A regatta becomes a "diner for sharks" in Bruno Mattei's utterly shameless sharksploitation mishmash CRUEL JAWS, on Blu-ray from Severin Films.

Hampton Bay is about to kick off its tourist season regatta opening when the mangled body of a diver washes up on the beach. Although oceanography student Bill (Gregg Hood) thinks the lacerations on what remains of the corpse were caused by tiger shark bites, corrupt hotelier and land developer Samuel Lewis (George Barnes) – who is also in a rivalry with Bill's mentor Dag (Richard Dew) who owns the local dolphin water park – convinces the spineless mayor that the cause was an accident with propeller blades. Tough-talking police chief Berger (David Luther) easily capitulates until a beachgoer actually witnesses his girlfriend's death by shark. Lewis organizes cautionary measures so that the regatta can go on, but this particularly tiger shark proves to be far more intelligent than a mere "locomotive with teeth."

Coming quite late in the post-JAWS sharksploitation craze and before the more recent deliberately sillier and bewilderingly-popular Asylum franchise entries like SHARKNADO, CRUEL JAWS is no different than some other concoctions of new and existing footage from editor-turned-director Bruno Mattei (HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD); however, this one is ballsy enough to incorporate "stock footage" from both JAWS and JAWS 2, Joe D'Amato's recent DEEP BLOOD, as well as Enzo G. Castellari's THE LAST SHARK: the film that Universal won an injunction against that has kept it off of US home video to this day. Although Mattei makes good attempts at matching the shark footage to the new scenes, the film suffers from its plotting – throwing in a star-crossed romance between Lewis' daughter Gloria and Dag's son "Bob", borderline criminal behavior by Lewis' son Ronnie and his buddies, Dag's adorable paraplegic daughter whose only happiness in life is swimming with dolphins, domestic strife between Bill and his fun-loving girlfriend who asks him to choose between her and the shark after multiple deaths, and even mob involvement in Lewis' land dealings – and particularly poor performances from the late period of Italian filmmaking when filming with sync-sound rather than dubbing was felt to be a necessity for foreign sales (Hood sounds like he is talking with a retainer in his mouth the entire time). The regatta scene is reasonably thriller – although the editing is such that some bits of action are not entirely clear – but the highlight is the ill-fated attempt of Ronnie and his friends to kill the shark which is as explosive as it is hilarious.

Unreleased in the United States, CRUEL JAWS was available to English-speaking audiences as a Japanese-subtitled VHS import. Scream Factory originally announced the film in a double-feature with EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000 before pulling it due to rights concerns and putting the latter film out as a solo release. Severin Films presents the film in different 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen presentations of two cuts: "The Mattei Cut" (94:21) which appears to be the export version, and the "The Snyder Cut" (96:15) – Mattei having used the pseudonym "William Snyder" – which featured a couple innocuous deleted scenes that appeared on the aforementioned Japanese VHS tape (there is no additional gore). The Mattei cut appears to come from the original negative, having an overall lower contrast than the Snyder cut with more shadow detail in the sometimes harshly-sunny exteriors (the colors in the Synder cut are slightly punchier but at the expense of detail in the darker areas of the frame, particularly during the night and day-for-night scenes). While some of the Italian low-budget Dolby Stereo and Ultra Stereo films of this period have come to home video with mono tracks – among them KILLING BIRDS, GHOSTHOUSE, and DELIRIUM among others – CRUEL JAWS's DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track on both transfers fortunately comes from the stereo elements, giving a surround presence to the library scoring (some of it possibly unauthorized), explosions, crowd scenes, and some underwater bits that gives the film a slightly "bigger" feel. Optional English SDH subtitles are included for both versions.