If you thought it couldn't get worse than CRUEL JAWS, you obviously never heard of DEEP BLOOD, chomping its way onto Blu-ray from Severin Films.

Four young boys once swore a blood oath to an old Indian shaman (Van Jensens) who told of Wakan, a demon sent by the god of the sea when his tribe's fishing talents threatened to empty the sea of fish. A decade later, Ben (Keith Kelsch) returns home for the summer to tell his fisherman father Aaron (Charlie Brill, BLOODSTONE) that he wants to play golf professionally rather than continue with his college education, Allan (Cort McCown, HOT AFTERNOON) is being pressed by his local mayor father Wayne (James Camp) to attend a prestigious military academy, while Miki (Frank Baroni) and John (John K. Brune) have stuck around town waging war with the local toughs. No one really worries much when a little boy is found on the beach claiming his mother was swallowed by the ocean, but Miki cannot help but remember the Indian legend when spearfishing John is torn to shreds right in front of his eyes. When the coast guard helicopter shoots down a large shark in the water, Miki is not convinced that it was the same shark while Wayne and the sheriff (Tom Bernard) are eager to play up Miki's mental problems what with an inattentive father and an alcoholic mother who committed suicide. Further disappearances, however, convince the three boys, Ben's father, and an unlikely new ally to take on the aquatic predator themselves.

Bruno Mattei's CRUEL JAWS was ballsy enough to create a story around "stock footage" from both JAWS and JAWS 2 along with Enzo G. Castellari's THE LAST SHARK – which had been withdrawn from U.S. screens after an injunction from Universal – and this earlier mishmash of stock footage DEEP BLOOD helmed by documentary filmmaker Raffaelle Donato and finished by producer Joe D'Amato. While the use of the Universal film footage is questionable, DEEP BLOOD was at least a co-production between D'Amato's Filmirage and Variety Film (for which Mattei worked as an editor), and a look at the original film surprisingly reveals that CRUEL JAWS was the better effort. Boasting little onscreen shark action apart from some stock shots and the usual shots of characters in the water disappearing in a cloud of red, DEEP BLOOD's worst sin is that it is simply boring. The acting ranges from terrible to passable to fairly good – the best performances come from the most seasoned actors Brill and cartoon voice artist Mitzi McCall (as Ben's frumpy mother) – the pacing is incredibly sluggish, and the script is just a mess. All of the main characters seem to have issues with their fathers, the rivalry for affection between Miki and Allan over Elizabeth (Margareth Hanks) goes nowhere, the mayor's attempts to downplay the threat are half-hearted, and nothing really comes of the novel notion of a sheriff up for re-election who actually seems to be well-meaning. The shark never seems to be a threat since the footage – both live action and effects footage from other films – never seems to cut effectively with the new footage, most disappointingly in the explosive climax. Even within the context of later Filmirage productions, and the cut-and-paste school of Italian filmmaking a la Bruno Mattei (which also extends to the recycling of Carlo Maria Cordio cues from KILLING BIRDS previously reused in WITCHERY and HITCHER IN THE DARK), DEEP BLOOD is just abysmal.