Piranha
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barry Brown, Belinda Balaski, Paul Bartel, Richard Deacon, Shannon CollinsPrimary Contributor: Bradford Dillman
Primary Contributor: Heather Menzies
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Special Edition
Picture Format: Pan & Scan, 1.33:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-10-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Concorde
Movie Reviews of Piranha
Movie Review: Not Deserving Of The Title "Classic", But Fun Nevertheless
Summary: 4 Stars
Piranha: Movie Review
Grade: B
One of the title's in the "Roger Corman Classics" DVD collection, Piranha is a great movie, but it has its fair share of flaws.
Directed by horror legend Joe Dante, Piranha is "my homage to Jaws", say's Executive Producer Roger Corman, who would later go on to produce other great horror films, such as Humanoids From the Deep and Carnosaur, along with it's sequels, Carnosaur II and Carnosaur 3: Primal Species. They're all fun, but they both have their problems, just like Piranha.
Set in the rivers and surrounding area of Lost Lake, Piranha starts with two unhappy campers. Lost, they take a trail up into an old military facility that is seemingly abandoned. They decide to go swimming, but as soon as they hit the water something...eats them. So Maggie McKeown, a lady whose job is to locate missing people is called in, and she and Paul Grogan, the local drunk, set out to the base where the two campers where last seen. That's when they accidently set them loose...A school of man-eating, intelligent, genetically-altered, voracious Piranha are heading downstream...toward a local summer camp and a just-opened resort.
The acting was surprisingly good, much better than other films of the time. Heather Menzies (Maggie) and Bradford Dillman (Paul) put effort into their characters, distinguishing this movie from other `70's horror films. (Except for Jaws, of course.)
But there's a lot more to the movie, and it's not just a horror film; at times it morphs into a comedy, with the characters cracking one-liners and saying the most ridiculous of lines. ("Horror, terror, death. Film at eleven." Or: "It's the fish sir. They're eating the guests.")
Yet Piranha, even though its plot sound's simple at first, leaves a lot of questions unanswered in the end. When our main characters are in the military base, just before they let the fish out, I would like to know just what the scientist was doing with fish. Weird creatures are being held in that laboratory, and one of them even gets out, wandering around and watching the characters. But then it disappears, and we never see it again. What's up with that?
And towards the end of the movie, how did the Piranha get so fast? (*Spoilers*) They reached the ocean in no time. The radio announcer was still telling what happened at the resort, and they were already there, at some unknown beach.
I would say that's what the sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning is for, but I saw that one before this one, and it explains nothing.
(It's actually one of the worst movies I've ever seen; the first is way better than the second.)
But who knows: in March (I think...) Alexandre Aja, director of some truly fantastic horror films like P2 (Widescreen Edition) and the 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes (Unrated Edition), is set to release the third Piranha...in 3-D!!!!!
So for know I'm waiting-waiting until 2010, for some answers, and, hopefully, the best Piranha yet.
Summary of Piranha
Roger Corman produced this shameless Jaws rip-off at the height of the "nature gone wild" boom of American cinema and struck B-movie gold. Scripted by John Sayles and directed by Joe Dante, this tongue-in-cheek thriller stars Bradford Dillman (doing his best Rip Torn impression) as an antisocial mountain man and Heather Menzies as a rookie detective who race a school of mutant piranha downriver. Dante and Sayles provide the requisite blood and gore for this drive-in meat market: a kids' summer camp and a waterfront amusement park await the little beasties. Along the way, riverside retiree Keenan Wynn gets his ankles stripped clean, camp counselor Paul Bartel is chomped on the cheek by a hungry little bugger who takes to the air, and hordes of unlucky bathers are caught in the center of a feeding frenzy. What differentiates this little gem from the legion of similar knockoffs are the satirical swipes at military arrogance and crass commercialism, Dante's energetic enthusiasm, and the bursts of black humor: "Lost River Lake: Terror, horror, death. Film at 11." The culty cast also includes Invasion of the Body Snatchers's Kevin McCarthy as the hysterical scientist guarding the creatures, horror diva Barbara Steele as a devious government researcher, and longtime Corman regular Dick Miller as an unscrupulous entrepreneur ("Sir, the piranha are eating the guests").The DVD features good-humored commentary by director Joe Dante and producer Jon Davison, who also narrate the 10 minutes of good-quality home-movie footage shot by Davison. There are also six minutes of outtakes. --Sean Axmaker
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