I unabashedly love this movie. It’s a blatant rip-off of Jaws, but it knows that it’s a rip-off and runs with it. Director Joe Dante (his first feature) and writer John Sayles (his first script) have a blast and we reap the benefits.
Tagline: “Then… you were shocked by the great white shark – Now… you are at the mercy of 1000 jaws!”
WTF Factor: ** An extra star for being so much better than it should be.
Notable Dialogue:
Assistant: “The piranhas…”
Buck Gardner: “What about the goddamn piranhas?”
Assistant: “They’re eating the guests, sir.”
Notable Announcement:
Reporter, on camera [deadpan]: “Lost River Lake. Terror, horror, death. Film at eleven.”
Synopsis: A couple of young backpackers trespass into a fenced army area at night. They decide to swim in the pool and get eaten by something we don’t see. [Nope, this is not familiar at all.] Next we meet our two leads. Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is a brash skip tracer who has been hired to search for the teens. Meanwhile we see Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman), a hard-drinkin’ burnout case who is accepting a booze delivery from Jack (Keenan Wynn) and his dog Brandy. Maggie questions Paul and insists that they go to the closed army test site that he mentions to her. Why he goes, I have no idea. They find a weird-looking lab inside a building next to the pool and then they find the hikers’ backpacks. Meanwhile there’s a cute little stop motion lizard-thing darting around on the floor and benches.
Maggie wants to drain the pool to uncover the bodies. Madman scientist Dr. Hoak (Kevin McCarthy!) desperately tries to stop them but gets clobbered for his troubles. Paul and Maggie take Hoak on a raft to get police and medical help. Hoak says that they released super-piranha into the river. The former fish hatchery drains to the river toward the dam. Maggie and Paul scoff until they find Jack’s body with his legs eaten. His dog Brandy is fine, though. [Whew.] Paul’s daughter Susie, who is afraid of the water, is at Lost River summer camp across the dam, so Paul is not pleased. Now they need to make it to the dam before the daily opening to adjust water levels. Meanwhile at the camp, officious director Dumont (Paul Bartel!!) annoys the children and counselors Betsy (Belinda Balaski) and Laura (Melody Thomas).
Hoak tells Paul and Maggie about Operation Razor Teeth, where the army and scientists bred enhanced carnivorous fish to release in North Vietnamese rivers. The army officially halted the project when the war ended, but Hoak continued his efforts. Nearby a man and his son are in a canoe but dad gets eaten. The son escapes on top of the overturned canoe. Hoak tries to save the boy on the canoe but gets chewed up; he does save the kid but Hoak dies. The fish then attack the raft. The humans manage to get to shore and Paul stops the dam from opening.
The army is alerted to the problem. At first Colonel Waxman (Bruce Gordon) and Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele!!!) are skeptical, then they see the results when they throw a leg of meat into the river. They proceed to poison the water behind the dam. Paul figures out a way that the fish could bypass the dam, so the army has Paul and Maggie arrested to keep them quiet. Paul and Maggie escape and warn Dumont, who disbelieves their story. They are then nabbed by the cops, while the Colonel (Bruce Gordon) calls the new resort downriver to ask Buck Gardner (Dick Miller!!) about the grand opening the next day. Maggie and Paul escape from jail and head to Susie’s camp.
Susie runs away from the water competition, which consists of tube relay races on the river. Of course the fish attack and it’s a bad time to have your ass stuck in an inner tube. Susie saves one of the counselors in a raft but Betsy is eaten. Dumont gets chewed up real good but he seems to have gotten the worst of it (except for Betsy, of course). Maggie and Paul arrive and Maggie calls to warn the resort, but Gardner won’t listen to her.
The big ceremony at the Aquarena Springs Resort is off to a good start and the water is full of fish bait. Unsurprisingly the fish take the bait. Unlike the kid’s camp, this is a real bloodbath. The Colonel pushes a swimmer back in the water, then he falls in and gets eaten, to no one’s dismay.
Paul decides to release chemical waste from an old refinery that is now underwater. Says he, “We’ll pollute the bastards to death.” Paul get chewed up pretty badly underwater but manages to open the waste pipe to kill the piranha. When the water poisons the piranhas, they mew like kittens. Aww. It’s not their fault. Reporters question Doctor Mengers after everyone is out of the water. She turns to the camera and smiles, “There’s nothing left to fear.” We see a shot of the ocean. The end.
Thoughts: Where to start? If you can only tolerate one Jaws rip-off, this is the one. Universal was ready to sue for copyright infringement, given that this was released at the same time as Jaws II, but Steven Spielberg stopped them. He has stated on several occasions that this is his favorite Jaws rip-off. This movie deserves an award for its casting alone. Everyone is just right for their role and everything is played straight; the abundant humor is deadpan. There is a refreshing lack of romance; the two leads work together for handling a crisis, but can you imagine them together long term? Ouch. Of course, at the end, it isn’t even clear that Paul will survive.
The movie is full of little touches:
- The stop motion dinosaur/lizard thing for no discernable reason;
- The scary campfire story that cuts to a cop watching The Monster That Challenged The World (1957);
- The girl at the resort reading Moby Dick and ignoring the carnage;
- The cop reading the tabloid with the headline “Piranhas Don’t Leave Many Clues,” before the mayhem starts;
- The music sting from the Twilight Zone for the soon-to-be-fish-food divers;
- The piranha noises like a herd of turkeys, with a little electronic distortion (Joe Dante refers to the noise as “a chorale of dentist’s drills;”
- The woman who addresses the Colonel as “General.” When he corrects her, she says, “Still?;”
- At the end of the final copyright notice, they added “…, so there!;”
- And not to forget:
In contrast to the experienced cast, this was a Roger Corman low budget special, so there is lots of talent early in their careers. This was John Sayles’ first screenplay; he went on to write Alligator (1980) and The Howling (1981), most famously. Over the years he has been an uncredited script doctor for many major films. He has said that he takes these jobs to finance his own movies, such as Return of the Secaucus Seven (1979) and Matawan (1987). His dry humor is present throughout his work. This was also Joe Dante’s first solo directing gig; he of course went on to direct The Howling and Gremlins (1984), as well as Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) [Hey! Ho! Let’s go!]. The 1981 sequel, Piranha II, The Spawning, was the first directorial effort for James Cameron (yes, that James Cameron).
This was one of the first jobs in makeup and special effects for Rob Bottin (The Howling, and most notoriously, The Thing (1982)) and Phil Tippett (the original Star Wars trilogy and Jurassic Park (1993); he had already done Star Wars [the original; I refuse to call it Part IV]). Tippett was responsible for the creatures, including the stop motion lizard homage to Ray Harryhausen.
The fish effects are done rapidly enough that it isn’t constantly obvious that these are nothing but fish models on sticks. A lot of prosthetic flesh gets poked with gallons of Karo blood in the churning water, which hides a multitude of puppet sins. The underwater attack scenes were filmed in UCLA’s Olympic swimming pool. Milk was added to achieve the proper level of murkiness (and disguise the pool). Apparently microorganisms had a field day with the biologicals in the pool, which had to be shut down and specially scrubbed after filming.
The makeup by 17-year-old Bottin is suitably gory, mostly at the final massacre, sufficient for Roger Corman’s demands for “more blood.” Bottin’s contributions were usually edited out for pre-cable television showings.
Unbelievably, Aquarena Springs Amusement Park was a real resort, RIP. You couldn’t buy this kind of advertising.
Suggested double feature: There’s always the “remake,” Piranha 3D (2010), if you’re really into boobs and gore; if not, try Killer Fish (1979), an Italian-French production with Lee Majors and Karen Black.
Tagline for the coming attraction: “Crawling Slimy Things Terror-Bent on Destroying the World!”
