4. "Smile, You Son Of A Bitch..." - Jaws (1975)
After a 25 foot great white shark has spent the sum of a single summer terrorising the inhabits of Amity Island, it's up to police chief Martin Brody, oceanographer Matt Hooper, and grizzled shark hunter Quint to confront the beast. The final stretch of Jaws, in which our heroes take Quint's boat out to sea, is pure cinematic joy from beginning to end, but the moment where Brody - taking potshots with a M1 Garand rifle - manages to blow the shark sky high provides us with one of cinema's most satisfying moments ever. As the beast is reduced to a zillion bloody pieces, we watch as Brody explodes with laughter - delighted and surprised that he hit his target (an air tank lodged in the shark's mouth). The shark may have scared the hell out of us, but this pay-off is exactly what cinema was invented for - pure, unabashed exhilaration. Spielberg, too, was right to change the ending from the original novel, which - rather less excitingly - had the shark succumbing to stab wounds.