Gosh... has it been 40 years?!! We’re getting old, Joe. I saw it again a few months ago and it is still frightening to me. Definitely a great movie!
“but its impact as the first true blockbuster in Hollywood history”
Evidently, this writer has never heard of Gone With the Wind (1938). I caught a little of the Today show last week and Boy George was on. Matt Lauer claimed that Boy George had changed the musical world and, therefore, the world in the 80s. Peoples’ use of mindless hyperbole when discussing entertainment knows no bounds. It is amazing.
You’re gonna need a bigger thread.
“Jaws” invented the summer blockbuster.
I STILL cannot watch the ‘Robert Shaw being eaten by the shark’ scene to this DAY!!
THAT is the scene that still makes me jump! I know it’s coming.. try to prepare for it but still JUMP straight up like a cat. :)
I believe Robert Shaw did his great USS Indianapolis story in one take (and with a hangover).
Jaws, with its technical mastery and ability to manipulate the audience into fearing something that for so much of the film’s running time they could not see...
That is part of the accidental brilliance of Jaws. You don’t see the shark that much, but you anticipate the shark. That anticipation is often more terrifying.
Jaws certainly gets my vote as one of the scariest films ever. It’s the only film I’ve seen in the theater where the audience stood en mass and cheered as the closing credits rolled. Simply amazing.
Best summer ever. Finally got my driver’s license.
I always thought that a lot of its success can be attributed to the music. Actually won an Academy Award for its score.
I think I have seen it at least 40 times. Never get sick of it. :-)
Jaws is one of- if not the best ‘horror’ film ever made.
Masterful.
It needed no obscene monsters, gory bloody scenes, no graphic sex or ‘F’ bombs every sentence the characters uttered.
The opening scene, a beautiful woman is seen treading water on a lovely moonlit, still bay. A buoy bell dings gently not far away. She laughs and calls to her boyfriend to join her, but he has passed out on the beach.
The camera does a sharks point of view beneath the girls legs, treading water. The camera gets closer, the music gets louder,
Suddenly she feels a tug at her body from beneath the water.
A expression of shock spreads over her face before she is pulled under.
She surfaces and her gurgling water logged screams are blood curdling. But there is no one to hear.
Again she is pulled under, but this time she does not resurface.
The water calms in the moonlight. The buoy continues its
gentle chimes- as though nothing had ever happened.
You have seen nothing. No monster. Nothing.
No need. The mind can conjure up images much worse than any movie maker could.
The primal fear of what is unknown in the water, is one of the factors that makes that scene so effective.
Spielburg uses fear instead of gore to scare the viewer
Few films are perfect. This one almost is. Jaws is the rarefied movie that can weather intensive scrutiny of each of its sum parts, and still emerge from this analysis as a clearly superior work in every aspect of its production. The acting is top-notch, and each of its characters are perfectly cast and essayed.
The score is superlative, and as key to the horror within as the shark. The story itself is deceptively simple, yet powerful enough to remain both timely and timeless. The camera work and use of environment to create tension are unparalleled in the film medium, and every frame carries an implied menace, even when the shark is nowhere in sight. Every detail of the film-making process is performed here with such groundbreaking precision that the film almost becomes a textbook.
Classic