Review: Piranha (1978)

Piranha (1978)

Rated R

Score: 3 out of 5

When it comes to the many killer aquatic animal movies that tried to cash in on the success of Jaws, Piranha is one of the more famous ones, and not without good reason. First of all, piranha have a reputation as basically a swarmer version of a great white shark, capable of stripping a fully-grown bull down to its bones in minutes. They're a natural fit for a movie like this. Secondly, Steven Spielberg himself gave it his stamp of approval as the best of the many films that ripped off his own, which was enough to stop Universal from suing to prevent the film's release. Furthermore, back in 2010 it received a 3D remake courtesy of the French torture porn hound Alexandre Aja, a film that still holds up remarkably well as a giddy little gorefest. Finally, the creative team behind it includes legendary independent schlockmeister Roger Corman as producer and a young, green Joe Dante in the director's chair. It's a film in which a woman gets her top off in the first three minutes, and the first thing we see after the opening credits is the heroine playing a Jaws arcade game as if to let the viewer know "yeah, we know this is a ripoff, we don't care" -- in other words, a film seemingly destined for B-movie cult classic greatness. And boy, does it achieve it. Piranha, like many gory horror films from that time period, is a fairly plodding film until it gets to "the goods", with a bit too many subplots for its own good (some of them seemingly thrown in just because Jaws did them and they've got a formula to follow) dragging it down in the second act, but those goods make for a cheesily fun and sometimes daring good time even forty years later.

The plot concerns genetically-engineered piranha originally created as a weapon to kill North Vietnamese fighters in the rivers of southeast Asia, only for the project to be abandoned when the war ended. When a pair of teenagers hiking in the woods near the Lost River in Texas sneak into the seemingly abandoned facility containing the project and decide to go skinny-dipping in the containment pond (to predictable results), skip tracer Maggie McKeown is sent to find them, teaming up with a local good ol' boy named Paul Grogan. The two of them find out about the mutant piranha from their creator, Dr. Robert Hoak... but only after they drain the containment pond into a nearby river in order to find the bodies. Now, there's a swarm of man-eating monsters in the river, putting at risk a summer camp where Paul's daughter Susie is attending, a newly-opened waterfront resort, and any other unlucky boaters, fishermen, and swimmers who happen to get in their way.

While it's not as overt as, say, George A. Romero's The Crazies, the plot of this film is firmly rooted in the '70s, particularly the cynicism towards the government and the military that prevailed in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, between the piranha being a biological weapon and the presence of the shady Colonel Waxman and Dr. Mengers (the latter played by '60s horror vamp Barbara Steele, older but in no way rustier) as the government representatives trying to cover up the project. The film's aesthetic, wearing the decade on its sleeve, is one of the best things about it, from a score by Pino Donaggio that's more beautiful than the film probably deserves to the level of violence in it to the fact that it's willing to genuinely put kids in harm's way (see above, re: the summer camp; incidentally, this would become a trademark of Joe Dante). This film is a gem for any fan of '70s exploitation cinema, one that fully delivers on its messed-up premise about as well as the budget and technology of the time could allow. While the nastiest gore effects are often obscured as the water around them turns red with blood, the film still takes great pleasure in showing them off when it can, the most notable shots being of a man whose feet were stripped almost to the bone and a diver whose half-eaten corpse floated to the surface. The buzzing sound of the approaching piranha with their gnashing teeth walks the fine line between cheesy and chilling, but the potent threat they offer when they do arrive on the scene is enough to keep that sound scary as a threat of what's to come.

Unfortunately, this film also bears many of the problems of '70s exploitation films. It goes without saying that the acting isn't that great, especially from the leads Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies. While both their characters were well-written and quite likable, the two of them had a tendency to overact in that peculiar, histrionic '70s way. It was most apparent whenever they shared the screen with Kevin McCarthy as Dr. Hoak, who acted circles around them in every scene they were in. The pacing also suffers, particularly when it comes to the subplot of the resort that's just opened up on the river. The film already had a good enough pair of villains in Waxman and Mengers, so adding a new one, a ripoff of Mayor Vaughn from Jaws who cares more about money than safety, leaves the film feeling bloated even in spite of its 92-minute running time. During the second act especially, it felt as though many parts could have been cut, rearranged, or rewritten in order to make the movie flow better, especially when it came to having two separate obstructive bureaucrats (Colonel Waxman and the resort owner) whose plots were barely connected to each other. While both the summer camp and resort attacks were fun sequences, combining the two into one big one, and adding some more small ones before then (say, perhaps the military hunting the piranha in the river rather than just dumping poison), likely would have made for a better-flowing movie.

The Bottom Line

Piranha is still, even with its problems, a very fun little movie that dares audiences to show up and have a good time. It's pure, popcorn-munching horror entertainment, the sort of B-movie that makes us remember that era of B-movies so fondly, laughing along with the corny bits and cheering at the good ones.