Revisiting movies part 1: Piranha (1978)
I had been pondering about a topic like this since last week. With MovieMeter members drafting pretty shitty movies for the horror draft I was really craving for some better flicks to see. After viewing Piranha 3D that gave me a good opportunity to rewatch the original from Joe Dante. Surprisingly I didn't hate the remake it was good as pop corn flick and the amount of nudity didn't harm. Nice nude underwater ballet and funny to see porn star Gianna Michaels skysurfing (or what is it called) losing her bikini exposing her big ones and later her lower body swallowed by piranha. It goes pretty overboard (pun intended) with the CGI gore though and the chaos keeps going on for too long. Pretty silly when people actually start to use guns to fend the killer fish of.
So on to the original. After watching it, I also took the opportunity to view the extras like how they didn the make-up and how they actually moved the piranha. Joe Dante does audio commentary on the movie which reveals a few things I didn't know.
Dante says it's no secret his movie rips of Jaws but the shark being replaced with a horde of smaller killer fish. Even if you look at the artwork it feels pretty much like Jaws.
There is other similarities like a few people warning the authorities about the danger these killer fish would cause for the people wanting to go for a swim in the lake. And with children having a summer camp too one more reason to keep people out of the water. Of course the authorities and expert scientists (Barbara Steele being one of them) manage to find a solution (or at least they think they have). Even though they try to stop them, Paul Grogan (Brad Dillman) and Maggie (Heather Menzies) manage to save the day but not without having the obligatory victims.
It's all pretty predictable with the local authorities wanting to go ahead with their plans despite the lurking danger. Using let's kill the messenger tactics always ends in trouble. A lot of people get injured or completely eaten. That's where the movie differs from Jaws that there is a lot more scenes with people on or in the water. There is a lot more victims and action definitely in the last half hour. You actually do see the fish in action pretty frequently. It's quick edits, fish on a stick with a mechanism to move their jaws manually. Even if lots of scenes were filmed in a swimming pool deep respect for the people behind the practical effects and building all these rubber fish. My favorite effect is the aftermath of the piranha's attack on the old man (Keenan Wynn), his legs eaten to the bone.
Another striking thing is that the piranha do not spare anyone even children are not safe. There seems to this days still an unwritten rule that children might get harmed but pretty rarely they are killed. This movie actually has a scene where the piranha attack while the children at the summer camp are having a swim ring race. It eventually leads to the demise of one of the camp leaders Betsy (Belinda Balaski). It's really tragic as Paul's daughter Suzie (Shannon Collins) first managed to save the other female leader Laura (Melody Thomas Scott) in a rubber boat.
The director was really impressed by young Shannon, saying she really did a great job. He loves to know what actually happened to her. I would have loved to hear her memories about the movie too. She only was in 3 more movies after Piranha.
So yes it was a great trip down the memory lane. I remember having seen a few other piranha movies during childhood under the surveillance of my elder sisters in the 80s but none of them had an impact like Piranha had. I am planning to seek for those other piranha movies I have forgotten about during summer, so the idea of a shark and killer fish movie challenge is a good motivation.
Next revisit review: FleshEater (1988)
