Piranha (1978) Review

WEEK 5: SOMETHING SMELLS FISHY

Piranha (1978) Review

Even though I didn’t review Jaws this month, it seems I can’t quit talking about it. It’s not too surprising; nearly every killer animal film owes something to Jaws, but the original Piranha may owe it the most. Steven Spielberg has gone on record as saying Piranha was the best of the Jaws rip-offs that came in its wake. It’s hard to argue with the masterful director himself, but is he right? Let’s dive in and find out.

The movie begins with a couple teenagers hiking up to a supposedly abandoned military facility and going for a midnight dip in the facility’s ice cold pool. They are attacked and eaten, and it is revealed the facility is not abandoned after all. An investigator goes out to find the teens, and she meets a loner/drunkard who lives in a cabin near the facility. He accompanies her to the facility, where they find strange experiments and evidence that the teens were there. They are attacked by the scientist who’s still working at the facility after they drain the pool, and soon discover it was a fatal mistake. The pool was full of mutated piranhas that breed like flies, were designed to live in cold water rather than tropical rivers, and have insatiable appetites, and they have just been released into the river. The fearsome fish make their way to Lost River Lake. On the menu are young kids at a summer camp and vacationers at a newly opened resort, and the drunkard’s daughter is at the camp. They must save his daughter and warn everyone about the impending danger, before the piranha escape the confines of the river and spread across the whole planet!

Piranha sounds like it could either be a so-bad-its-good creature feature or fall short and just be a cheap waste of potential. Surprisingly enough, it’s neither. This movie, while essentially a parody of Jaws, is a pretty accomplished B-movie that delivers on its premise and stands more on its own than other Jaws rip-offs, such as Orca or Killer Crocodile. The best thing about Piranha is it finds a balance of taking itself seriously and delivering as much carnage as possible, while also being self-aware and inserting much needed comedic relief. The dialogue is pretty funny, and the characters go beyond just the stock horror movie archetypes. The main characters are actually likable, and a number of the side characters stand out as well. There’s a goofy camp counsellor, an old guy who lives on the river with his dog (at one point getting drunk and telling the dog a story in a hilarious way), and a sleazy businessman, played by Dick Miller, who has been in all of director Joe Dante’s films. Joe Dante would later go on to direct The Howling, Gremlins, and Gremlins 2, among many other films, and while Piranha isn’t among his greatest work, it’s his direction that keeps it from being just a throwaway animal attack premise.

The piranhas themselves are shown very little. With such a low budget, I’m actually surprised with what they were able to accomplish, in terms of special effects. The piranhas are just rubber puppets that are always moving around as fast as possible, but the illusion that there are great numbers of them is sustained, and there are a few close-ups of them that look pretty decent, although only last mere seconds. The sound effect for the attacking piranhas is rather strange, and I’m not even sure how to describe it. It’s sort of like a trilling sound, but played underwater, with bubbles overlaid. It’s not really scary, but it’s kind of weird, and I guess it’s better than just having the piranhas silently eat people. Besides the piranhas, there are a couple bizarre creatures in the laboratory seen early on, but they never reappear.

After the opening attack scene and the two main characters are established, it cuts back and forth from their efforts to get down the river to the drunkard’s daughter at the summer camp. The plotline with the main characters is always going in new directions and is constantly entertaining. While these scenes, as well as the ones with the piranhas attacking people are great, the scenes at the camp are not as thrilling. His daughter is really boring—she never says much, is always pouting, has no friends—and while the camp counsellors are a bit more interesting, they aren’t usually the focus. Once the piranhas reach the camp and actually attack some of the kids, which happens at the same time the main characters reach the camp, things really come to a head and a bloodbath ensues. After that, the movie builds up to the piranhas reaching the vacationers and eating them, but it takes a while, and the eventual mayhem that occurs is pretty good, but there isn’t any standout gore or violent kills, and that’s what prevents Piranha from being a truly fantastic killer animal film. It’s not that the violence is bad—there’s actually quite a lot of blood and people getting ripped to shreds—there’s just nothing extremely special, which isn’t too surprising, given the low budget. But looking at it from that perspective, Piranha does not appear as cheap as you might expect.

I have to hand it to everyone behind the production. While clearly made only because Jaws was made (fun tidbit: after the first attack, the first scene has the investigator playing a Jaws videogame), it still offers a great deal of entertainment, despite not having aged as well as some animal attack films, including the aforementioned shark classic. It moves at a nice pace, delivers vicious creatures capable of real damage, has characters you can get behind, and does all of this on a very low budget. There was a sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning (well known for being the first movie James Cameron directed), as well as a remake from 1995. But, the reality of the situation is, all Piranha films pale in comparison to the 2010 remake, Piranha 3D. Clayton’s Creepy Cinema: Animal Mayhem will conclude with the review for that film tomorrow!