Jaws

Jaws is a 1975 American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. It stars Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw.  Also, lets not forget Susan Backlinie, who played a memorable character and who recently passed away.

Jaws won three Academy Awards: Best Film Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Best Sound.  It was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

On a nine million dollar budget, Jaws took in $476 million at the box office.  It was the prototypical summer blockbuster.  

I remember having a difficult time finding a parking space when we went to the theater when Jaws was first released in cinemas that June.  Everybody wanted to see it.

In a New England beach town, a young woman (Backlinie) goes for a late-night swim (in the nude) during a beach party. An unseen shark attacks and pulls her underwater. Her remains are found washed up on the beach the next morning.

Soon after. a young boy is killed by perhaps the same shark at a crowded beach. A bounty is placed on the killer.  Quint (Shaw), an eccentric and roughened local shark hunter, offers his services for $10,000.

Consulting oceanographer Matt Hooper (Dreyfuss) examines the first girl's remains, confirming that an abnormally large shark had killed her.

The local police chief (Scheider) plus Quint and Hooper go out on a small boat to destroy the man-eating shark.

Instead of many sightings of the shark, Spielberg effectively uses its theme music to convey its presence and impending doom.   

One night on the boat, Quint and Hooper drunkenly exchange stories about their assorted body scars. One of Quint's is a removed tattoo, and he reveals that he is a survivor of the Japanese attack on the USS Indianapolis, (which carried the atomic bomb to the Tinian Naval Base in July 1945) during which many US sailors, after the ship was sunk, were killed by sharks. 

When the police chief  first sees the large shark, he utters the famous line, "We're gonna need a bigger boat."  The battle between the three men and the shark continues to a conclusion with casualties on both sides.