And he shows them pearly white…

In the wake of the blockbuster success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) there came a spate of books and publications designed strictly to cash in on the fascination with man-eating sharks. Sure, there may have been the occasional issue of National Geographic or a Jacques Cousteau documentary on the subject, but they were way too classy. Where was the blood and guts? That’s where trash publications like Jaws of Death came in. It does feature a number of pictures of purported shark victims all in glorious and grainy black and white printed on newsprint. There are a lot of pictures of sharks doubtlessly cribbed from other sources along with breathless prose probably punched out by writers who spent their days writing true crime detective magazines. Yeah, it’s trash, but it’s wonderful! It’s how people got a salacious fix for morbid curiosity well before Shark Week on cable television and any number of websites today.

This well worn copy of Jaws of Death comes courtesy of Bill Cucinotta who has been on a lunatic quest for these sort of things of late. It was published by National Mirror, Inc. in 1976.