When a school of genetically modified piranha are released from an old military facility into a river, it falls to loner Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) and skip-tracer Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) to warn the outside before the little critters start nibbling on the fingers and toes of all the people in the water.
Last Friday, my local art house theatre put on a double bill of Roger Corman-produced b-movies, Piranha and Humanoids from the Deep. Following Blumhouse's M3GAN, this screening felt like a spiritual prequel.
A Jaws ripoff that stands on its own, Piranha was director Joe Dante’s calling card to Hollywood, and gave multi-hyphenate John Sayles a second career as a genre screenwriter.
One look at the credits and you know you’re in for something: Alongside Dante and Sayles, you have editor Mark Goldblatt (The Terminator), composer Pino Donaggio (every Brian De Palma movie), effects masters Phil Tippett (Star Wars) and Rob Bottin (The Thing).
It also features a great cast - Bradford Dillman as the irascible, hard-drinking Grogan and Heather Menzies as a Macgyver-style improviser make for a terrific pairing. The script gives them plenty of great banter and an interesting dynamic which did not need the romantic subplot that is inserted midway through.
In the supporting cast, genre mainstays Kevin McCarthy, Barbara Steele, Paul Bartel and Dick Miller enliven proceedings. Bartel stands out as a blowhard camp counsellour and Miller is in his element as a huckster who has set up a resort which turns into a buffet for the piranha.
The film’s biggest strength is that it handles every element around the titular beasties so well that you do not check out during the downtime between the piranha attacks.
Not that there is much downtime.
The movie is structured like a chase, as our heroes try to get downriver before the fish.
There were a couple of chuckles from my audience at the effects, but they are pretty effective - the fish are represented by some rough animation and hand puppets, with a neat bit of stop-motion during the lap sequence.
Despite its low budget, Piranha never feels small, and is filled with incidental detail which make it feel more well-rounded.
With a self-aware sense of humour and well-rounded characters, Piranha is great fun.
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