“Jaws” left an indelible mark on American culture 50 years ago, in part with its iconic movie poster image. Creative Commons license

Sh- Sh- Shark!

It’s been 50 years, and we still haven’t found a bigger boat.

“Jaws” was released in the summer of 1975. The Steven Spielberg film was based on the novel by Peter Benchley. Roy Scheider stars as Martin Brody, the newly hired police chief of Amity Island. His first public emergency is a shark attack. Before he can even say Fourth of July, he has a full-blown panic on his hands as the mysterious killer shark stakes a claim on the waters off the island.

Actually, if you really need a synopsis of the film, just skip it and go see “Jaws” when it’s re-released in theaters this summer for the anniversary. If you could find it showing at a drive-in — especially one near a beach — that would truly be epic.

While we are on the plot, the quintessential moment — all pun intended — in the film is Quint’s monologue about the USS Indianapolis. Delivered beautifully by Robert Shaw, it is a powerfully gripping moment with perfect balance and timing. By the end, we believe our Captain Ahab really did survive the Indianapolis, and that is why he is so obsessed with this great white shark — even if the facts don’t line up with the film.

But, the plot isn’t what is important here. What is important is how immediately “Jaws” changed the way many people enjoyed the ocean, and the impact it has had on American life and culture for half a century.

First, the film had a profoundly negative impact on sharks. Sharks were hunted for sport, and their populations declined dramatically. Spielberg told BBC Radio in 2022 that he regretted the negative impact “Jaws” had on the shark population.

“That’s one of the things I still fear — not to get eaten by a shark, but that sharks are somehow mad at me for the feeding frenzy of crazy sport fishermen that happened after 1975,” Spielberg said in that interview. “I truly, and to this day, regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film.”

But the film also had an impact on how people felt about going to the beach.

Alex Anzar was 8 years old and living on the California coast when “Jaws” came out. He still has profound memories related to seeing it in the theater. Admittedly, at least one of those would have been common to most 8-year-old boys, regardless of living by the ocean.

“I’ll just be honest. That opening scene of Jaws… they filmed it just right so you could almost see that that lady was naked,” Alex said. “I’m an 8-year-old boy, and I have an 11-year-old brother. So we’re like what is happening with this lady swimming in the water. That was the initial thing. Even in the movie posters you can see that.

“My brother and I went and saw it at the movie theater. You are completely transfixed trying to figure out what is happening to this lady in the water. And the surprise of her getting pulled under, and you don’t know what’s happening to her, except for the blood boiling and that fin. And then that music. The music was obviously extremely captivating.”

He still remembers what it was like to swim in the ocean before and after seeing the movie.

“Before that, we were all avid swimmers because we had a big pool in our back yard,” he said. “So I grew up swimming. My folks didn’t care what we did in the ocean because we could all swim good. So we would all swim way out there, and it was nothing for us to feel fish swimming around underneath us kicking around in the waves. It was never a big deal.”

But that was before “Jaws.”

“After the movie, you’re trying to be tough and think to yourself, because you know it’s a movie. You don’t put too much attention to it until you get to that three-foot deep mark in the ocean, where you can’t see what’s going on in the water. I can best describe it to you as that heat that comes over you when you are extremely nervous or anxious… I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, something just rubbed against my leg.’ And the first thoughts are, ‘Oh, it’s Jaws! I am backing out of this water.’”

But remember, the beach and the movie were both family affairs for Alex, which just made it worse.

“I had older siblings, and they would tease us to get deeper and deeper in the water. It was so scary. I remember I would be wishing or praying that my mom or dad would say, ‘Get back in here.’ But they never did. So we’d be out there, and everything looked like Jaws at that point. You’d see things in the water. You’d see fish that were longer than you in the water. Before we never thought about it or worried about it. It just got to the point where it wasn’t enjoyable anymore. And you could tell. The whole beach was shallow. And we’re talking thousands and thousands of people, and nobody would go deep in the water after that.”

For Alex, it was like the whole ocean got a little smaller.

“Especially over the years, as things happened in San Francisco,” he said. “People were getting got by great whites. When you look at it on a little map, it’s just right there. It’s the same beach, basically. It wasn’t. It was 100 or 200 miles away. But still you’re thinking that shark can swim this far without too much problem. It was an amazing thing.”

And then there was the “Jaws” installation at Universal Studios.

“When they first came out with the ‘Jaws’ ride at Universal Studios, I am getting close to 12 or 13,” Alex recalled. “Right before we moved to Arizona, my parents took us to Universal Studios because of the ‘Jaws’ ride. That was the big thing. I remember thinking with my brother, ‘We’re ready. We know what ’s going to happen.’ I mean everyone knows what’s got to happen on this ride. You think that you’re ready for it. It’s animatronic. You know all this stuff about it because you’ve been to Disneyland a million times and been through Pirates of the Caribbean.

“That thing was the scariest thing on the planet. As fake and rubbery as I can see it now in retrospect, that thing looked real when you’re on the ride. It looked so real I can remember my brother and me crawling into my mom’s underarms just tucking up right underneath her as fast as we could. And I was 12 years old at the time. You couldn’t help it. It had that much power and impact.”

Alex said the familiarity intensified the fear.

“It was super scary,” he said. “To see that kind of boat and that kind of dock — seeing all that kind of stuff you see in the movie is very normal to see in California. This boat looks like that boat. You start doing all this comparison. Before you know it, you’re mind’s playing tricks on you. And there are see lions all over the place. Those sea lions look like sharks. It’s only that fin that makes the difference.”

Ah, yes. The fin.

“Of course there’s always that idiot, doing the thing with the fin,” Alex said as he recalled pranksters who would recreate a scene in the movie with a cardboard fin. “And man, you want to talk about the lifeguards. The lifeguards were brutal to those guys. It was always a teenager out there with one of those fins and a snorkel, scaring the life out of people. Like when you see the wave at a stadium, you’d see that with people waving sideways getting out of the water when the guy with the snorkel was going by. The lifeguards would go out there and wrangle theses kids. They were ruining it for people.”

It’s been 50 years, and you still can name that song in two notes. And it still takes you back to that place where you became concerned about what was swimming in the ocean with you, and whether you had a big enough boat. That’s why “Jaws” will forever hold a spot in Scooter’s Summer Drive-In Americana Film Festival, which would be a cool thing, if it were real.