The Biggest Scare In Jaws Was Literally Filmed In A Swimming Pool

Every movie fan has core memories of the moments they were truly scared by movies growing up. For me, watching classic horror movie flop "Nightbreed" at age 10 probably wasn't the best idea. Witnessing an entire family slain by some wretched hellspawn before seeing a man cut his own face off and grip chunks of his own flesh while being subdued by hospital staff is now forever etched in my cortex. But before I scarred my young mind for good with Clive Barker's nasty little horror fantasy — and before I even knew what a horror movie was — Steven Spielberg provided my, and an entire generation's, first major movie scare.

In fact, he managed to provide a whole slate of scares with 1975's "Jaws." So effective at upsetting audiences was this inaugural blockbuster that an early screening of "Jaws" had one audience member vomiting. By the time I was a kid in the early '90s, there was still a palpable "Jaws"-induced fear among adults, one which I quickly came to know when I was allowed to watch the movie for myself.

Aside from the ambient level of fear I remember from that first viewing, the most viscerally shocking moment — the one which formed a core memory — was when that damn head floated out of the submerged boat. It might not be one of the greatest moments in "Jaws," but the scene in which Richard Dreyfuss' Matt Hooper dives to investigate the half-sunken ship of fishermen Ben Gardner (played by real fisherman Craig Kingsbury), only for the long-dead Gardner's head to emerge from the underside is surely many people's first experience of a jump scare. It was the moment "Jaws" veered into full-on horror territory, and I think it's fair to say this scene remains a significant moment in horror history, even if watching it as an adult doesn't quite have the same impact — especially when you know the key moment was shot in a swimming pool.

Knowing how and when a scene was shot can sometimes be a deflating experience. Now that I know the whole "Home Alone" house was a set built in a school gym, for example, a small piece of the magic is lost every time I rewatch it. Similarly, knowing the head shot from "Jaws" was filmed in a swimming pool sort of robs it of the horror. On the flip side, though, it makes the whole thing more impressive when you know how Steven Spielberg and company actually pulled it off.

In the movie, the discovery of Ben Gardner's body might be the biggest scare of the whole film. As it turns out, this bit was only added after initial test screenings left Spielberg eager to get one more scream from audiences. It wasn't enough that one guy threw up while watching the demise of poor young Alex Kintner (Jeffrey Voorhees), the director wanted another big scare, and so the now-infamous head shot was added. But Spielberg wasn't about to reassemble the entire "Jaws" crew in Martha's Vineyard where the movie had been filmed. Instead, he stayed local and used his editor's swimming pool in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Van Nuys.

As recounted in a making-of featurette, Universal Pictures had already signed off on the final cut when Spielberg enlisted VFX specialist Kevin Pike, stuntman Frank Sparks, and editor Verna Fields to help create the insert shot he needed. As the director recalled:

"That scene had already been shot, but it wasn't done to shock the audience and so I went to Verna Fields' [...] and borrowed her pool, because I didn't have one. I didn't have enough money to have a swimming pool in those days because 'Jaws' hadn't come out yet and I was a poor director."

In Empire's oral history of "Jaws," writer and Meadows actor Carl Gottlieb recalled how there was "no more money for shooting" at the time Spielberg decided to add the extra Gardner scene. According to Gottlieb, the director said he would pay for the shoot and the "skeleton crew" of a production team headed to Fields' house where they threw "a half gallon of milk" into the pool to make it "more photogenic." In the making-of featurette, Pike recounts how he used a small replica of a boat hull he'd built in someone's driveway, which they submerged in the pool along with a foam life cast of Ben Gardner actor Craig Kingsbury. After throwing tarpaulin over the pool itself, Sparks stood in for Dreyfuss, holding up the flashlight to the hull while Pike pushed the Gardner cast through the hole in the hull. The result was one of the scariest on-screen moments in cinema history. As Spielberg recalled, "I remember, I timed it to get it for maximum shock effect."

Steven Spielberg certainly managed to get his desired shock effect. If the first test screenings had already traumatized audiences, the previews featuring the Ben Gardner head moment were something else entirely. Reminiscing on the most satisfying edit she made in "Jaws" following her Academy Award win for Best Film Editing, Verna Fields said:

"The most satisfying edit, I have to say, was the face coming out of the boat because when I went to that preview and that audience just went six feet off their seats and let out this incredible scream. That was really satisfying."

As upsetting as the fake Gardner head was, Fields really does deserve a lot of the credit for making this hastily-shot insert one of the most memorable moments in "Jaws." In fact, she was integral to making the film so effectively unsettling throughout. As Spielberg put it in the making-of featurette, "Verna did a great job with her bio-rhythms, creating a bio-rhythm for 'Jaws.' It was just the right kind of tautness, like a violin string playing a very, very high note."

Spielberg ended up being reimbursed for shooting the extra scene. Carl Gottlieb claimed that once Universal executives saw it, "they asked how much it cost and the studio said, 'All right' and paid for what turns out to be a major point in the movie." The writer also remembered how he and Spielberg would visit a theater on Hollywood Boulevard and stand in the back of "Jaws" showings right when the Gardner head scene was playing. "We would stand at the back and watch 1000 heads jump simultaneously," he said. "Then we'd laugh and nudge each other and go out for the evening." Though the filming of "Jaws" was famously torturous for Spielberg, at least he and his writer were having the time of their lives after having created one of the most savage animal attack horror films ever and traumatizing several generations.