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The phenomenon of Jaws began with the publication of a novel by Peter Benchley in January, 1974. A Newsweek reporter and sport diver, Benchley had long been fascinated by sharks and loosely based his story on a series of shark attacks off the New Jersey coast during the summer of 1916.

Based on a pulp novel about a human-eating great white shark written by Peter Benchley, who also collaborated on the screenplay, Jaws was Steven Spielberg’s second feature film. It was his first big commercial hit, arguably because it was able to exploit widespread fears about killer sharks. Like Spielberg’s television film Duel (1971), which pitted an ordinary traveling salesperson against an anonymous driver of a menacing truck, the plot line of Jaws centered on a similar menace—a shark—that stalked unsuspecting characters. Perverse and even absurd in its plot, characters, and situations, Jaws nonetheless had a strong visceral appeal, and its visual style set a different course for disaster films.