Pirañas asesinas

At the beginning some robbers carry out a heist at a factory , robbing a lot of valuable jewels . Later on , they hide the loot into a river, unknowing it is full of piranhas . Soon after , the Jewel thieves attempt to recover the loot of hot rocks at the piranha infested river . But the stealers find a lot of problems to retrieve them as if took a lot of foresight.

This thrilling film concerns typical plot about a robbery that goes wrong , as a scheme to steal and then to hide a fortune in emeralds at the bottom of a tank full of piranhas backfires as the criminals find it impossible to retrieve them . The film attempts to blend two genres : Disaster movie including a spectacular Dam bursting with flood sweeping a factory and the sea monster sub-genre with starving piranhas . In fact , this is one of several films made in the mid-70s and early 80s following the Catastrophe movies as Earthquake , Tower inferno , and after hits as Piranha, Piranha 2, Jaws , Tintorera, Devil Fish, Barracuda, Tentacles , among others . This Killer Fish boasts a good cast but really wasted giving average performances . Stars Lee Majors and Karen Black as two cunning and roguish thieves . Supported by a decent support cast as Margaux Hemingway , Marisa Berenson , Gary Collins, Frank Pesce , Roy Brocksmith , and James Franciscus . Furthermore, special appearance by Anthony Steffen , the known Spaghetti Western antihero , who died in Río de Janeiro , Brazil.

It contains a passable and acceptable cinematography by cameraman Alberto Spagnoli . As well as anticlimatic musical score by Guido and Mauricio de Angelis , adding some catching songs ."Deadly Tresure of Piranha" was middlingly directed by Anthony M. Dawson AKA Antonio Margheritti. He was a good craftsman who made all kinds of genres , such as Wartime : The Last Hunter , Tornado , The Commander , Code Name Wild Geese . Adventures : The Golden Arrow , Ark of the sun...temple of hall , Jungle Raiders, Treasure Island , Mister Invisible . Spaghetti Western : And god David to Cain, Dakota Joe, Vengeance , Joe the Implacable , The Stranger and the Gunfighter, Take a hard ride . Terror : Virgin of Nuremberg ,Web of Spider , Seven dead in the cat's eye , The long hair of death , Castle of blood , Horror Castle , Cannibal in the streets . Science Fiction : Yor the Hunter from the future , War of the planets , Wild Wild Planets . Peplum : Hercules prisoner of evil, Giants of Rome , The Slave merchants ,The Fall of Rome. Thriller : Operation Goldman, , Killers are challenged, The Squeeze , Death Rage. Rating : 4/10. Below average.

Killer Fish is directed by Antonio Margheriti and written by Michael Rogers. It stars Lee Majors, Karen Black, James Franciscus, Margaux Hemingway and Marisa Berenson. Music is by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis and cinematography by Alberto Spagnoli.

Majors leads a band of thieves in trying to regain some stolen gems that are at the bottom of Piranha infested waters.

It's pretty bad, in fact it's a rare case where I would suggest that the low internet rating for the film is about right. OK! You wouldn't think anyone seriously goes into this type of Spaghetti Horror expecting a terrifying masterpiece, but it's not unreasonable to think that you might get some modicum of suspense and half decent acting. Unfortunately Killer Fish has neither.

Filmed on location in Brazil, there's a half decent budget afforded the production, yet the actors stare off into the distance on some sort of sleep deprived auto-pilot, forced to say dialogue so poorly written you wonder if it was being made up as they went along? The fish of the title don't show up until half hour into the pic, briefly raising hope that excitement, peril and drama will now pulse through proceedings, but it's a false dawn.

The Six Million Dollar Man and the perpetually blank Hemingway fulfil their catwalk casting assignments, and some half decent model work is introduced and blown up, but at just over an hour and forty minutes in length, it's a real chore to get through. Oh well, at least it's not insultingly bad on purpose, it is honest in its very modest intentions. 3/10

I had a lot of fun with this movie, which is not the same thing as having a lot of fun at it. There was something cozy about its simple plot and its even simpler faith in tried and true conventions. It could be accused of many things, including laughable dialogue, hysterical performances and insane camera angles, but it could not be accused of dishonesty.

After stealing a fortune worth of jewels, a group of thieves hide their stolen loot in a box and throw it into a nearby lake. Proving the adage that "there is no honor among thieves" two of them decide to sneak out to the lake and retrieve it prior to the specified time. What they don't realize is that the mastermind behind the robbery named "Paul Diller" (James Franciscus) put some piranhas in this lake a year or two earlier to protect it from just such an attempt. His plan works as the person attempting to swim toward the box is rapidly consumed. Later, these same piranhas also kill two more thieves as well. But protecting the treasure isn't the only thing Paul has on his mind. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that I found it to be better than I initially thought it would be as it managed to combine elements of a crime caper with that of a horror film along the lines of "Piranha" as well. Of course, having two attractive actresses like Margaux Hemingway (as "Gabrielle") and Marisa Berenson ("Ann") certainly didn't hurt either. In any case, I liked this particular film and have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

I love Italian genre films from the 70s and 80s - horror, sci-fi, giallo, WIP, nunsploitation, whatever. This Italian-French-Brazilian co-production is an action/adventure/thriller/horror hybrid, made to ride the wave of Spielberg's Jaws a few years earlier. A bunch of professional thieves steal a quantity of emeralds from a tropical industrial complex. They hide the gems at the bottom of a reservoir, intending to retrieve them 60 days later once the heat has died down. Unbeknownst to them, their man on the inside has decided to stock the reservoir with piranha to prevent anybody finding the stones or retrieving them early. Sure enough, some of the gang decide to go back and help themselves without telling anyone else - you can guess their fate. A sudden storm breaches the reservoir dam and the deadly fish are carried to all the other local waterways - including tourist spots. As the human population starts getting bumped-off (i.e. Eaten), those remaining find themselves cut-off from help and fighting for survival.

Antonio Margheriti (here under the alias 'Anthony M Dawson') directed some pretty enjoyable, even good genre films over his career. Unfortunately, this isn't one of them. At 101 minutes it feels overlong, drawn-out, and uneven. The characters are pretty thin, the cliched dialogue lacks any real 'punch', and (talking of punches) the fight choreography is poor. As far as the cast goes, the leads are all American; Lee Majors, Karen Black, Margaux Hemingway, James Franciscus, and Gary Collins (sad to think Majors is the only one still with us). Also popping-up (in a relatively minor role - maybe he needed an easy paycheck) is Italian 'spaghetti western' favourite Anthony Steffen. Lee Majors is likeable as ever (shame he didn't do more on the big screen), whilst Karen Black is her usual drop-dead, lazy-eyed sexy-as-hell self; the rest pretty much just go through the motions. At least the scenery's nice (it was filmed in Brazil), and the fish make an effort. 4/10.