In the wake of the phenomenal box office success of Jaws and Jaws 2 a worldwide fascination with sharks developed rapidly. Whilst Universal Pictures lawyers’ made sure that many cinematic Jaws pretenders – such as Italian copy Great White – were soon legally dead in the water, they couldn’t prevent a plethora of media interest in sharks in general via newspaper articles, books, and magazines.
Lurid and grisly accounts of attacks by the “blood-thirsty demons” (yes, sharks), plus masses of “explicit pictures of murderous sharks” were the mainstay of many of the publications that infested magazine racks. The following are just some of the many sharksploitation mags that proliferated in the late 70s and early 80s:
