On June 20, 1975, an up-and-coming young director named Steven Spielberg unleashed a little killer shark movie called Jaws that not only came to define what the summer movie season would become but also inspired a slew of movies about deadly water-based animals. As we celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary with a remastered re-release on Aug. 29, we thought it was a great time to revisit the creature features that followed in its wake.
The first several on this list came about immediately after the success of Jaws, as every studio and director in the land rushed to try and grab box office dollars from moviegoers hungry for more. Some were more successful than others. A lot depended on both the star power and the effectiveness of the monster special effects. A few even used real shark footage for that extra bit of verisimilitude.
In the ensuing decades, several other monstrous marine beast films have appeared, some as one-offs, some as franchises. Some were clearly satirical and meant to be funny, parodying the genre with wicked humor and lots of blood and guts, while others went the serious route and attempted straight horror. With that in mind, let’s go through 15 of these “killer fish” movies in chronological order. After you see Jaws in 4K, check out some of these movie-alikes on streaming or physical media and be prepared to awaken some long-dormant ocean phobias.
Richard Harris, Bo Derek, and Robert Carradine star in one of the first movies spawned from Jaws. Orcas, also unfairly called killer whales, are, in reality, social animals and part of the dolphin family, and zero recorded deadly attacks against humans in the wild have ever been recorded. That didn’t stop Academy Award-winning director Michael Anderson (Around the World in 80 Days) from tackling Orca anyway and giving the titular animal a revenge mission for the death of its mate and unborn calf. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there haven’t been many “bad dolphin” movies since.
(Photo by Courtesy Everett Collection)
John Huston, Shelley Winters, and Henry Fonda appear in this Italian (though filmed in the U.S.) production, featuring an evil corporation building an underwater tunnel that attracts an enormous octopus that doesn’t like the sound waves. Naturally, everyone who saw this rooted for the octopus. Though created to snatch some of that leftover Jaws money, Tentacles also bears a striking similarity to 1955’s It Came from Beneath the Sea.
The Jaws Sequels (1978-1987)
Minus the involvement of Spielberg but including some of the actors and actresses from the previous movies, Universal tried very hard to replicate the success of Jaws with three increasingly silly sequels. In the original, the shark barely appeared on screen for two reasons: to build suspense in a less-is-more fashion, and because the mechanical shark didn’t work very well. Technology hadn’t improved much by the sequels, but the filmmakers showed the shark much more anyhow and upped the blood and guts factor, too. Michael Caine, who starred in the fourth and last film, the notoriously poorly reviewed Jaws the Revenge (the one set at SeaWorld), famously quipped of his involvement in the movie: “I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it was terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.”
The Piranha Franchise (1978-2012)
One of Joe Dante’s earliest films would contain much of the biting satire that he became known for with movies like The Howling and Gremlins. 1978’s Piranha is a straight-up parody of Jaws, with Kevin McCarthy at his scene-chewing best as a mad scientist who unleashes a school of mutated piranha on an unsuspecting populace.
Piranha II: The Spawning would follow three years later, notable as James Cameron’s feature debut (what is it with fish movies and launching legendary careers?). Many years later, Piranha would return in a 1995 remake, followed years later by another remake and sequel, the latter two of which greatly amped up the humor, violence, and nudity.
(Photo by ©Associated Film Distribution)
Mystery Science Theater 3000 tackled a few underwater terror movies in its day, such as Lords of the Deep (1989), Blood Waters of Doctor Z (1971), and the Roger Corman classic The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1958), but their most recent effort is one of the best and gives this article its name: Killer Fish, satirized in Season 12 on Netflix. Another Italian production, Killer Fish is best described as a Spaghetti Horror (as opposed to a Spaghetti Western), in which the titular fish are piranha (again) that terrorize a team of diamond thieves. Once again, the fish are the heroes. Fun fact: The director of this film, Antonio Margheriti (credited here as Anthony M. Dawson), is the fake name given by Eli Roth’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds when the Basterds infiltrate the Nazi film premiere posing as Italian filmmakers.
Skipping ahead to the 1980s and the realm of bigger budgets, this one stars a fish-like mutant creature designed by Oscar-winning special effects wizard Stan Winston… and Peter Weller (RoboCop), Daniel Stern (Home Alone), and Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters). The crew also mutates into creatures similar to the original leviathan, thanks to some equally gross and stylish practical effect sliminess. There were many other sci-fi underwater movies out around this time, like The Abyss, and Leviathan is often compared to the next one on this list for this very reason.
The co-creator of the Friday the 13th franchise, Sean S. Cunningham, helms and co-produces this underwater horror entry which stars Taurean Blacque from Hill Street Blues, Greg Evigan (“B.J” from B.J. and the Bear and Danny Zuko in Broadway’s Grease), and Cindy Pickett (the mom from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), versus a unique creature: a huge eurypterid (aka sea scorpion) called a Depladon. Sounds terrifying! DeepStar Six refers to an underwater military installation crewed by jarheads who blow up an underwater cavern, letting loose the huge Depladon. The creature was designed by Oscar-winning special effects artist Chris Walas (The Fly) and makes the whole thing worth seeing.
(Photo by ©Buena Vista)
The recently departed Treat Williams (who, incidentally, also played Danny Zuko on Broadway) and Famke Janssen of the X-Men films) head up this tale of mercenaries hunted by what appear to be giant sea worms, only later revealed to be tentacles belonging to an enormous, miles long deep-sea creature, the Octalus. Deep Rising is worth catching for the Industrial Light & Magic special effects alone. Stephen Sommers, the director, went on to do The Mummy the following year.
This cult classic thriller sees scientists face off against huge, genetically engineered mako sharks. Anyone who saw this will remember one infamous scene in particular: Samuel L. Jackson gives a memorable and rousing call-to-action to rally the scientists against the huge, intelligent killer sharks, only to be instantly and messily devoured in a huge jump scare. Stream Deep Blue Sea just for that one scene.
As mentioned in the intro, Open Water is one of the shark horror films that uses real shark footage and behavior to scare (and scar) audiences. This one also happens to be based on a true story, in which a couple on a scuba diving adventure are stranded in shark-infested waters when their boat crew accidentally abandons them. The true-to-life aspect of this one and the real sharks (not to mention the fact that the writer, director, and producer are all scuba divers) make this feel almost like a found-footage survival movie. Those with a fear of sharks need not apply.
The Sharknado Franchise (2013-2018)
Shark movies go very, very silly as the production studio known as The Asylum — famous mostly for “mockbusters,” aka low-budget knockoffs of popular blockbuster movies — dives headfirst into the killer water animal genre. The Sharknado series, which consists of six SyFy original films with subtitles like The 4th Awakens and Global Swarming, is known for bringing back aged but familiar faces to either get eaten, be tornadoed, or survive against the titular dual threat. Look for Tara Reid, Vivica A. Fox, Bo Derek, Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray, Frankie Muniz, Jerry Springer, and David Hasselhoff, just to name a few, but be prepared for a pre-allegation cameo by Subway Jared in Sharknado 2: The Second One (they cut him out of the third one, appropriately subtitled Oh Hell No!).
If you’re looking for Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, you’re in the wrong place. This is, in fact, another survival horror shark movie, featuring a spectacular performance from Blake Lively as a surfer who faces off solo against a very angry and single-minded shark. Instead of actual footage, the shark monster in The Shallows is done using quite effective CGI, which animal rights groups rightly prefer these days to award the all-important “No Animal was Harmed” badge to the movie.
The Meg Films (2018, 2023)
The Meg duology is frankly preposterous, but with the right mindset, it can also be a whole lot of mindless action fun. In the first one, it’s Jason Statham at his Statham-est versus an enormous prehistoric megalodon. In the second, he and his fellow undersea explorers have to contend with not one, but three new Megs (one of whom is sort of a frenemy), plus a few other monstrous deep sea beasts, and of course Statham uses a helicopter blade to take down the alpha. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
Underwater didn’t get glowing reviews, but Kristen Stewart knows her way around a thriller, and she’s fantastic in this picture as a mechanical engineer who faces off against several unfamiliar humanoid creatures and one very large underwater monster that looks like Cthulhu. Naturally, she takes it upon herself to make a last stand. Watch for the alternate ending found only on the DVD and Blu-Ray.
What’s worse than facing off against a shiver of sharks (the shark name for a school)? Facing off against a shiver of sharks and a serial killer, all of which give Dangerous Animals its name. This American-Australian co-production is directed by horror expert Sean Byrne (The Devil’s Candy) and stars Hassie Harrison (Yellowstone) as a drifter who is abducted by a serial killer (Jai Courtney) whose M.O. is to feed his female victims to sharks. What could have been a simple, ho-hum thriller is elevated by a strikingly unhinged performance by Jai Courtney and some pretty memorable shocks, making this the latest in a long line of summer movies that make us second-guess heading to the beach.
The 50th Anniversary Re-Release of Jaws hits theaters on August 29, 2025.
Thumbnail image by ©Warner Bros.