaws 3-D," "The Jerk," and "Doctor Detroit." Gottlieb also directed the 1981 comedy "Caveman" with Ringo Starr. 

Benchley said on his website  (which compiled various articles, forwards, and introduction that he has written over the years) that he was impressed with the final screenplay, and he was actually totally okay with certain subplots being cut out for efficiency's sake. Benchley felt that Spielberg's version let the characters stand out a little more sharply. As for the ending,  Spielberg made it into something explosive and sensational. Also, Spielberg gave his film a happy ending, which wasn't the point of the novel.

It's hard to say if Benchley's original ending would have made "Jaws" even more popular, but the version we got was certainly popular enough. "Jaws" is re-watched in theaters to this day. 

‘Jaws’ Fans Are in for a Treat in September

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Shark Week may be more than one month in the rearview mirror, but shark fans just got an exciting update. The first three Jaws movies, Jaws , Jaws 2 , and Jaws 3-D , will begin streaming on Netflix starting September 1. The first Jaws is largely regarded as the best the franchise has to offer, with acclaimed director Steven Spielberg coming on board to direct, with Roy Scheider , Robert Shaw , Richard Dreyfuss , and Lorraine Gary all starring in the film. The screenplay for the first film was written by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb . As for Jaws 2 , Benchley and Gottlieb returned to write the script along with Howard Sackler , but Jeannot Szwarc stepped into Spielberg's shoes to direct. Benchley and Gottlieb were joined by Richard Matheson , Guedron Trueblood , and Michael Kane as scribes for the threequel, which was helmed by Joe Alves .

The Jaws movies join a stacked lineup of projects that are set to premiere on Netflix this September. Netflix didn't get to be the biggest streaming service in the world by only churning out originals, but by also securing the rights to older projects for people to enjoy as well. 3:10 to Yuma is just one of the projects that will premiere on Netflix at the start of September, the western remake which stars Christian Bale and Russell Crowe . However, most projects can't stay on Netflix forever, as all the older Spider-Man movies starring Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield are set to exit the platform at the end of this month with no new streaming home in sight.

How Has the ‘Jaws’ Franchise Done at the Box Office?

There are four Jaws movies in the franchise, the three that are set to premiere on Netflix next month, and Jaws: The Revenge , which released in 1987. The first movie is the highest-earning in the franchise by a considerable margin, grossing roughly $260 million during its theatrical run, while the sequel failed to even reach $80 million . The third film experienced an even harsher drop-off, grossing only $45 million total, while the final installment continued the plummet, earning a measly $20 million. The third and fourth installments also premiered in twice as many theaters, yet grossed a fraction as much as the original.

Jaws stars Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss and was written by Peter Benchley and directed by Steven Spielberg. Stay tuned to Collider for future streaming updates and watch the first three Jaws movies on Netflix starting September 1.