We’re midway through AMC’s month-long Halloween homage and I still don’t have cable. But the best horror movies aren’t dated on All Hallows’ Eve, nor do they include ghosts, ghouls, vampires, zombies, possessed little girls, demented dolls, Freddy or Jason.

There’s nothing all that awful about something that’s just not real. That thing from another dimension that goes bump in the night just doesn’t cut it when you’ve debunked your demons. Nothing lives under your bed or in your closet anymore.

The definition of horror roots in what’s truly terrifying. What really makes you squirm are palpable, visceral terrors that could happen to anyone. When you can see yourself in their shoes, that’s when you get the chills.

So that being said — remember that time you were at the beach and a big “thing” brushed against your leg?

Enter “Jaws.” The 1975 movie opens at a beach party with a bunch of hot-looking people drinking seaside as the sun goes down. Two girls splash out into the darkness, and while everyone knows not to swim after dark, man does that seem fun. A few giggles followed by a bigger gulp, and bam — we got ourselves a killer hook and an even bigger shark.

“Jaws” entertains in this manner the whole way through, continually giving the audience a patient portrayal of a small beach town with a big shark problem. There’s no big scare, there’s no crazy make up; just a cop, played by Roy Scheider, and a vet, played by Richard Dreyfuss, trying to find, hunt and kill an epically evil shark. On a completely un-horrific note, Scheider and Dreyfuss are extraordinary town hall heroes, but dreadfully dilapidated shark hunters that ultimately form a buddy relationship and swim off into the sunset, but damn, is their close encounter with the shark terrifying.

Spielberg goes to great lengths to truly scare you straight to the beach bar, by meticulously adding more and more to the lore of the great white. At first, a few local fishermen think they’ve reeled in the real guy, emptying everything from bikinis to license plates from the shark’s stomach.

For the most part, the shark attacks happen at night, preventing the audience from actually seeing blood drawn. You don’t see how big the Jaws actually are for an hour and a half, leaving the audience constantly wary of what lurks just beneath the surface. For the first two thirds of the movie, John Williams’ infamous score grabs more screen time than the shark it introduces, the tension building with each slide across the bass strings.

How cool is that? You don’t even see the beast for much of the movie, yet it’s so prominent in your head as a viewer because you know what it’s like to be in dangerous, dark and deep water.

If you haven’t seen “Jaws,” one, do you live under a rock? And two, I’m envious of you. My family used to vacation in Maine, but we’ve switched to Michigan after my little brothers first encountered “Jaws.”

I will forever cling to the fact that this is Steven Spielberg’s best movie. Don’t quote me, but I’d be willing to wager “Jaws” singlehandedly stopped a lot of American families from hitting the beach for the latter half of the 1970s. I don’t care who you are or how much you can bench — to this day, “Jaws” should scare your swim trunks straight off.

If I still haven’t swayed you to thinking sharks are scary, think about the impact Jaws has had on pop culture. Any time you hear that music, you immediately anticipate something menacing on screen. Jaws launched 4 sequels, and these days people seem pretty obsessed with the beasts of the deep, as Shark Week runs every summer on Discovery Channel.

“Jaws” broke the surface on June 20, 1975, its superbly natural shark leaving beach goers gasping for air each time they hit surf a little too hard on the boogie board. That shark is damn scary; leave the Book of The Dead on the shelf and double down on the Jaws of the deep if you’re up for a real scare.

Brian Hamlin is a junior communications and rhetorical studies major. His column appears weekly in Pulp. He can be reached at brhamlin@syr.edu.

Published on October 23, 2016 at 9:54 pm