26 Years Ago In TIME

By Melissa August, Amanda Bower, Beau Briese, Rhett Butler, Kathryn Hoffman, Ellin Martens, Julie Rawe, Sora Song, Heather Won Tesoriero, Josh Tyrangiel

We're still catching our breath from Pearl Harbor and Tomb Raider, and Jurassic Park III is yet to come. But when TIME put Steven Spielberg's JAWS (just named No. 2 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best movie thrillers) on its cover in 1975, Hollywood was just discovering the summer action blockbuster:

"Jaws, which opens in 490 theaters this week, is part of a bracing revival of high adventure films and thrillers over the past few months. It is expensive ($8 million), elaborate, technically intricate and wonderfully crafted, a movie whose every shock is a devastating surprise. Like Earthquake, it takes a panic-producing disaster and shows how a representative cross section of humanity responds to it. Like The Exorcist, it deals with an essentially unknowable, therefore unpredictable and thoroughly spooky symbol of evil. Jaws promised to hit right in the old collective unconscious and to draw millions irresistibly to the box office. Start a mass-medium migration like that, its producers hope, and millions more will turn out just to see what all the excitement is about. After that, as they say in the trade, 'through the roof.'"

--TIME, June 23, 1975