“Jaws” took a bite out of ticket sales records in the Twin Cities when it opened here 50 years ago.

Based on a novel of the same name, Steven Spielberg’s horror flick about a killer shark that terrorizes a New England beach town packed movie theaters nationwide in June 1975.

Local moviegoers mobbed the two metro theaters that had won exclusive rights to screen that summer’s hottest blockbuster: the Gopher Theater in Minneapolis and — somehow — the tiny Cine Capri in downtown White Bear Lake.

“‘Jaws’ is simply mopping up, smashing house records almost everywhere it’s playing,” Pioneer Press entertainment reporter Bill Diehl wrote shortly after it was released. “At the Cine Capri, it has hauled in grosses that easily pale anything in our area. At the Gopher in Minneapolis, it swam right past the records set at that theater by ‘The Exorcist.’ “

Box office sales in Minneapolis exceeded $64,000 in the film’s opening week, while the tiny Cine Capri — which seated only 400 people to the Gopher’s 900 — raked in more than $30,000. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $395,000 and $185,000, respectively.

(The ticket sales title-holder at the time, however, remained the 2,800-seat Orpheum, which did $84,000 in business during the opening week of “The Godfather” in 1972.)

A cultural phenomenon

On its way to becoming the highest-grossing film of all time — until it was surpassed by “Star Wars” two years later — “Jaws” quickly turned into a cultural phenomenon, generating overblown fears of shark attacks in the process.

“I know that I will think twice before swimming at Pig’s Eye (Lake) this summer,” quipped Pioneer Press opinion editor William Sumner in a column about the film’s local box office success.

Sumner noted that the line outside the Cine Capri stretched around the block before each showing — even during a recent torrential rain storm.

Diehl marveled that “even the weekend 11:45 p.m. showings are selling out!”

And it was a good thing they were. The Capri and the Gopher had to bid against other theaters to secure the screening rights from Universal Pictures, which “put its own ‘jaws’ into the theaters playing the movie,” Diehl wrote.

In addition to requiring an onerous 12-week run, the terms of the distribution deal gave Universal 90 percent of the box office revenue.

In the end, even the runaway success of “Jaws” didn’t pay the bills for the Cine Capri, which closed in 1977. The Gopher survived a little longer, repurposing itself as a venue for X-rated films until being demolished in 1979.