Thanks to the horror-centric streaming platform Shudder, fans of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 horror classic Jaws can dive into a splendid horror marathon with a collection of newly added creature features available on the streamer. These include the animal and aquatic-based horror movies Lake Placid, Crawl, Cujo, Orca, and The Pack. Any one of these horror films is a great companion piece to Jaws, and as a collection, they all make for a monstrous horror marathon.
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1999’s Lake Placid centers on a crocodile terrorizing the denizens of a sleepy town in northern Maine, devouring any and all prey that dares to enter the town’s quiet lake. 2019’s Crawl also features crocodiles as its underwater predators during a hurricane in southern Florida, with Haley Keller (Kaya Scodelario) trying to rescue her trapped father Dave (Barry Pepper) while a swarm of crocodiles hunt for prey in the flooded town. Both Lake Placid and Crawl use Jaws‘ template of tension and keeping an underwater monster hidden from view until just the right time to reveal it to great effect.
1983’s Cujo, based upon Stephen King’s eponymous novel, brings its menace onto the land, with Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace) and her son Tad (Danny Pintauro) trapped in their broken down car on a scorching hot day with the titular rabies-afflicted St. Bernard trying to get to them. Additionally, 1977’s Orca centers upon an Orca whale seeking revenge for the slaying of his pregnant mate at the hands of the ruthless Captain Nolan (Richard Harris). Released in 1977 on the heels of Jaws‘ success, Orca has often been heralded as one of the best Jaws-style horror movies about killers sea animals.
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2016’s The Pack focuses upon its own killer animal menace in the form of a pack of feral dogs, with a family in Australia seeking refuge from the pack in a farmhouse. Like Jaws, Lake Placid, The Crawl, Cujo, Orca, and The Pack all focus upon the horror that can be found within nature itself, each devoted to a different kind of real-life animal in its natural habitat and the kind of terror each is capable of unleashing. In many ways, Jaws was instrumental in establishing the foundation of horror movies focused upon killer animals.
Despite its horribly troubled production (and in some unexpected ways, because of it), Jaws became the biggest box office hit of its era in 1975, along with Jaws launching the modern summer movie season. The constantly malfunctioning mechanical shark in Jaws in particular forced Spielberg to keep it out of view for most of the film, which ended up greatly heightening its effectiveness as a horror movie. With Jaws celebrating its 50th birthday this years, the film’s less-is-more approach is often found in horror movies centered on killer animals.
Whether set in the sea or on the land, the Jaws template of turning creatures found in nature into terrifying horror movie villains has provided a great and consistently reliable template for many horror movies ever since. With Jaws taking place during the Fourth of July holiday, it isn’t uncommon for Spielberg’s classic to be played on TV or revisited by fans this time of year. With the vast repository of horror movies that is Shudder, horror fans can also set up a chilling Jaws-style marathon with Lake Placid, The Crawl, Cujo, Orca, and The Pack.
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