JAWS—“This shark, swallow you whole.” To its shivering glee, much of the world found that out when the all-time fish tale finned into view in 1975, first decimating the beach party scene of ‘Amity Island’, then churning money like a feeding frenzy and ultimately gulping down Hollywood and the movie industry when its astronomical (gastronomical?) success steered the business of show into one long chum of high-concept marketing. Whether that last gorge was net positive or negative is fodder for a philosophical food fight, but it did indisputably cement young man in a hurry Steven Spielberg as a front-rank entertainment genie, and collaterally made a sly, deceptively simple piece of music one of the most instantly identifiable of, like, ever. *

“Mr. Vaughn, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that’s all.”

Summer tourist time in a little New England coastal isle. One death from a shark attack is regrettable, but when the toll reaches four the panic-stricken community pins their hopes of rescue onto three men in a boat. Aboard the Orca, out to joust with a monstrous Great White shark, are the town’s police chief ‘Martin Brody’ ((Roy Scheider), who’s afraid of the water; oceanographer ‘Matt Hooper’ (Richard Dreyfuss), a little on the smartypants side; and salt-crusted loner ‘Quint’ (Robert Shaw), captain, shark hater and all-round hardass. They will find that they not only need a larger vessel but perhaps should asked the Navy for some depth charges.

Wowed by Peter Benchley’s 278 page novel, producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown bought the rights before it was even published—and eventually sold over 20,000,000 copies worldwide. After action ace John Sturges declined directing (he’d had enough water-logging on The Old Man And The Sea), then hiring & firing Dick Richards, they gave the wheel to excited 27-year-old Spielberg, who’d only done one feature film, The Sugarland Express, which hadn’t been released yet. Benchley, unfamiliar with screenwriting, did the first drafts, then it was rewritten by Carl Gottleib, with John Milius and Robert Shaw contributing the famous ‘Indianapolis’ segment.

Opting to film not just on location (Massachusetts around Martha’s Vineyard) but offshore on the restless Atlantic water, Spielberg learned the hard way that ocean + cameras = nightmares. Battling with nauseous nautical conditions and the brace of ‘Bruce’s—the three expensive continually malfunctioning and/or damaged mechanical sharks—caused the man vs. beast adventure originally budgeted at $3,500,000 and a 55-day shoot to ultimately sail for six months, chomping $9,000,000.

From the ominous opening notes of John Williams score to his reflective touch in the end titles two hours later, Spielberg’s opus is a winner in every department. Blessed by Verna Fields superlative editing, Spielberg’s direction is flawless, measuring the just right blend of humor and humanity into the flex & release tension, the visual thrills and primordial chills—the sort best endured watching them enacted as entertainment rather than being directly perpetrated on your plasma-filled person. His mastery of action set-pieces (the crowd stampede at the beach, the assorted startling attacks, the battle royale finale), skill with casting and gift with child actors, his sheer joy in the art are all present.

The fascination with fear element takes many forms, some defendably giddy (rollercoasters) some beyond stupid (Russian roulette) and wondering or worrying about all the ways you can die is an endless cornucopia of ick. Yet being eaten alive, devoured, by some other specie, is perhaps the oldest and most enduring: bears, lions and sharks not enough we decided to fiddle with dog breeds. Add the upside-down, disorienting ocean environment where access to not just movement but oxygen are not in your favor. Williams atavistic music heightens the scares—the main theme effectively embodies the shark on the hunt, turns exuberant when called for and gracefully is muted when the excitement has run its course. “Smile, you sonofabitch!”

Though he apparently wasn’t nuts about the part (and did not enjoy the sequel other than as a payday), worried and likable Martin Brody is a welcome role for Scheider, 42, sandwiching this nice guy hero between his slate of tough cops and grimy hoods. Dreyfuss, 27, had gained notice for American Graffiti, Dillinger and The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz, but feisty Matt Hooper swept him uphill into Close Encounters Of The The Kind, The Goodbye Girl and many ensuing ups & downs, 129 credits as of 2026. Reliably intense and icy Shaw, 47, had been a fave since From Russia With Love and Battle Of The Bulge thru The Sting and The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three: Jaws turned him, rather late, into a bona fide lead—Black Sunday, The Deep—his career then cut too short by his untimely death just three years later at 51.

After all the production headaches, Universal, smelling $$worth$$ under the woe, spent $1,800,000 on adroit marketing;  their near-perfect adventure/horror/thriller landed in the summer like 25-foot, 3-ton all-time trophy. The fear-savoring public went bananas: $281,033,000 domestically and $214,005,000 internationally, not only 1975’s biggest catch take by far but for a few years the largest ever until a pal of Spielberg’s revealed “A galaxy far, far away.” Adjust for inflation and as of 2026, Jaws is the 7th biggest hit of All Time. The Academy Awards  justly gave a nomination for Best Picture, and bestowed wins for Film Editing, Music Score and Sound.  Precocious, shrewd, wildly talented Spielberg zoomed to the head of the class, the banking of the three stars went into high register, and more people than ever before thought twice about doing anything riskier at the beach than playing volleyball or downing Pina Coladas.

With Lorraine Gary (37, feature debut, as Brody’s wife ‘Ellen’), Murray Hamilton (great as usual, as the smarmy Mayor), Carl Gottleib, Chris Rebello, Jay Mello, Lee Fierro and Susan Backlinie (‘Chrissie’, appetizer). 124 minutes.

* “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”—–chased by the okay Jaws 2, the silly Jaws 3-D, the toss-it-back Jaws: The Revenge, and an ocean-load of tie-in’s, salutes and ripoffs: toys, games, theme park rides, a musical (of course), a Lego set of 1,497 pieces and, less humorously, the increased decimation of the shark population from trophy hunters.

Steven Ahab— the man-boy at the helm reflected “I thought my career was already over halfway through Jaws because everybody was telling me this film was way over budget…So I thought I’d better give it my all, because I didn’t think I’d be working in the industry again…I was offered several times [by Universal executives] the opportunity to gracefully bow out because we were close to 90 days over schedule. It turned out we went 100 days over schedule and the shoot lasted 158 days….I’ve never seen so much vomit in my entire life in the six months out at sea…I was naive about the ocean, basically. I was pretty naive about mother nature and the hubris of a filmmaker who thinks he can conquer the elements was foolhardy, but I was too young to know I was being foolhardy when I demanded that we shoot the film in the Atlantic Ocean and not in a North Hollywood tank.”

Sound quality—Williams and the director first worked on The Sugarland Express. Jaws made them brothers-in-arms, with the composer siding with the director on another 28 movies, as of 2026. Jaws is a terrific score, no doubt, though for 1975’s Oscar my pick would be Jerry Goldsmith’s magnificent rouser The Wind And The Lion. Williams work with Spielberg has plenty of dandy stuff (Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, etc.) but we confess to never falling for the cutesy-poo job on E.T.—sorry, alien critter. Call me both foolish and irresponsible (it’s been done) but my ears and soul tend to prefer other Williams scores—Star Wars, of course, but also The Reivers, The Cowboys and Superman. Just sayin’…

Ways Not To Go—for moi, we’d take a quick dismemberment from a Great White over being stung to death by a swarm of bees. I suppose the delightful stakeout on an anthill situation would be right there, too.