Swimming in open water was never the same after Steven Spielberg released his chilling creature feature Jaws (1975). The film follows a small-town police chief, a marine biologist and a shark hunter as they team up to stop a massive great white shark from terrorising the beachgoers of Amity Island.

The movie made a massive splash at the box office. With a modest budget of just $7 million (around $44m/£33m today), it grossed $261 million upon its original release. That’s a staggering $1.6 billion (£1.2bn) today – making it not only one of the scariest horror films ever made, but also the most commercially successful.

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