3. JAWS (1975)
The most influential thing about Jaws actually came about by accident. Twenty-five-year-old Steven Spielberg was directing his first big-budget picture, but the cost was getting out of control. The mechanical shark (nicknamed Bruce, after Spielberg's lawyer) kept breaking down, and there wasn't enough money to fix it. So Steven had to show the shark as little as possible. As a result, the audience doesn't even get to see the whole shark for the first 90 minutes.
What happened? It made the film better. The suspense built up so strongly the first hour, that it ended up scaring audiences more that they couldn't see the shark. The audience, like the citizens of the town the shark terrorizes, did not know what the monster looked like. The result: the first movie EVER to gross more than $100 million. And that's in 1975 disco-dollars.
Here's the lowdown: Amity Island is an island town where the citizens depend on tourist dollars brought in by summer beach-goers. But after a string of shark attacks, Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) and a fish expert (Richard Dreyfuss) realize that the only way to keep the sea safe is to kill the shark.
Jaws also benefited from marketing genius. Based on Peter Benchley's bestseller, it was released over the summer, thus creating the "summer blockbuster" phenomenon. When marketing departments realized that kids would return to see films again and again over the summer, studios began dumbing down their summer fare, hoping to attract the kiddies. Once Star Wars came around in 1977, there was no turning back.
Notes:
- First film to break the $100 million barrier
- Biggest money-maker of all time until 1977's Star Wars
- Nominated for 4 Academy Awards (including Best Picture)
- Won 3 Academy Awards: Best Score, Sound, Editing
- Won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Movie
- Placed #48 on the American Film Institute's "100 Greatest Movies" List
