During this cold October month, many of us would rather be relaxing on a hot beach. Well, for our Halloween Book Versus Film, let’s head to the sun-kissed sands of Amity, off the east coast of America. Hands up who’s brave enough to go into the water …? Let’s go!

Amity, a Long Island seaside resort, is looking forward to vast summer crowds when a less welcome visitor appears off its coastline. At first nobody wants to believe a great white shark is behind the death of a lone swimmer, but when more people are killed, the truth cannot be ignored. However, if their Police Chief thinks the predator in the water is his biggest enemy, he’s reckoned without the town’s Mayor, who will do anything to keep the beaches open…

Police Chief Martin Brody is 41, and has always lived in Amity. He met and married his wife Ellen 15 years ago and they have three children. His community matters to him, so he’ll suppress bad news if it’ll adversely impact the town’s economy.

Of greater concern, though, are the lives of those living in and visiting Amity, so when the first shark victim is discovered, Brody wants the beaches closed. It’s an unpopular decision, but one he’s willing to resign over. Brody can lash out when feeling threatened, but he’s principled and brave. Whilst he can swim, poorly, he’s been afraid of the creatures that inhabit the sea since childhood. And the thing stalking the coastline is his fear magnified to over twenty feet.

Quint is the skipper of the Orca, a chartered fishing vessel. In his fifties, he tolerates other people only when he must. Quint delights in provocation, such as demonstrating how a shark can be made to eat itself, and the more extreme the reaction the happier he is. He’s hunted sharks before, and calls them “dumb garbage buckets”, but his latest quarry will turn out to be anything but stupid.

Matt Hooper is in his mid-twenties, an Ichthyologist (a zoologist specialising in fish life) from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He’s grown up loving the water, and used to spend summers at nearby Southampton. Hooper comes from a wealthy family, and though outwardly he’s the opposite of Quint, they both show little regard for others. This will do more than rock the proverbial boat aboard the Orca, for Hooper has admitted to having a crush on one of his elder brother’s girlfriends from fifteen years back… a girlfriend who is now Brody’s wife.

Ellen Brody is 36, and a volunteer at nearby Southampton hospital. Growing up, Ellen was part of the New York set that visited Long Island each summer, but that ended when she married Brody. It didn’t bother her before, but since her youngest child started school, she feels lonely. Ellen yearns for her former social circle, so the sudden reappearance of a link to her past – the kid brother of an old boyfriend, now a handsome young man – may be just what she needs.

Freelance journalist Peter Benchley was struggling to make ends meet when, in 1971, he had a meeting with Thomas Congdon, Doubleday’s editor. Congdon liked his proposal for a novel about a beach resort terrorised by a shark. Benchley had been fascinated by them since childhood and met legendary shark hunter Frank Mundus in the 60s. Whilst Benchley denied Mundus was the inspiration behind Quint, many who knew the fisherman confirmed it was so – and Mundus did use Quint’s technique of employing barrels to help kill a shark.

The completed manuscript took over 18 months. Many changes were made at Congdon’s request, including inserting an affair between Ellen and Hooper. But even with the book finished, one thing was still missing. It didn’t have a title.

None of Benchley’s working titles (The Stillness in the Water, Leviathan Rising) seemed to fit. He and Congdon brainstormed numerous ideas, but with publication literally moments away, they could only agree on one word they both liked: Jaws.

Amity is situated on Long Island’s east coast, rather than being its own islet, as in the film. The book also features two shark protagonists, though only one – the fish in the water – appears on the page. Tino Russo is a New York loan shark with Mafia connections. He once ‘helped out’ Amity’s Mayor Larry Vaughan, and now exerts great influence over the town’s real estate. This is the reason Vaughan is reluctant to let the beaches close, and why Brody receives strange phone calls, and their family pet is killed.

Harry Meadows, the local paper’s editor, is the one who summons Matt Hooper to town, and uncovers the links between Vaughan and Russo. Meadows initially wants the beaches kept open too, but eventually sides with Brody and uses the paper to clear the Chief’s name after he’s blamed for more deaths.

He and Brody are at odds from the start, and Hooper has no qualms about sleeping with Ellen (arguably, he’s the book’s third shark). Brody is soon suspicious, though it’s never brought to the surface – unlike poor Hooper’s body, clasped between the great white’s jaws after discovering his expensive shark cage wasn’t worth the money.

Despite the friction between the main characters, the tension is somewhat lacking. Once Ellen decides to seduce Hooper there’s barely any will-they-won’t-they before they’re metaphorically lighting the post-coital cigarette. This undervalues Ellen’s character, reducing her to a plot device for creating animosity between the two men. Likewise, Vaughan’s Mafia connection, and the threats to Brody and his family, feel like a distraction. Whilst Ellen and Vaughan do see the error of their ways, there’s no feeling of redemption.

Brody’s fear of aquatic life barely features, surprising considering it’s his main ‘belly of the beast’ story arc. The one character whose salvation works is Meadows – the most likeable in the book, possibly because Benchley was a journalist too.

But if the land-based storylines seem flat, the book really comes alive out at sea. The scenes of the shark tracking six-year-old Alex Kintner on his rubber raft, or homing in on a youth who’s gone swimming for a dare (not in the film) are terrific. The final third, set mostly aboard the Orca, is so well written you can almost smell the sea-salt, and the research into sharks and hunting adds to the credibility. It reminded me of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park: light on characterisation, but incredibly deep on detail.

Whilst reviews were mixed, with many criticising the characters, even its detractors agreed the book was a fast-paced, tightly plotted read. It did have its supporters too, not least the general public.

Released in February 1974, the hardback spent 44 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. It sold 125,000 copies – amazing for a debut novel – but even that was eclipsed by the paperback. When the film opened the following year, the book had already sold 5.5 million copies in America alone. Today, worldwide sales are estimated at over 20 million.

Film producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown quickly paid $175,000 for the rights, which included a screenplay by its author…

Steven Spielberg was attracted to Jaws by its parallels with his first feature, Duel, for both show a seemingly unstoppable force targeting the everyman (Spielberg even included a reference: the destruction of the truck is the shark’s death cry). Before signing on, he stated his desire to change the material preceding the shark hunt but stay faithful to the Orca scenes, although the days aboard shrunk from four to two.

After Benchley delivered his drafts, several other writers came aboard. These included Howard Sackler, John Milius, and Carl Gottlieb, an acquaintance of Spielberg, and the only one to share a writing credit with Benchley. Gottlieb wrote most of the final script during the shoot, often discussing with the director and cast each evening about what the next day’s scenes should include.

Spielberg met Roy Scheider at a party and told him how difficult he was finding it to cast Brody, at which point – to the director’s delight – Scheider volunteered his services. Brody became an island outsider, having recently moved there from New York, and only then discovering he was aquaphobic (credited to Howard Sackler, who made Brody terrified of water rather than the creatures inhabiting it).

For Hooper, Spielberg’s friend George Lucas recommended Richard Dreyfuss, following their collaboration on American Grafitti. Dreyfuss initially turned it down, but changed his mind after watching himself in another film (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) and thinking he was so bad he’d best get a new role quick! Although the character was already different to the book, it was further rewritten with Dreyfuss in mind.

The producers suggested Robert Shaw for Quint, having just worked with him on The Sting, though Shaw needed some persuading (by his wife, Where Eagles Dare actress Mary Ure, and his secretary). He based his performance on local fisherman Craig Kingsbury (who appears as ill-fated Ben Gardner).

Quint in the film is quite gregarious, though he still likes winding people up. His singing of the shanty Spanish Ladies is a reference to Moby Dick, where it’s sung by Captain Ahab’s doomed crew. One new aspect, and the cause of much debate, is Quint’s reason for hating sharks. He’s now a World War 2 veteran, having served on the USS Indianapolis – a real ship that sunk in shark-infested waters in 1945 – and the writing of this scene may hold the record for the highest number of people claiming credit. But according to Spielberg, Sackler had the idea and wrote a few paragraphs, Milius expanded it to around a dozen pages, then Shaw (also a gifted playwright) rewrote it into the final version.

As well as making the characters more likeable, Spielberg focused purely on the shark storyline. The affair subplot was axed, in part because it would affect the camaraderie on board the Orca. The downside is a reduced roll for Ellen (Lorraine Gary, who would get more screentime in Jaws 2, and earn Final Girl status in Jaws: The Revenge), but in her few scenes she brings a warmth and wit entirely lacking from the book. Mayor Vaughan (Murray Hamilton) loses his ‘Mafia partner’ and Larry Meadows (played by the film’s screenwriter, Carl Gottlieb) barely features.

The film’s most famous line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat“, was already a crew mantra, frustrated at the budget constraints (one of the equipment vessels was too small), and Scheider cleverly ad-libbed this into the shoot.

Due to technical problems limiting Bruce the mechanical shark’s appearances, Spielberg had to invent new ways to suggest its presence. Fortunately, the book came to his aid for the hunt, with those floating barrels being a terrific visual cue (the destroyed pier earlier in the film serves the same purpose), and plenty of shark’s-eye-view shots add to the tension.

But the real star is John Williams’ incredible score. In much the same way that Bernard Hermann’s music helped Hitchcock ‘show’ the Psycho shower murder, Williams’ simple alternating E- and F-note motif (possibly the most recognisable film music ever) is so terrifyingly effective that many people didn’t realise the shark isn’t properly seen until 62 minutes into the film.

One final major change is the ending. Benchley has the shark die of extensive wounds (it’s last seen spiralling into the dark, following Quint’s Ahab-like death), but Spielberg wanted something more satisfying, so suggested a scuba-tank exploding in its mouth for a more cathartic, audience-pleasing finale.

The cast are superb, with Scheider and Dreyfuss making us root for their characters, and Shaw stealing the film with his finest performance. Whilst Bruce isn’t the best practical effect, those few appearances are more effective.

There are some surprisingly funny moments (Brody surreptitiously checking his own appendectomy scar as Hooper and Quint boast about their shark-related wounds), and the scares – especially that floating head – still work. And the music is simply one of the greatest scores ever.

Reviews were overwhelmingly positive, with many singling Spielberg out for praise. Any criticism was usually reserved for the shark, re-enforcing the director’s decision to keep its appearances to a minimum.

The scheduled 55-day shoot lasted 159 days, and with the budget ballooning to between $7- and $12-million, Spielberg felt his career was over. However, producers Zanuck and Brown stood by him, and it opened on 20thJune 1975 across 450-plus screens. At the time that was a huge release, but the studio’s head cut this down from 900 screens to ensure it lasted all summer.

Jaws did that and more, becoming the highest grossing film until Star Wars, two years later – the first of three times Spielberg has achieved this.

Jaws is acknowledged with creating the summer blockbuster, the first high-concept feature to dominate the box office during the season when cinemas didn’t perform so well. Its advertising campaign, which relied heavily on television – rarely utilised until then – became the benchmark for movie marketing.

Its influence on future films is clear: not only was the idea of Alien sold to studios with the pitch “Jaws in space”, but also Jurassic Park (Spielberg again) and many other ‘creature features’ probably would not exist without it.

The downside was a misconception about sharks that continues to this day. Benchley became a conservationist as a result, and Spielberg expressed regret at the number of shark killings due to the public’s mistaken belief that they pose a threat to swimmers.

If the old adage about there always being more in the book is correct here, then so too is the one that states less is more. Whilst the novel is a deserved bestseller, the film wisely jettisons its subplots to concentrate on the battle between human and shark, and makes the relationship between Brody, Hooper and Quint the real heart of Jaws.

As such, the prize for landing the biggest fish goes to Steven Spielberg’s film.

BIO: Nick Jackson is a Leeds-based landlubber who has written numerous short stories for various anthologies, usually horror, though none have involved a shark. He would like to stake his claim as the writer of the USS Indianapolis scene, even though he was aged around two at the time, and if you’d given him a crayon, he’ll more likely have tried to eat it than write one of the greatest monologues ever. But he did do it, and he gave it to Captain Pugwash to deliver. Honest.