This film, perhaps more than any other on the list, is a perfectly constructed machine of a film which doesn't sacrifice heart for tension. This movie, before Star Wars, can also be pinpointed as the first summer blockbuster. It grossed millions worldwide and made Steven Spielberg into the Hollywood statesman that he is today and yet it uses the same slasher rules as Halloween or Bay of Blood, only with a shark. It helps, of course, that, through Peter Benchley's source novel, there are three brilliantly rounded, and incredibly different, lead characters. Roy Scheider's water-fearing Brody, Richard Dreyfuss' bookish Hooper and Robery Shaw's salty, irritable Quint manage to create such a pivot for the movie that, in the moments at sea before Jaws goes for a full-out attack, you almost forget the reasons they out there and yet still feel the tension cranking up through Quint's US Indianapolis story. Luckily, Spielberg didn't have a huge budget so couldn't show his shark as much as he originally wanted but it is this that makes the film a true great as we catch a marauding dorsal fin or a loose tooth. Spielberg clearly knew his horror too as his jump shock for the appearance of old Ben Gardner is one of the best in the genre (surpassing the Carrie grave moment). The reason this works, as with so many on this list, is that it plays on some very simple nightmares (water, sharks, being alone at sea) and colours it with fully rounded, and excellently acted, characters.
