Piranha (1978)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Joe Dante along with screenwriter John Sayles, made two films I really love - The Howling and Alligator. The former is particularly great, with effects by Rob Bottin and some amazing yet brief stop motion animation by David Allen, The Howling has everything you want in a horror-comedy. Moving onto Piranha, there are some big pluses in this cash in on Jaws. 1)The stop motion animation of the little mutant in the lab. 2)Kevin McCarthy and Dick Miller in brief yet key roles. 3)One of my favorite lines from shlock cinema "Sir, it appears that the fish are eating the guests." The problem with Piranha is that it tries to get too serious when the climactic attack takes place. It just sucks all the amusement right out of it and bogs down the film. Whereas in The Howling, a keen sense of humor is maintained throughout, Piranha suffers from a turn toward the serious, and serious this film is not. All in all worth seeing even though I think the remake with Jerry McConnell directed by Alexandre Aja is superior.

The first of the numerous Joe Dante/John Sayles collaborations is a wicked tongue-in-cheek horror comedy, which uses JAWS as its inspiration but is much more fun than that straight-faced classic. In fact, I enjoy PIRANHA so much that I'd rank it as my absolute favourite Joe Dante movie, even better than THE HOWLING. An affectionately witty script, a fast-paced and action-packed story, a great cast of B-movie stars, and some cheap but imaginative special effects work combine to make this one of the most intelligent B-movies out there. Being a Dante film, this is of special interest to the classic horror buff, containing as it does clips of vintage monster flicks (THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD turns up here), references and in-jokes and familiar cast faces. Kevin McCarthy in particular has a great role as the misguided but human scientist who helped create the mutant strain of piranha in the first place, and he gets to go memorably over the top as per usual.Dante scores points for grabbing the wonderful Barbara Steele for a bit part as a shady female doctor investigating the piranha outbreak; Steele is a welcome presence as always and I think I'm right in saying this is her last horror appearance to date, unfortunately. Eighteen years after her horror debut in BLACK Sunday and she's still looking great, I'm glad to say. Dante regular Dick Miller has a small appearance as the slimy resort manager Buck Gardner but does exceptionally well with the part, whilst director Paul Bartel puts in a very Tim Curry-ish turn as buffoonish summer camp counsellor Dumont. Then there's old-timer Keenan Wynn as an early unfortunate victim who gets his legs chewed off and Heather Menzies as the feisty female lead. Towering over all of these folk is the one and only Bradford Dillman, putting in a humorously serious performance as the alcohol Grogan who ends up becoming the unlikely hero of the movie. Go Brad! PIRANHA the film is, unsurprisingly, kept afloat through loads of piranha attacks. Dozens of cast members end up getting chewed by the little critters and there's plenty of blood and cheap gore effects to appeal to the horror crowd. The special effects have dated a little but are still lots of fun, especially the brief moments of stop motion which pop up on occasion (such as to animate the weird fish-men in the doc's lab at the beginning). Dante gets to stage not one but two major "panic" attacks at the finale, in which rivers full of holidaying folk suddenly turn into screaming bloodbaths, which prove to be a perfect way to end a hugely entertaining movie. Hearty congratulations to Dante and his crew for creating an underrated comedy/horror classic.

When two young adults go missing "Maggie McKeown" (Heather Menzies-Urich) is hired to travel to Texas and find them. Not familiar to the rugged outdoors she comes across a cabin in the woods to inquire whether a man named "Paul Grogan" (Bradford Dillman) can help her. They soon hike up to a top secret Army station which appears to be deserted and find some gear which belonged to their missing couple. Concerned that they may have drown in a large pool Maggie decides to drain it. When she does she unknowingly releases genetically modified piranha into a nearby river on the same day as a couple of popular events which are scheduled for numerous people. To make matters even worse, once Maggie and Paul realize the danger they are frustrated at every turn by the government which underestimates the potential death these piranhas can inflict upon those using the river for recreation. Now, rather than disclosing the rest of the movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was a fun movie which combined some nice humor with some pretty good horror. While it certainly didn't have the budget to duplicate the effect of a movie like "Jaws" it still managed to entertain and because of that I rate it as slightly above average.

When flesh-eating piranhas are accidentally released into a summer resort's rivers, the guests become their next meal.With Kevin McCarthy, Dick Miller and others, how can you go wrong? Take a Corman film and put it in the hands of the talented Joe Dante, and you are guaranteed to have a good time.Is this a ripoff of "Jaws"? Yes and no. Surely that was what sparked this film's creation. But looking back now on all the shark movies that have been made, this almost seems far enough removed to be considered completely unrelated (never mind the "Jaws" video game in the beginning).Truly a must-see for all Corman or Dante fans.