10 Reshoots That Actually Improved Horror Movies

Anyone who has ever read anything about Jaws will know that Steven Spielberg's tourist-munching blockbuster was a total nightmare to make.

It turns out that filming scenes on water with a bunch of temperamental mechanical shark props is the antithesis of an easy life, as Stevie boy found out to his dismay. The biggest problem was that the fake shark looked like, well, a fake shark, completely undermining any threat Bruce posed.

And then, genius struck.

Spielberg found that merely implying the shark's presence, instead of showing it outright, built tension and made the Great White even more menacing than any actual shot could have. As such, he majorly retooled the film, resulting in the sparse, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride audiences know today.

So much of Jaws' appeal comes from the fact that the monster is hidden right until the end. It's often held up as the example of "show don't tell", still terrifying new viewers nearly 50 years after it first hit the big screen.

To think that, without Spielberg's flare for the dramatic, Jaws could have been just another schlocky monster movie with a laughably bad creature at its core.