Piraña

Piranha is cheesy 70s/80s creature films at their very best! It has everything - evil military generals, obligatory lake celebrations, scientific experimentation gone wrong, horrible dialogue, low-budget effects, and more. It's clear as you watch the film that Piranha was heavily influenced by Jaws, with the city ignoring the warnings of the dangerous underwater creature, the very similar movie poster, and much more. Steven Spielberg has even named it his favorite Jaws rip-off movie. This low-budget gem was a zeitgeist of creature horror cinema of the decade that didn't allow bad effects, poor acting, or no money to stop them from making their movies. The remakes in the 2000's just used this movie as an excuse to show a lot of nudity, and while there is a little nudity in Piranha (1978), it is much briefer than its predecessors. Pirahna (1978) focuses on letting the army of hungry fish gnaw on its helpless victims. This goofy little creature flick launched the career of director Joe Dante, who later collaborated with Steven Spielberg himself to make Gremlins - a real creature masterpiece! Piranha is no Gremlins, but it sure is a fun start to Dante's creepy creature-filled career.

This was a peculiar rip-off to classic ¨Jaws¨ by Steven Spielberg; Piranha (1978) got much success as well, directed by Joe Dante and stars Bradford Dillman ,Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wynn, Dick Miller, Barbara Steele . Concerning an insurance investigator called Maggie (Heather Menzies) and her local guide, Paul (Bradford Dillman), search the Lost River Lake area to find two missing teenagers. When stumbling upon an abandoned army camp run by mad doctor Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy) who has been developing a mutant strain of fish, they then release by accident in the river some flesh-eating piranhas that were bred to use in the Vietnam war. The piranhas are heading straight to a nearby summer resort's lake and its guests just in time for spring break. As the piranhas attack and local police and our protagonists must work together to stop them. Piranhas make their way downstream to various swimming holes and resorts and in their own way wreaking havoc. There's Something in the Water. Don't Scream...Just Swim!. One perfect killer !. This summer, how fast can you swim? A hideous death lurked unseen in the river..!. They came downriver in their thousands. Their teeth could strip a living man to the bone in seconds. They're Here...And They're Hungry. Lost River Lake was a thriving resort - until they discovered...They're here...Hungry for flesh! Who can stop them?. Something you can't see...something you can't feel...until it's too late!. Then... you were shocked by the great white shark - Now... you are at the mercy of 1000 jaws!

Spoofy terror movie features the now-obligatory Dante film in-jokes in the background. It's a passable film with a creepy creation of tension, thrills, underwater terror, exploitation and lots of blood and gore , but being paced in tongue-in-cheek, B-style. The plot is well-known: an accident frees thousands of vicious piranhas from an abandoned military facility, causing bloody events with lots of gory scenes. The man-eating piranhas are released after a sudden accident and set free into a summer resort; they are delivering the goods as the guests become their next meal. John Sayles' witty script plays the action for laughs rather than chills, stealing wholesale from the plot of 'Jaws', while filmmaker Dante piles on the cinematic in-jokes and cheap FX. In fact , the piranha attacks images deliver emotion and tension united to a thrilling score by Pino Donaggio who heightens the suspense. And a breathtaking final attack on the 'Lost River Lake' causing loathing and extremely bloody massacre that took time to shot ; however, no cuts were demanded by the MPAA in spite of extreme bloodletting and gruesome frames. There are lots of scary and horrifying set pieces with plenty of gore, blood, amputation, removal of limbs that were professionally made by special makeup effects supervisors. Appearing here and there various familar faces giving sympathetic acting, such as: Keenan Wynn, Dick Miller, Barbara Steele, Belinda Balaski, Melody Thomas, Barry Brown, Paul Bartel and Richard Deacon.

Followed by ¨Piranha II: the spawning¨ (1982) by James Cameron with Tricia O'Neal, Lance Henriksen, Steve Marachuk; an early Cameron exercice in gore tech that's a step down from original. Many years later, ¨Piranha 3D¨ (2010) by Alexandre Aja with Steven R. McQueen , Jerry O'Connell , Jessica Szohr , Kelly Brook , Riley Steele; producers and director pay tribute to Jaws (1975) and Piranha (1978) with various cinematic remarks , including a poster in the style of Jaws (1975) film franchise, with the monster at the bottom of the sea , and the potential victim on the surface high above sea. And ¨Piranha 3DD¨ (2012) by John Gulager with Danielle Panbaker , Matt Bush, Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd , Gary Busey , Clu Gulager and special mention for David Hassellhoff.

Not many movie-makers do parodies better than Joe Dante – the director who brought us The Howling (a werewolf movie parody), Gremlins (a monster movie parody), Innerspace (a Fantastic Voyage parody), The 'Burbs (a neighbours-from-hell parody) and Piranha (a Jaws parody). This 1978 comedy-horror is one of Dante's early movies, but despite that he shows an assured touch and gets generously tongue-in-cheek performances from his cast of horror veterans. While the film is never a truly great rival to the awesome Jaws, it is a fun and entertaining homage that has much going for it. Easily the strong point of this film is the gruesome make-up provided by whiz-kid Rob Bottin, but more will be said of that later.

A couple of teenagers go missing while trekking through the woods. Private eye Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) goes searching for them, and discovers a burnt-out hermit Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) living on the mountainside who offers to help her in her hunt. McKeown and Grogan stumble upon a secluded military research centre where crazed scientist Dr. Hoak (Kevin McCarthy) is busily conducting experiments to create a strain of piranha fish able to survive in rivers and oceans, and always eager to devour anything in their way. The plan is to release these super-fish in enemy rivers, thereby making the entire river system too dangerous to use. McKeown and Grogan mistakenly release the piranhas into the local river, and realise that anyone using the river for recreation – including the bustling summer camp miles downstream – are now in desperate danger. The army is brought in, but instead of helping to solve the terrifying situation they seem more concerned with covering up the whole business. In particular, General Waxman (Bruce Gordon) has cause to keep the existence of the piranha secret, as he has invested his savings in the summer camp and doesn't want to scare away his paying customers. In a race against time, Grogan and McKeown try to release poison into the river to prevent the piranhas from devouring everyone in sight and proceeding to the ocean…..

Piranha is fast-moving, gory fun. It's nice to see Dillman in a heroic leading role after so many years of playing the supporting bad guy in numerous films. Menzies is fine as his partner-in-adventure, and there are great supporting roles for horror legends like Barbara Steele (as a military scientist), Dick Miller (as a cowboy entertainer) and Keenan Wynn (as Grogan's doomed buddy who lives at the riverside). As I said earlier, Rob Bottin provides some bloody make up effects that make some of the half-eaten victims look pretty yucky. The gently mocking script is by John Sayles, and is full of humorous references to earlier books and films along the same theme. The finale in which the holiday-makers fall foul of the piranha fish is packed with blood and guts, and should definitely appeal to gore-hounds. Even though the film keeps its tongue in its cheek, there are still some dumb moments along the way that mar credibility even on this level. For instance, Grogan spends much of the closing scenes underwater being attacked by the piranha…. earlier in the film we were made to believe that the piranha devoured their victims in literally a few seconds, but they seem to make ludicrously hard work of attacking Grogan while he's in the water (in fact, he surfaces after several minutes in the firing line with just a few bites, which seems somewhat fortuitous!!) Piranha is enjoyable, though, and should be well received by genre addicts.

Better than expected.

Having seen the 2010 version of Piranha (and the 2012 sequel, which was even worse) I really didn't expect much from this, the 1978 original. Turns out it's not bad, and better than I expected.

Starts very well - setting the scene, developing the plot and characters. There is a genuine feeling of intrigue and engagement. You keep thinking "How are they going to stop this?".

From a point, however, it does degenerate into a B-grade creature feature, with action, body count and gore being the main drivers. It also feels like a bad ripoff of Jaws.

However, for the most part it is reasonably enjoyable and worth the watch.

Scientists developed a variety of piranha which can live in fresh and salt water. Then the government project closed down, and they poisoned the water. But the fish survived, and eat Keenan Wynn.

It's a dumb-sounding idea for a film, one of the many movies that came out after the success of JAWS. Surprisingly, it's a funny spoof of the movie, from the posters based on the mega-hit's poster, to director Joe Dante having two-legged reptiles running around, to a silly pastiche of the beach scene. Writer John Sayles was so disgusted that he thought about giving up on film, returning to novels Instead, he took his earnings and made RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS SEVEN, and Steven Spielberg thought it was so funny, you talked Universal out of a lawsuit and hired Dante.