Netflix Is Losing The Greatest ’70s Movie Of All Time

If you’re somehow not familiar with the plot of this iconic 1975 film, Jaws is a movie about a police chief of a summer resort town who must face down something scarier than any criminal. When the area is threatened by a ravenous Great White Shark that loves to snack on tasty tourists, the area’s top cop must team up with a marine biologist and a shark hunter. They make for an amazing team, but it soon becomes clear it will take plenty of luck on top of their skills if they are to overcome this underwater invader and escape with their lives intact.

One of the reasons that Jaws is such a great movie is that it was directed by Steven Spielberg. He may be a household name now, but this was only the second theatrical film for the legendary director. In fact, Jaws helped create the legend because Spielberg effectively created the summer blockbuster thanks to the success of this thrilling film.

Of course, a Spielberg film is only as good as its cast, and the director was fortunate enough to have a stellar cast for Jaws. Roy Schneider plays the everyman cop in over his head in a fight against a Great White Shark, and Richard Dreyfuss plays the marine biologist whose info may turn the tide in their favor. Rounding out the core cast is Robert Shaw, whose shark hunter has a speech that is guaranteed to leave you speechless.These days, those actors are rightfully considered Hollywood heavyweights, but at the time Jaws was filming, they were relatively unknown. This was intentional because Spielberg thought more famous faces would have been distracting. Ironically enough, Spielberg himself was even more unknown than his actors, and he tried to back out of the film because he worried that between Jaws and his previous film Sugarland Express, he’d be typecast as a “shark and truck director.”

Spielberg tried to get out of directing Jaws, but Universal Pictures flexed their contract rights to keep him on board. To make the 26-year-old director feel better, producer David Brown consoled Spielberg that “after [Jaws], you can make all the films you want.”

These words proved prophetic: the success of Jaws made Steven Spielberg the hottest director in Hollywood, and he’d spend the coming decades helming some of the biggest films in the industry, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and Schindler’s List.

Financially speaking, Jaws was a major hit: against a low budget of $9 million, the movie earned a staggering $476.5 million at the box office. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an impressive critical rating of 97 percent, and its audience rating is 90 percent. That made Jaws a success across the board as it impressed critics and general audiences around the globe.

If you’d like to see what the fuss is all about, or you just want to return to the movie that made you scared to “go in the water again,” you can stream Jaws on Netflix through December 31. With its combination of thrills, chills, and spills, it’s the kind of blockbuster with a little something for everyone. Just be warned that after watching, you’re going to find yourself saying “I think we need a bigger boat” at least a dozen times a day.