10 Horror Films That Beat Genre Prejudice To Win Oscars

6. Jaws (1975) - Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound

With Goldsmith's score for The Omen winning in 1977, it was two horror composing Oscars in a row thanks to John Williams' win for Jaws the previous year. Along with the Best Original Score, Jaws also won two of the other three Oscars for which it was nominated, Best Editing and Best Sound, but lost out on the main award to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which swept the board for the big five prizes.

Did It Deserve To Win?

Without a doubt. Steven Spielberg was rightly disappointed that the film, universally loved and massively commercially successful, did not win for Best Picture, nor even get him a nomination for Best Director, but the Academy was right that the music and editing are a huge part of what made Jaws great. The failure of Jaws' expensive, complex and unreliable animatronic shark was a blessing in disguise for Spielberg and his team, requiring them to create something truly sinister through just music and editing.

Williams, awaiting the result of his 49th nomination at the coming Oscar ceremony, is a master of building a score around a memorable theme and the theme from Jaws is one of his most hard-hitting. In just a few simple notes it conveys the threat perfectly. Meanwhile, editor Verna Fields cut the film in a way that was innovative, witty and gave the shark character before it ever appeared on screen.

In 47 previous Oscar ceremonies there had only been five female winners of the Best Editing prize, so Fields was pretty remarkable to win. Off the back of her central role in Jaws' production Fields became one of the first women to be appointed to a senior management executive position at Universal.