Jaws - released 44 years ago today

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Still one of the greatest, if not THE greatest thrillers ever made.

-Spielberg initially approached Jon Voight and then Jeff Bridges to play the character of Hooper

-The scene where Brody’s son Sean mimics his father’s movements at the dinner table was based on a real thing that happened between Scheider and child actor Jay Mello in between takes. Spielberg loved the off-the-cuff moment so much that he re-staged it and put it in the movie.

-The book's auther Peter Benchley can be seen in a cameo in the film as the news reporter who addresses the camera on the beach.

-Spielberg had to return to L.A. and didn't shoot the final scene of the movie.

-Jaws was scheduled to take 65 days to shoot, but it ended up taking 159.




Has it been that long? I went to see it at the theater in its first run, but before going I happened to have had a conversation with a surgeon who said she'd seen it but it grossed her out. A surgeon?? Therefore I was a little edgy during the show-- with good reason!

It affected me so deeply that even today I'm extremely reluctant to go into the ocean above my waist.. And I live on the Gulf Coast! It's kind of like the effect that Psycho's shower murder scene had on generations of women.

~Doc



... And 44 years later nothing comes close to it for me. I wish I'd been old enough to see it when it was released back then. Thankfully I did get the chance to see it on the big screen a few years ago and just loved the experience.
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5-time MoFo Award winner.



Fabulous movie!
The big jump scare was sadly spoiled for me by a mate that had been to see it the day before, but it was still great fun to hear (and in some cases see) just about everybody else in the cinema gasp in shock during that scene
Jaws, Star Wars and Alien were the cinematic soundscape to my youth ..... ah yes, those were the days



I seen Jaws first run with my parents at an old theater that's no longer there. It was a neat old theater and Jaws was very engrossing and had quite the impact on the big screen. I remember walking out of the theater and across the dark parking lot to the car...I was so impacted by the movie that I kept envisioning a shark attack from the pavement below!



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
I saw it again recently, and think it's a very good movie accept for maybe two smap quips. I feel that maybe Brody's son should have been one of the victims of the shark instead of being a near miss. Because if it was his own son, than that would have been more dramatic for him and given him a more dramatic reason for wanting to go after the shark.

And even though Quint is a fun character, I feel that he is eye rollingly stereotyped though. He's of Irish origin, so I guess they felt they made to him him a slobby, drunk who likes to sing badly, like how you see other Irish male characters in fiction. Unless I am being too hard on it maybe?

But still a very good movie.



I remember seeing this in the theatre with my friend and her brother. We were to young to go alone.. We would have been 9. Back then they didn't enforce the ratings as they do now. Her brother wasn't much older than we were.



Ghouls, vampires, werewolves... let's party.
Here lies the body of Mary Lee; died at the age of a hundred and three. For fifteen years she kept her virginity; not a bad record for this vicinity.



Yeah, it's excellent.

For almost a year, every Friday night my sister and her friend would order a small pizza and watch Jaws. Every. Friday. Night.