Piranha (1978)

Piranha is the notorious 1978 Jaws rip-off from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. It was a major hit for Corman. Joe Dante directed.

Skip-tracer Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is trying to find a young couple who have disappeared into the backwoods. Misanthropic hermit Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) reluctantly offers to help her after her jeep breaks down.

She finds them, or at least she finds a skeleton that might belong to one of them. The young couple broke into a deserted research facility and found an inviting swimming pool so they decided to take a dip. Unfortunately the pool was full of piranhas.

These are not just your regular piranhas. These are mutant super-piranhas. They’d been bred in that research facility. The facility belonged to the US military and the piranhas were intended as a biological weapon for use during the Vietnam War. The war ended and the project was shut down, officially. Unofficially one scientist, Dr Hoak (Keven McCarthy), remained behind and continued his research. Now he’s bred super-piranhas that can live in fresh or salt water.

Of course if the piranhas get into the nearby river they’ll be able to reach the sea and they will become a global threat. But that can’t happen unless someone drains the pool, thereby releasing the piranhas into that river.

And that’s exactly what Maggie inadvertently does.

Maggie, Paul Grogan and a very reluctant Dr Hoak now have to try to undo the disaster. The first problem is the children’s summer camp on the river. The kids swim in that river. What would happen if the piranhas got loose among a hundred kids cavorting in the river doesn’t bear thinking about, but that summer camp is precisely where those piranhas are going to be heading. And Paul Grogan’s eight-year-old daughter is at that summer camp.

The second problem is that the next step on the piranhas itinerary will be the new resort which has been built by a consortium led by crooked businessman Buck Gardner (Dick Miller) and a crooked colonel. There will be carnage when the piranhas arrive.

And Dr Hoak has managed to smash up Maggie’s jeep. The only way for the trio to reach the summer camp in time is by raft. Rafting down a river infested with super-piranhas will be a challenge.

Maggie and Paul also face the problem that the military is determined to cover up the fiasco. And Dr Mengers (Barbara Steele), who has been sent to investigate, is determined to cover up the problem as well. She doesn’t see why the prospect of a few hundred people being eaten by piranhas should stand in the way of vital scientific research. The US military needs new and imaginative ways to kill people.

This was the late 70s and cynicism about the US Government and the US military was at its height.

Scientists don’t come off too well either. Dr Hoak is a nice enough guy but he can’t see any moral problem with his work. There’s always a price for progress.

This was an expensive movie by Roger Corman standards, which means it was a very cheap movie by anyone else’s standards. But Corman’s pictures always managed to overcome their budgetary limitations. Corman had a knack for employing people who could get good results with very little money.

The special effects were achieved fairly simply. The piranhas are just stick puppets. But they look fairly convincing. The scene where they attack the raft is particularly effective and genuinely frightening. The underwater scenes are done well.

There’s quite a bit of gore. The body count is high. Those piranhas are hungry. Of course you keep telling yourself that there’s no way this movie is going to show us little kids getting eaten by killer carnivore fish. I mean there’s just no way that’s going to happen. Maggie and Paul will get to the summer camp in time to prevent such horrors. They will, won’t they? You’ll keep telling yourself that until the piranhas start chomping up the kiddies. This is a movie that packs quite a punch.

The acting is OK. Bradford Dillman makes a good surly hero type who never wanted to be a goddamn hero. Heather Menzies is fine. Barbara Steele is delightfully evil. Dick Miller overacts entertainingly.

Piranha succeeds in doing what it set out to do. It’s a low-budget Jaws rip-off that offers effective thrills and horrors and it’s extremely entertaining. Corman got his money’s worth and if you bu\y the Blu-Ray you’ll get your money’s worth as well.

The Shout! Factory Blu-Ray offers a very nice transfer, there’s an audio commentary by the film’s director Joe Dante and producer Jon Davison and a number of other extras as well.

Piranha is good reasonably gory fun. Highly recommended.