Hello and welcome back to KID NOSTALGIA, your online guide to monster, science fiction and horror movies ranging from the oldies to more modern releases, from the classics to more obscure films – ones like this! New World Pictures presents a Jon Davison production; PIRANHA a Joe Dante film starring Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies, Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wynn and Barbara Steele. Lost River Lake was a thriving resort – until they discovered… PIRANHA! Directed by Joe Dante. Before I get into the movie, I’m gonna tell you now that this is aimed at a teen/adult audience and is not for children. My posts often include mild language, crude humour, and mature themes depending on the movie. So if you’re under 15, I’d advise clicking off. But if you read ahead anyway, that’s on you. Piranha is one of the establishing Jaws (1975) knock-offs people actually like. I mean, okay, it isn’t a Jaws knock-off exactly, but be honest, it wouldn’t exist without Jaws.The movie was an early John Sayles screenplay, and if you don’t know, he went on to write another of the great Jaws knock-offs, Alligator (1980), which, quite frankly, is a better movie than this, which I should get around to sometime, along with its sequel. This marks Joe Dante’s first solo directed feature film as well, and it’s not a bad one to start with, but I should save my opinions for the actual review. The film managed to get a sequel, a remake, a reboot, and a sequel to the reboot, along with many clones. I mean, fancy being a knock-off of a knock-off – I’m looking at you, Killer Fish (1979)!
What I used to do, which I don’t anymore that often, is dive into the production to see if there’s anything interesting enough to milk for content. There are two things worthy of mentioning. One; 80 rubber piranhas, 4 with metal teeth (to be used in scenes where they gnaw at prosthetic limbs), were constructed, which is an absolutely insane feat for a movie with only 200,000 to possibly 600,000 maximum US dollars budget, and just think that not all of that money, only probably a tiny fraction, went towards the practical effects. The budget was higher before, closer to 1,000,000 dollars, but executive producer Roger Corman cut the budget back to give more money to the production of Avalanche (1978), a significantly less successful movie, only getting 87,000 dollars from the box office with 6,500,000 spent on it, while Piranha got somewhere between roughly 3,000,000 to 16,000,000 dollars. Two: Because the release date for Jaws 2 (1978) was very close, Universal were gonna go after Dante, but Spielberg watched it and convinced them not to because apparently it was its own movie. I mean, I don’t know if he was watching the same movie as all of us, but sure. Now, let’s not waste any more time and get right into the movie… after I warn you all that, as always, this post will contain spoilers, so viewer discretion is advised.
The film kicks off with a teenage couple skinny dipping in a pool in a seemingly abandoned military complex, because, of course nothing can go wrong in a random pool in a military complex. Seriously, what in these kids’ brains said that “this was a good idea.” I mean, they’d just come out with mutations because it’s radioactive or something. But instead, something drags them underwater, never to be seen again. That still beats what I suggested. Oh, and be ready to count how many boob shots are in this movie. Seriously, it’s just silly. So, that marks one. We then meet Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies), a skiptracer who’s contracted to find the two teens from the opening scene, who… certainly has personality, but she’s a bit of an airhead. I’m describing the character not the actor. And I’m not saying that to be sexist, John Sayles literally said he wrote her in to be absent minded but resourceful. A great idea for one of your leading characters. This means she comes across useful, but it rather insufferable in some scenes at the same time. The actor is known for the being Jessica in the Logan’s Run tv show. We then meet Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman), who’s an alcoholic that we meet while he’s eating a fish rather ironically. So, what, we have the alcoholic and the airhead as our two main characters. Great. As much as I complain, the two are good actors, but in not great roles. Maggie hires Paul to guide her around the area the teens went missing, and they magically come to the conclusion to go to the military compound, where they see the pool and automatically decide that the teens are probably in there, so they start wandering about to find a way to drain the pool… i.e., they wander about this laboratory full of 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) rejects that’s seemingly active just devoid of people.
Not that devoid though, because a scientist tries to stop them, but they beat him unconscious, do it anyway and just leave him there! They go in the pool and find it empty other than a dog skeleton, when the scientist wakes up, crashes their car, and gets injured in the process. The scientist says his name is Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy), who, makes even dumber descisions later on than crashing the car!
The unknown creatures attack one Paul’s friends, Jack (Keenan Wynn), while Paul, Maggie, and Dr. Hoak go on a raft to cross the river and Hoak tells them that he was part of a top secret mission called Operation Razorteeth, which is an awesome name by the way, where he genetically engineered a load of piranhas to flood into the North Vietnamese rivers during Vietnam, but the war ended before they could use them, so they just were left in the facility for years. They find Jack’s dog, barking, which leads them to Jack’s corpse, whose legs are completely stripped of flesh. Keenan Wynn doesn’t have a lot of luck with these 70s creature flicks, does he?
A kid’s father is killed, leaving him on top of their cap-sized canoe, and Paul realizes that the dam is opened every few days, which would let the piranhas head down to the Lost River Lake resort and a nearby summer camp, where Paul’s daughter is staying. The raft starts heading the kid’s way, and they see him in distress, so, instead of just waiting for the raft to get to the canoe, Hoak just jumps in the water and dies trying to “save the kid.” I mean, come on, couldn’t he have waited for the raft to get to him instead of jumping in to grab him?! I mean, what was he gonna do, somehow paddle the kid to the raft?! The others manage to rescue the kid and pull Hoak’s corpse aboard, but his hand is dangling in the water, so, the piranhas start destroying the ropes holding the raft together, so Paul has to throw Hoak’s corpse into the water and detatch some of the raft so they can get to shore quick enough to get off. Paul manages to stop the dam attendant from opening the dam, and then he calls the military, lead by Colonel Waxman, and along with them comes Hoak’s old colleague, Dr. Mengers (Barbara Shelley), who is trying to spread poison upstream to kill the piranhas, even though they seem to be immune, and then cover up the event. Barbara Shelley was a 50s/60s horror name, but you would think the character, Dr. Mengers would know that they’re immune to poison because she helped engineer them. They hold Paul and Maggie at the camp so they can’t talk to the media, but they escape by… Maggie flashing the guard before nicking a car. That makes two boob shots. The guard was John Sayles as well, so I bet he just wrote himself in to get flashed! I see your tactics John, and it’s not cool! At least it was a body double for Heather rather than actually her. Paul calls the cops about the piranhas, but they think he’s drunk because he’s not exactly got a good track record on that, so they arrest him and Maggie and stick them in seperate cells. Don’t tell me they’ll escape by getting Maggie to flash the guard again! Meanwhile at the summer camp, two counsellors start getting ready to go for a midnight swim, but are interrupted by the head supervisor, thanfully stopping them. That makes three boob shots. Instead of flashing the guard again, Maggie is more resourceful… but noisy, by completely destroying the plumbing in her cell so she can get a cop to come in to look at it so she can knock him out and nick his key. I mean, how did he not hear her trashing the pipes and the toilet lid, I mean, even Paul was like “what the hell are you doing in there?!”
Flashing back to the summer camp, a competition is being done in the water, and Paul discovers a tributary that goes past the dam and towards the summer camp. Paul’s daughter doesn’t want to do the competition, so hides away so she doesn’t have to do it, and I bet she’s glad when she sees the piranhas injure a load of kids in the water. That said though, she actually gets in a small rubber boat to try help get some of the people who are further out in the water back to shore, and she manages to get one of the camp counsellors out while the head supervisor manages to get the rest of the children out, the only death being Betsy, one of the other counsellors. What’s interesting in this scene, is through the entirety of it while everyone’s being gnawed on, all three of the counsellors are trying to help rather than just trying to save themselves, which makes for a nice change from Friday the 13th (1980), even after, especially the head supervisor, being horribly injured. Paul and Maggie get there and call the Lost River Lake resort to warn them of the piranhas, but the owner, played by Dick Miller, doesn’t believe them and keeps the resort open. Because Dick Miller doesn’t believe them, Paul and Maggie start heading there, but Dr. Mengers and Colonel Waxman arrive to try catch Paul and Maggie. A load of divers go diving nearby for no particular reason, in fact, in such a busy speed-boat area, they shouldn’t be there at all unless they put up warning buoys. It’s open water too!
One of the divers gets killed, and his body is found by a water skier, and nearby a boat explodes for literally no reason, before the piranhas reach the resort and start wasting a load of people. They also somehow manage to get a woman’s bikini off, just… like… why?! Fancy getting your boobs eaten by piranhas, that does not sound pleasant! That makes four boob shots. Colonel Waxman gets wasted by the piranhas in this scene as well.
Paul and Maggie nick a speed-boat and head to a shuttered smelting plant in hopes of polluting the piranhas to death, because Paul thinks that will kill anything… and he’s right, but they find it flooded. Good thing that Paul can hold his breath for 100 seconds and we were only just told this now! So, he gets a long rope and ties himself to the boat with it, and tells Maggie to count to 100, and if he isn’t out by then, she has to start the speed-boat and pull him out by sailing the boat. He pulls the valve all the way at the very last second, releasing the pollution, while getting bitten up by the Piranhas, but he barely gets out when Maggie starts the boat after apparently 100 seconds, but it was actually 4 minutes. Seriously. It was 4 minutes.
They get back to shore and Paul enters a catatonic state and may or may not have died. If not, I guess you have to presume they got together afterwards…? I mean, early in the movie she asks him a load of questions that are none of her business then says “well, I’ve been trying to hint my way under the covers for the last five minutes” which may or may not have been a metaphor because you never see them kiss or anything, so God knows. Meanwhile, on tv, Dr. Mengers makes a statement denying the piranhas’ existance despite the overwhelming amount of people dead from being almost completely stripped of their flesh. And that’s the end. As much as I complain at plot holes and some overall bizzare choices in writing, don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad movie. If you watched and enjoyed Jaws, I can tell you now, this is far better than any of the sequels. I would say Grizzly (1976), Orca (1977), Tentacles (1977), this, and Alligator are the best Jaws knock-offs that I have seen. I’d rate this a 7/10 for a good cast, 80 rubber piranhas, a relentless pace, but bad script choices at times and not very well thought out characters. For now though, that’s it for me. Later!
Kid Nostalgia 