Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 he wades in the water. In 1974, writer Peter Benchley published "Jaws", a novel about a rogue great white shark that terrorizes the fictional coastal community of Amity Island. Chief of police Martin Brody, biologist Matt Hooper, and fisherman Quint hunt the shark after it kills four people. The novel was adapted as the film "Jaws" by Steven Spielberg in 1975. Spielberg's film makes reference to the events of 1916: Brody (Roy Scheider) and Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) urge Amity's Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) to close the beaches on the Fourth of July after the deaths of two swimmers and a
Jaws (franchise) for his work on the first film. The shark theme is used in all three sequels, a continuity that Williams compares to "the great tradition" for repeating musical themes in Hollywood serials such as Roy Rogers and The Lone Ranger. Alan Parker composed and conducted the score for "Jaws 3-D", while the final film was scored by Michael Small. The latter was particularly praised for his work, which many critics considered superior to the film. "Jaws" was the first film to use "wide release" as a distribution pattern. As such, it is an important film in the history of film