'Jaws' celebrates 30 years of scares

Steven Spielberg was 27 years old when he made "Jaws." He was hired on pure faith by the producers, and not since someone put Alexander the Great in charge have the top brass possessed keener foresight. Alexander was nothing if not a populist, and one who knew how to spin straw into gold with the best of them. Spielberg is not much different, conquering the film world with equal grace, all the while making films the people want to see (and never cheapening the final product in the process). Back in the day and with a shoestring budget, he made a film about a killer shark terrorizing a tiny New England town, a seemingly insurmountable task on paper, into an enduring piece of pop cinema that's shown at least 10 times a week on television to this day.\n"Jaws," released initially in 1975, ended up becoming the first honest summer blockbuster movie, and while that whole overhyped genre has fed the public some real stinkers in the last three decades, Spielberg should be given honest credit for making many studio execs feel a little less shaky about bankrolling projects helmed by virtual unknowns. As is made painfully clear throughout the extras in this set, "Jaws" was a serious bitch to make, and production was almost shut down on many occasions, making the eventual outcome of the film as a modern masterpiece all the more amazing.\nThose who already own the 25th Anniversary one-disc of "Jaws" need not feel that Universal has unleashed the film again just to boost cash flow. Despite containing the majority of the same features as the 25th Anniv., this new set includes a two-hour never-before-seen-in-its-entirety making of the film doc, featuring unearthed interviews with the notoriously tight-lipped Spielberg (who, I am convinced, will never record a commentary track). Also bundled with the set is a commemorative 60-page photo journal, and, for the first time on disc, the original theatrical mono audio track which stays true to the first-run sound of the film, and finds John Williams' iconic orchestral score at its nightmarish best.\nThirty summers after "Jaws" made its initial splash, Spielberg is poised to overtake the national consciousness again, this time by way of the malicious aliens of "War of the Worlds." In the doc on disc two of this set, the director reminisces "When I first hear the word Jaws, I think of a period in my life when I was much younger... and I think because I was younger, I was more courageous, or I was more stupid. I'm not sure which." It would be the first major success in a storied career filled with courageous decisions and unforgettable images.