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Summer movies are a wonderful thing. You escape the heat by slipping into a big dark cold room to stare at a mythical collection of images with mega sound. Plus, there’s snacks. Summer movies just hit different. They have a special kind of energy. Yes, movies are cool at other times of the year, but summer movies are incredibly magical, especially the good ones. 

They capture a moment in time. There are a handful of movies that when I watch them I instantly remember the summer they came out and how I was feeling back then. The sense memory of that first viewing stays with me. What’s really funny is that I didn’t see my favorite summer movie in a theater. In fact, I didn’t see it until years after its release because the trailer alone scared the crap out of me. 

Jaws turns 50 this summer and it rates high on any list of awesome summer movies. Heck, it’s pretty much the first ever summer movie. Before Jaws, movies were released willy nilly throughout the year. There was no summer movie season. Flicks came out at different times in different regions, slowly spreading across the country like a virus served with popcorn. Jaws was the first one to drop in thousands of theaters at the same time with a marketing plan focused on luring folks on summer vacation. 

People lined up around the block to see it, hence the term “blockbuster.” I was a little kid in the summer of 1975. I wasn’t allowed to watch scary movies, but it was hard to escape Jaws during those days. It was a bonafide cultural phenomenon. This movie was everywhere. My teenage sister, who wasn’t even a movie buff, saw it multiple times. She had a dog-eared copy of the paperback novel that inspired it under her pillow. The soundtrack was stacked next to her Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd albums. 

Jaws scared the crap out of me and all I’d seen was the TV commercial. I blame Percy Rodriguez, the legendary voiceover artist who narrated the Jaws trailer along with teasers for Alien, The Black Hole and tons of horror movies. His deep measured tones sounded like the devil coming to get you. His voice combined with John Williams’ iconic theme music and those shots from the shark’s POV were enough to give me nightmares. My big sister telling me all the movie’s gory details at bedtime like a ghost story also didn’t help. 

Even if my folks had relaxed their “nothing but Disney movies until you’re 12” rule, I don’t think I could have watched this one. Little kid me couldn’t even get in my neighbor’s pool without getting freaked out. Every time I went underwater, I heard that music. Daaaa Dum. Daaaa Dum. Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum. Jaws haunted me for another 12 years before I caught it on HBO late at night when I was in high school. 

I was probably sneaking an episode of The Hitchhiker (if you know you know) and Jaws teed up in its wake. I decided to face my fears and watched the whole darn thing by myself in that dark living room. It was pretty freaking awesome. I knew Spielberg was a master filmmaker from Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T., but Jaws blew my damn mind. It was a visceral experience. 

My childhood fears provoked anxious expectation of what was to come, making every jump scare more intense. But that was exactly Spielberg’s intention. He let my imagination be his most valuable special effect. How many movies have you seen ruin the thrills by overdoing it? You see the monster so much that you get used to it. Jaws teases you with glimpses until about halfway through when you get that big reveal. It was chilling. 

This was long before I knew all the behind the scenes info about why the shark never worked and how Spielberg had to come up with ways to make its presence known without ever showing it. His desperate ingenuity makes this movie great. I admit that the shark looks pretty fake these days, but it’s a testament to Spielberg’s genius that this movie still gets my heart pumping more than most movies with better effects. 

One reason is he really spent time on the characters. We get to know Brody, Hooper, and Quint and their very different motivations. We’re so enraptured by their stories that we believe the danger even when that big phony fish flounders up on the deck at the end. Jaws is a psychological thriller, preying on our primal fears of what’s lurking within the ocean depths, apex predators, and being eaten alive. 

Spielberg exacerbates our phobias with the movie’s strategic pace and haunting score by maestro John Wiliams. I still haven’t recovered from cinematographer Bill Butler’s masterful reaction shot of Brody when Alex Kintner gets chomped. The camera pushes in while also zooming out. I can’t ever unsee that frenetic image. I can only imagine the collective insanity when people saw that shark breach for the first time. 

It must have been like the shower scene in Psycho or when Linda Blair’s head spins around in The Exorcist. Our senses are so dulled these days by CGI, it’s hard to comprehend the manic thrills of seeing virgin terrors unleashed. Can you imagine what the crowd was like watching this flick in theaters for the first time in 1975? (Editor: Some of us don’t have to imagine.)

This flick’s gargantuan success spawned a slew of imitators and I’ve now seen a bunch of them. They all miss the boat, especially its own sequels. One of the key reasons that Jaws works is that it’s not just about jump scares. It’s that Hitchcockian reflex of being frightened by what you don’t see. The subsequent movies give the shark way too much screen time. 

Jaws 2 is fun because the director knew he couldn’t compete with the original so he just made a horror flick featuring an underwater boogeyman. It’s a thrilling lark with some over-the-top moments. The other two sequels suck. They are Grade Z monster movies. The subsequent films forget that Spielberg’s secret sauce was making the audience care about the characters. 

Most casts in shark movies are just chum in the water. You don’t care what happens to them. Take a look at Deep Blue Sea or The Meg, for instance. These wannabes are entertaining, but they’re not classics. Are you really invested here or just killing time until things get toothy? The characters are all bland archetypes. You know their fate from the very beginning of the movie. 

These flicks have their moments, but comparing them to Jaws is like saying a fireworks display is just as good as a Broadway show. Jaws has stood the test of time. Over the years, I’ve seen it twice on the big screen and it does not disappoint. If they bring it back to cinemas for its golden anniversary, I encourage you to go. You deserve to see this movie in a theater. 

No matter how many times you’ve caught it at home, you’ll discover something new. Maybe it’s the beach scenes or that bit that takes place over Independence Day, but it’s not summer until I watch Jaws. If it is not resurfacing at a multiplex near you, pop in your old DVDs or rent it on Prime or AppleTV.  Decide for yourself if Jaws is the ultimate summer movie.