Jaws

Peter Benchley's pulp bestseller is here turned into the scariest sea saga ever filmed, with Steven Spielberg creating maximum suspense in the first dark moments and then maintaining the momentum with brilliant sleight-of-hand direction. The tale of a great white shark terrorising a New England resort community and the modern-day Captain Ahab (Robert Shaw) employed to kill it is now a classic of the suspense thriller genre. It's also credited with creating the summer blockbuster craze that Hollywood pins its financial hopes on every year. John Williams's Oscar-winning music and the excellent performances of Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss add to the ingeniously mounted tension that cleverly plays on all our deepest primeval fears.