Shinwa

This film made me miss Roger Corman movies. Utterly absurd and action-packed, you can see the machinery start to creak heavily about halfway through, but there are enough clever moments and quirky acting bits (my favorite is Keenan Wynn, as the Babbling Codger) to make this a completely enjoyable ride. The genetically engineered piranha which are released into a mountain river and terrorize the waters (they're cross-bred with salmon, apparently, and intend to spawn downstream) are much more frightening when they are not seen, as in the creepy opening skinny-dipping "Jaws homage", so once you start actually seeing them dashing towards their victims the broad humor aspect of the movie is played up, thanks in large part to Paul Bartel as the Authoritarian Summer Camp Director, Bradford Dillman as the Grizzled Mountain Man, Kevin McCarthy as the Good Mad Scientist, and, of course, Barbara Steele as the Evil Mad Scientist, whose huge, shifty eyes are a punchline in and of themselves.

The broad humor doesn't really sit well with a genuinely unpleasant attack on a bunching of swimming children or its bloody aftermath, and the following attack on a resort is anticlimactic (practically identical to the attack on the children), if in line with the film's politics (military experiment backlashes first against the nature lovers, then the children of the middle class, and finally the middle class itself, while the right-wing authoritarian and capitalist structure prevents the tragedy from being averted). But it's all done with palpable enthusiasm, and should certain push the right buttons in those of us who dread feeling our legs brush against foreign objects while underwater, especially when those foreign objects have little razor-sharp teeth and make whirring noises. Highlights include the scene where a piranha frenzy dismantles a raft and the climactic heroics from Dillman, whose character has supernatural lung capacity.

Well, you know it's going to be hokey. The slimiest, crawliest and scaliest of the marshland fauna revolt against Ray Milland, who apparently thinks he's doing one of Faulkner's lesser known characters, and his money-drunk clan, in retaliation for a long history of pollution and casual animal abuse. Fortunately, rugged salt-of-the-earth good sense is present in the form of manly, ecologically aware Sam Elliott, and after an hour and a half of not-so-Steadicam closeups of frogs and snakes, the greener of the house's guests manage to evade the critters while the decadent class gets what's coming to it. Unfortunately, everything is a little too random and way too cinematographically shoddy, and occasional squirm-inducing moments (an attack by alligators is particularly effective) do not disguise the fact that movie goes on for way too long, and works visibly to do so. If you want good acting, run.