"It's been 35 years, but people are still scared to get into the water. That's the legacy of a two-hour movie released in June 1975 by a then little-known director called Steven Spielberg, and which turned the hitherto tranquil act of visiting the beach into a nerve-wracking pursuit which involved the humming, at ever increasing speed, of two musical notes: "dee-dum."
"The film, of course, was Jaws. And aside from forever poisoning our relationship with vast predatory fish, it also made an indelible impact on modern culture as the first ever Summer Blockbuster: the first movie to pass the milestone of making $100m at the box office, and the first to be marketed by a major Hollywood studio as a cultural event.
"Before Jaws, new films were typically released in a handful of cinemas, often on a Monday night, before widening to more screens if enough people turned up."