Blu-ray review: 'Jaws' Universal 100th Anniversary Edition

When those double bass fiddles sound the first two ominous notes on the soundtrack and John Williams’ throbbing minimalist theme gradually begins to quicken in tempo, everyone knows to look out for BRUCE!

Yes, Bruce. That’s the nickname director Steven Spielberg laid on the troublesome mechanical shark(s) that played the great white antagonist in “Jaws” (1975), and that’s

Widely considered the first summer blockbuster, establishing new methods of marketing high-concept action-adventure films aimed at attracting a very large mainstream audience, it was based on Peter Benchley’s runaway bestseller and written for the screen by Benchley and actor/writer Carl Gottlieb, both of whom had minor roles in the film.

The story is set in the fictional New England shore community of Amity, where a great white shark is attacking vacationing swimmers and threatening to destroy the town’s tourism trade to boot. Roy Scheider is the police chief, Richard Dreyfuss is the young ichthyologist and Robert Shaw is the salty and grizzled seaman who leads them on the hunt to destroy the murderous marine mammal. It all looks and sounds great in Blu-ray (six times the resolution of DVD, up-mixed to DTS-HD Master 7.1 sound), but diehard fans of the film will hungrily devour such bonus features as the new feature-length documentary “The Shark is Still Working: The Impact & Legacy of ‘Jaws’.”