10 Iconic Movies That Spawned A Thousand Imitators
9. Jaws
As well as putting Steven Spielberg on the map, leading to an all-timer of a directorial career, Jaws will always be known as one of the most important movies ever made because it marked an industry-wide shift in how the studios marketed and released their biggest projects, leading to the blockbuster model that's still in use today.
Foregoing the previous blueprint of how movies were slowly rolled out across the country over a period of months, Jaws made pioneering use of heavy TV advertising and a nationwide release in the middle of summer to become the highest-grossing movie ever made until Star Wars came along two years later.
Jaws may have made people afraid to go in the water, but it didn't make people afraid to try and make a quick buck off from its unprecedented success, leading to countless inferior knock-offs that featured one-word titles with an animal positioned as the villain.
Although the likes of Orca, Grizzly, Mako, Barracuda, Alligator, Piranha and Tintorera were blatant attempts to piggyback on the popularity of Spielberg's movie, Alien was initially pitched as 'Jaws in space', so at least we managed to get one classic out of the bargain.