50 Years Ago Today, the First and Arguably Greatest Blockbuster Ever Made Was Released

By Luna Guthrie

Published 3 days ago

Follow

Like

Thread3

Link copied to clipboardSign in to your Collider account

 Generate a summary of this story

Happy birthday, Bruce! Everybody’s favorite disobedient animatronic turns fifty today, and since thrashing onto screens in 1975 in Steven Spielberg‘s summer masterpiece Jaws, the notorious great white shark has been busy causing decades’ worth of trauma. It’s strange to even consider a time when people could just swim in the ocean, without a care in the world about what may lurk beneath the murky surface, but apparently this is what the world looked like before Peter Benchley‘s infernal mind came along and ruined things for everybody with his novel about a man-eating shark.

Jaws was an absolute sensation, and its clever marketing campaign built around a sinister voice urging you to “see it before you go swimming” deliberately tapped into the reality of its premise. Overnight, galeophobia, or a not-so-irrational fear of sharks, became widespread, and a very real battle between man and beast was waged. Much to Benchley’s horror, sharks were suddenly being hunted and killed in their thousands as a direct result of the fears he instilled, and he spent the remainder of his life working to protect the poor creatures from such measures.

‘Jaws’ Has Caused Me a Lifetime of Trauma

I was something of a curious child, one might say masochistically so. My love for the horror genre grew out of a burning sense of morbid curiosity and pushing my little brain to its limits. Even as a seven-year-old, I knew of Jaws. Twenty-five years after its release, its influence was still everywhere, and the ominous presence of that poster—of an open-mouthed beast rushing straight up through the water towards an unsuspecting woman—piqued my curiosity. I had to see it! Given that it was only rated PG, this turned out to be one of the easier film-hunting endeavors of my younger years. Sure, back in 1975 there may have only been a choice between PG and R, but the ratings board had expanded in the years since, and in my native England, perhaps a 12 or 15 would have been more appropriate. But hey, the experts said this movie was no scarier than Toy Story, so what did I have to lose?

My sanity, apparently. Any sense of peace for the remainder of my life. The ability to even think about water without getting that sick feeling in my guts that says an ugly, terrifying force is about to appear out of nowhere and see me to a very painful and gurgly demise. I lost it all one summer day in 1999, when I sat and watched Jaws for the first time. Swimming pools were suddenly sources of terror, bathtubs were no longer a relaxing place to be, and obviously the ocean could go f*** itself. Sure, science dictates that I am unlikely to cross paths with a man-eating shark in a tub of murky dishwater, but that’s not the point. Something about that movie had awakened in me a primal fear that would impose itself onto any scenario in my life and give me an immense feeling of unease. My vivid imagination would copy the image of that shark and paste it anywhere. There was no going back. I was damaged goods, and I had Steven Spielberg to thank for it.

Despite It All, ‘Jaws’ Is Still My Favorite Movie

• Image via Universal Pictures
• Image via Universal Pictures
• Image via Universal Pictures
• Image via Universal Pictures
• Image via Universal Pictures

So you’d think that with this visceral a reaction, I’d be a one-and-done viewer of Jaws, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, that morbid curiosity meant that now I’d seen it, I couldn’t get enough of it. As a young kid, obviously the shark was the exciting part. The boring stretches of people talking lost my interest, but I was sucked right back in as soon as the action moved to the water. There’s no denying that the shark, and all the bloody mayhem he caused, was the draw for me. But as I got older, and my appreciation for film as an art form grew, I would regularly return to the movie and see it a little differently each time. Those talking scenes were no longer boring but actually very deep and carefully written character moments that told us all about these people and got us invested in their journeys. Quint’s famous Indianapolis speech, once the calm before the storm, was now one of the most menacing parts of the whole movie. This was actually a brilliant, engrossing, exciting, electrifying combination of horror, adventure, and character drama, and it balanced all its elements with finesse.

Related

The 10 Most Enjoyable ‘Jaws’ Ripoffs, Ranked

Sharks, piranhas, crocodiles… killer animals galore.

5

Then I came to develop a fascination with how movies are made, and my appreciation for Jaws only grew further. This movie was nothing short of miraculous. In the hands of a 27-year-old novice director, the budget and shooting schedule had spilled over massively, there was tension among its actors, they were finding out the hard way that the sea is a cruel mistress, and the damn shark was not working. When you break down the craft and labor that went into making the movie, it’s a wonder it ever even got finished, let alone turned out as one of the finest, most artistically brilliant films of the 20th century. It was dramatically paced, astonishingly filmed, astutely performed, and thematically rich. This terrifying monster movie that had shaken me to my damn core was a work of art, one that I continue to go back to and marvel over, time after time.

‘Jaws’ Still Impacts Audiences on a Deeper Level to This Day

Sure, at 33 years old, I still can’t sit in a jacuzzi without considering that its size and shape are perfect for a shark’s head to inexplicably emerge from, and I genuinely don’t think I will ever feel safe or at ease around water in my entire life, but I am grateful to Benchley and to Spielberg and to all the incredibly talented artists who made this unlikely hit. It was my first real look at what absolute cinema looked like and how it could impact people on a deeper level. It opened my eyes to the realities of a film set and the functions of a finished movie, and it is very likely that were it not for my dark fascination with Jaws, I would never have become the writer or film fanatic that I am today. So here’s to you, Bruce, and to many more years of trauma together.