Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is available to rent, buy and stream.
In 1975, Steven Spielberg unleashed a new terror that remains one of the best movies ever made and one of the most enduring creature horror films of all time. Was Jaws simply a smart re-telling of Moby Dick or was Jaws a clever spin on the classic serial killer movie? Over the years, many have dissected Jaws, seeking answers to these questions. Some have argued that Spielberg’s film is laced with discussions of masculinity in crisis, while others have pointed to themes of humans versus nature and our desperate need to control our natural world. At the same time, others cite The Creature from the Black Lagoon as an inspiration. In truth, Jaws is a young filmmaker’s beautiful, brave, and brilliant shiver of all the above, celebrating the power of cinema in bringing us together for a shared spectacle.
Jaws would transform the classic B-movie monster horror of the 1950s into something far more terrifying by paying homage to the classic small-town serial killer narrative. However, unlike the classic flesh and blood serial killer, Spielberg’s murderer wasn’t human, with the clues of its deadly arrival, the scattered limbs or chunks of flesh washed up on a beach; this killer was a silent predator who stalked its prey along the shores of Amity Island. Here, Spielberg would take the fun and pleasure of a summer swim or a leisurely boat ride and subvert them into a sun-drenched nightmare, playing with our sense of security while making the whole world question the joy of a summer beach and an inflatable lilo.
Before Jaws, opening any film in the middle of summer was considered box office suicide; after all, why would people spend time in a dark cinema when they could be in the sun? Steven Spielberg and Universal were about to change the summer release forever by making the sun, the beach and the water a terrifying place and the dark movie theatre a sanctuary. The monster-sized campaign for Jaws was unprecedented; after all, Peter Benchley’s novel had taken bookshops by storm in 1974, and with the rights brought up before its publication in 1973 by Universal, expectations were high for the film version of his Great White gone rogue that had already begun development with a young director at the helm as the novel hit bookstore shelves.
In crafting the campaign for Jaws, Universal set the template for summer blockbuster promotion with a marketing blitz and broad distribution to maximise box office takings. On its opening night, Jaws played on 464 screens in the United States alone – an unheard-of scale in the mid-1970s, with front-loaded merchandise, TV slots and promotions ensuring Jaws pulled young and old into theatres. It was Jaws that inspired George Lucas in his promotion of Star Wars two years later.
Jaws was one of the first movies to capitalise on the power of TV advertising, using slogans such as “You’ll never go in the water again!” and “The most terrifying movie of the year.” Meanwhile, a few trims took the rating from R to PG, warning that Jaws “may prove too intense for some children.” This only increased the desire of many kids to see it as they nagged their parents for a seat.
Jaws was made for around $9 million but went on to take over $482 million globally. Spielberg’s shark would dwarf Shampoo, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Dog Day Afternoon and pave the way for the massive tentpole features that now dominate the summer season. Jaws would change Hollywood forever and usher in a new era of blockbusters that encouraged us to leave the beach for the cinema.
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