The year is 1975 and I’m 13 years old, I don’t remember much about being 13 years old, probably blotted most of it out, 1970’s comprehensive schools weren’t the most exciting places to be, but I do remember my obsession with Jaws.

As a voracious reader I had devoured the book, and the prospect of a film was almost too much to bear. However, in those days we had to wait, and wait and wait.

Jaws was a phenomenon, becoming the first mega summer blockbuster when it opened across the United States in June 1975. I looked on with envy at the reports of queues round the block and their strange obsession with anything shark related. Americans were not only buying tickets to the film, they were also buying anything shark related, books, posters, even teeth. But here in dull grey old England we would have to wait until after Christmas. After Christmas? I could barely contain myself.

I read the book again, then I read the poster magazine that came out, with articles about the film and the stunning and now iconic one sheet poster on the reverse which quickly went up on my bedroom wall. So, I dug in and waited for Christmas to arrive. Having a dad who owns a cinema was going to give me all the access I could possibly want on Boxing Day when the film was due to be released in UK cinemas.

Then, disaster. CIC, who released Universal films in the UK were asking for a minimum of four weeks playing time (which would be illegal today) and 80% film hire. All of which was an anathema to my dad. As we were only a one screen cinema at the time, he really didn’t feel inclined to commit everything for a month to one film and at such outrageous film hire terms.

I was distraught. The grown up me understands it better, although four weeks of mega business surely would have outperformed a rerun of The Incredible Journey (1963) coupled with Song of The South (1946, which would be illegal today). He followed that with Peter Pan (1953) and then a week of The Towering Inferno (a relatively recent 1974). I love 70’s disaster movies almost as much as I love Jaws, but, come on!

There was no budging him, and I had to watch as pretty much every other cinema apart from our own started playing Jaws. My mum took pity and in early January, she took me and my brother to a packed out screening at the now closed ABC cinema in Eastbourne.

It was everything I had hoped and dreamed it would be. Exciting, scary and funny in equal measure. 500 people all jumping at once to Ben Gardner’s head, 500 jumping at once to the shark leaping up at Chief Brody chumming some of this shit. I was seduced by the charm of Mr. Hooper, like Ellen Brody was in the book, although Carl Gottlieb’s script had cut out all of those shenanigans. It was perfect in every way and I needed to see it again immediately.

Sadly, at 13 years old in early 1976 my options were limited and dad was showing no signs of caving on CIC’s terms. Sad times indeed.

It was my annual trip to my Nan’s that came to my rescue, she lived in Eastbourne and as luck would have it the ABC was still running Jaws. I’m not clear whether it was an uninterrupted run since January, but Eastbourne still had a strong summer season in those days and it was still packing in the locals and tourists. I would always go and stay with my Nan for two weeks in August and that is when I seized the opportunity to go and see Jaws every day, for two weeks.

You have to remember back then the chance to see a film multiple times was limited. No VHS or home entertainment, perhaps it would come on the telly in a few years, but that was it. Obviously, I had been born lucky and grew up with the opportunity to see many films in the cinema most of my contemporaries did not. (To be honest they probably didn’t care.) I saw all the greats of the American new wave in the cinema, Cuckoo’s Nest, Taxi Driver, Network and so on. They were mostly played to empty auditoriums, which really got up my dad’s nose. Except Cuckoo’s Nest, that always took money.

But for two weeks in Eastbourne in the summer of 1976 I went to see Jaws every day and it just got better every time I saw it. Each time I would see something new, and would start watching all the little details. The obvious stuff like the shooting stars or odd stuff like the way we can see through Mrs Kitner’s glasses when she confronts Chief Brody on the dock after her boy is gobbled up by the shark, the way there are several repeated shots of the same family in the water fleeing from the shark at different times. There were references that meant nothing, The Late Show, Cape Cod, Rhode Island?

I have to put my hand up and say that my uncle was a manager at the ABC, so I didn’t always have to pay, but all my spending money disappeared very quickly.

A glorious and unforgettable two weeks, and something, with the onward rush of puberty, I would never repeat.

Jaws however stayed with me in all sorts of ways. It became one of the first films I showed when I was learning to be a projectionist in the summer of 1977, also in Eastbourne at the now also defunct Tivoli cinema. I was putting it back in its cans one Thursday and went down to put reel 7 in the transit case and transport had already been. Somewhere out there is a 35mm print of Jaws with the last reel missing. Almost two years after its release, Jaws was still running in cinemas.

I remember well the first time it was on television in 1981, a full 6 years after its first release. I was working in the cinema in Uckfield and we were showing Escape to Victory, not the strongest title in the world, but that night nobody turned up at all because Jaws was on the telly. Amazing. There was a good deal of schadenfreude when we discovered TVS (the local ITV station) had lost sound for the first 20 minutes. Hilarious. Also, pan and scan with advert breaks? This is no way to watch one of the greatest films of all time.

We endured Jaws 2, and then Jaws 3D (ugh) and the final indignity of Jaws: The Revenge, but as soon as the sell through VHS became available, I bought it, and then again on DVD and then again on Blu Ray and now I have just bought it again on 4K blu ray. I know every creak and every line of dialogue, I know where every change over, or end of reel is, I could show it with my eyes shut. (I wish they would leave change over cues on the discs.)  I will never tire of it.

Even at 13, it was the film that made me understand how important pacing is, I loved how it would be loud and then quiet, how after the hysteria of the Tiger shark scene, Spielberg slows it right down all the way to the dinner scene in Brody’s house. The best example being the incredible single barrel chase followed by the eerie and quiet delivery of Quint’s now famous Indianapolis monologue, immediately followed by the shark thumping into the side of the Orca.

Maybe it’s my age, but this seems like a lost art, as the new Jurassic films demonstrate, start on 11 and just keep shouting until the end.

So, did we ever play Jaws in Uckfield? Yes, it finally played in September 1976, 9 months off date. It did well for the first week, because CIC were still insisting on at least two weeks, and it tanked the second week. I guess everyone in Uckfield had seen it.

Incredibly, we have been playing Jaws again this summer to packed houses in both Uckfield and Birmingham. I have just seen a performance through, and it’s so good to see it again with an audience after all these years. From the strange squally undersea sounds over the Universal logo all the way to the serene end credit music it still has the power to captivate. Its absolute proof of why cinema is the greatest invention of all time.