Jaws 50th: All the Films ranked w Original Trailers

50 years ago, the summer blockbuster was invented.

The world came to know Steven Spielberg, and I sat in my parents station wagon at the Round-Up Drive In in Scottsdale, unable to take my eyes off the screen as John Williams music lurked around every corner.

What a summer. It was JAWS mania everywhere you turned.

As a 14 year old kid, I bought every game, devoured "The Jaws Log" making-of novel by Carl Gottlieb and saw the film many times in the theater, long before VHS players revolutionized home viewing.

The magic of the film remains untarnished, a testament to Spielberg's young genius and sheer talent. While the first sequel has its goofy charms, greatly enhanced by fond memories of the summer of 1978 in which it was released, the other sequels are prime evidence against sequels as a genre.

How do they all rank?

Let's take a look here, featuring different posters for each film that the most common versions that are found on the actual reviews at George At The Movies.

To kick our ranking off at the bottom, with a film that plumbs new depths of the sea for celluloid rock bottom we start with

4.Jaws: The Revenge

When people ask me what's the worst movie I've ever seen, JAWS: THE REVENGE always comes close or wins, certainly in the worst ten movies I've ever seen.

It's one of those movies you have to watch every ten years or so just to revel in how bad it is. So why is it so bad? A few examples:

* Lorraine Gary was OK as a small player in the original 2 films, but in the lead role here, she is so grating, so overly dramatic, all while sporting the absolute worst hairstyle ever seen by an actress in a major film. How did she get this role? (oh yeah, she was the wife of the President of Universal Studios)

* In one scene, the giant shark chases Michael Brody through a shipwreck, inexplicably going where he goes, even though Michael has to squeeze through tiny portholes and the shark is 35 feet long. What great continuity! What great editing!

* Even Michael Caine phones it in. He's been in some awful dreck, but here you can tell that he knows this is crap and he's just enjoying the Bahamas. Don't miss the scene where he swims 30 yards and comes onto the boat with dry clothes. Who was in charge on continuity on this film, Mr Magoo?

* How does the shark go nearly 3000 miles from Amity in New England to the Bahamas in just a couple weeks? Oh leave your common sense at the door, people!

* Of course, you cant talk about this waterlogged stinker without discussing the ending, in which the shark leaps out of the air and is speared on the end of the boat and then, for absolutely NO reason, explodes as if it was filled with dynamite. At least that's what I think happened. It's one of filmdom history's most muddled, poorly edited, filmed and executed conclusions, so you might have to guess for yourself.

Holy Shark Balls, this is ONE HORRIBLE movie and it sinks miserably to the ocean floor with a well deserved, capital F.

3.JAWS 3D

I would have loved to have been in the room when this movie got pitched to the Universal executives that green lit this piece of crap.

"OK, let's say the two sons of Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) are both grown up now and the first one, Mike (played by a very young Dennis Quaid) works at Sea World! The younger brother Sean lives in Colorado but comes to visit Mike in Florida. Sea World is about to open up a big new attraction of underwater tunnels just when the biggest Great White ever manages to sneak into the man made lagoon! The shark can chase pyramids of water skiers and guys with scuba tanks! Awesome!"

Shame on Universal for tarnishing the name of the JAWS franchise with this goofy, cheap, silly and needless sequel, JAWS 3D, unleashed upon an unsuspecting audience in 1983.

The director Joe Alves, was in charge of making the robot sharks for the first two films and he manages to turn all the actors into robots here, so at least he's consistent.

Louis Gossett Jr. fresh off his Oscar win for 'Officer and a Gentleman" is given almost nothing to do, but he manages to do it gratingly with the worst Cajun accent since Ernest Goes to Mardi Gras.

The special effects are horrible and WILL make you laugh out loud. They are even worse watching them in 2D.

Bess Armstrong is just horrific as Quaid's love interest and I was cheering for the shark to make her an appetizer the entire film.

Let this be known as the film in which the JAWS series "jumped the shark". I'll give it a D-. It's only saved from an F by the fact that the film series managed to get much worse in its next and final incarnation, JAWS: The Revenge.

2.Jaws 2

More than 45 years ago, the sequel to an all-time great thriller hit theaters!

Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water.....the summer of 1978 brought JAWS 2! I have such fond memories of seeing this with my cousins Tammy & Cindy in Ohio that summer, it will always have a special place in my movie memories. By FAR the best of the JAWS sequels (which is a hurdle an ant could jump over), Roy Scheider, Lorraine Gary and Murray Hamilton return from the original for another shark filled summer in Amity.

It's no JAWS, but it does manage to spark some of the same summer blockbuster energy thanks to Scheider's performance as a man who can't believe he's going through this again. I remember that we were all so hungry for more Jaws, three years after the original that audiences (including ours) embraced every shark scene with enthusiasm.

Director Jeannot Szwarc is no Steven Spielberg and it shows, but he does a decent job with a few suspenseful scenes. The scene with Tina & Eddie (and the shark) in their boat is very good.

The stunt work with the mechanical shark is pretty damn great and John WIlliams' music holds up very well in an all new music score featuring the classic JAWS theme.

Most of the young actor's acting is so bad I found myself rooting for the shark, but all in all (and gilded with fond memories) JAWS 2 is a 70's summer classic. It's $209 million box office on a $20 million budget guaranteed we would see JAWS 3, and that's when things REALLY started to smell fishy. As for JAWS 2, we'll give it B as a fun, guilty pleasure.

But of course, all the sequels were merely treading water compared to the original masterpiece, released 50 years ago today!

Jaws

It's so hard to believe that 50 years ago today, we saw JAWS at the drive-in during its opening weekend in 1975. To remember it all again, we just watched the digitally remastered JAWS on Blu-Ray and it looks excellent, with better sound than ever featuring DTS 7.1 completely remixed by archivists from the original tracks.

By now, we all know the story, but I had forgotten just how brilliantly the film is constructed.

We open with the now famous two note strains of cello by John Williams, ramping up to a full menacing pitch through the underwater credits.

Then we witness the first attack on Chrissy, meet Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) and his family and watch as Brody battles the single-minded mayor (Murray Hamilton) to close the beaches.

Enter shark expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and Shark Bounty Hunter Quint (the excellent Robert Shaw) and you have a movie firing on all cylinders. Young director Steven Spielberg shows all the style that would become his trademark, deftly not allowing us to see a full view of our shark until over an hour into the film.

Williams music is fantastic throughout and Bill Butler's photography is excellent, really popping in this remastered version of the print.

So many classic moments here, but my favorites are still the nighttime discovery of Ben Gardner's boat by Brody and Hooper, JAWS in the estuary on July 4th, the first barrel encounter at sea ("We're going to need a bigger boat.") and the classic final 15 minutes.

Robert Shaw famously wrote his haunting, well told story of The Indianapolis and his interaction with Scheider and Dreyfuss is stellar.

The mechanical shark rarely worked, but it's masterful how Spielberg uses shots of it sparingly, making it more powerful when you do finally see the beast.

In today's age of CGI and everything being on screen every moment with every nut and bolt of every Transformer explosion in our face (often boring) it's surprising how effective Spielberg's approach is throughout.

JAWS still holds up as 124 great movie minutes, one of the best thrillers in movie history and a perfect A+.

One of my Top 10 films of all time.

What are your JAWS memories from the first time you saw this film classic?

One thing is certain, we all remember the first time we heard those quiet cello notes of John Williams score, the first hint of the thrills to come.