What's it about? The sleepy town of Amity Bay is the setting for Jaws, Steven Spielberg's hugely successful adaptation of Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. After a great white shark attacks several swimmers, police chief Brody (Roy Sheider) calls on the assistance of ichthyologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and local fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) to set out onto the ocean waves and hunt the beast down.What makes it groundbreaking? The influence of Jaws on cinema history is known to anyone who hasn't been living in a cave these last few decades since its release - Spielberg single-handedly kickstarted the notion of the summer blockbuster, delivering the first "animal attack" horror movie, a genre which has been going strong - if never quite as good as this - ever since. Comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock are entirely justified - Spielberg himself has rarely matched this early masterpiece for pure thrills and tension.
