Jaws

Steven Spielberg made a thriller in 1975 about an enormous great white shark with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. John Williams' musical motif builds tension frame by frame toward a cathartic finale - and it is precisely this interplay of image and music that makes Jaws a textbook example of the genre.

The story unfolds in the sunny coastal town of Amity, where a series of mysterious deaths convinces the local police chief Brody that a shark is behind it all. No one believes him, so he sets out to sea with two companions to stop the predator on its own territory.

Spielberg also embedded a clear message about human self-centeredness and the subordination of everything to business - nature collects its due, quite literally.