Killer Fish (1979)

Antonio Margheriti’s 1979 opus Killer Fish has a 4.2 rating on IMDb and is contemptuously dismissed by people who take movies seriously so I figured I’d almost certainly love this movie. And I was right.

And it has a cast guaranteed to bring joy to the hearts of fans of 70s cult movies and TV.

It should be pointed out that the title is just a little bit misleading. There are piranhas, lots of them, and they do the stuff you expect piranhas to do, but they’re not the main focus. This is not a Jaws rip-off. It bears not the slightest resemblance to Jaws (or to the movie Piranha). This is a totally different type of movie. This is a frenetic action movie and it’s a heist movie.

We start with a fine heist sequence. Margheriti loved miniatures effects and he knew how to make them work. He was a guy who was just not going to include miniatures work unless it was done right. Yes, you can tell that he’s using miniatures, just as you can tell when directors of a later era use CGI. But somehow good miniatures work just looks better than CGI. It doesn’t have that cartoonish CGI look. This particular sequence involves lots of explosions. Margheriti liked to blow stuff up. I personally think that this is a very positive thing.

At first we don’t know it’s a heist. We get a brief scene of a smoother operator doing some big-time gambling at a casino, then we cut to a man and a woman breaking into some kind of industrial plant (possibly a power plant) deep in the Amazon rainforest. These people could be secret agents or thieves.

We soon find out that they’re thieves. The objective is not sabotage (they blow up a whole pile of stuff merely as a diversion). Their objective is the safe in the main office. It would appear that either the owners of the plant have been doing some shady financial stuff or possibly they just don’t trust the government but they keep their financial reserves in that safe. In the form of precious stones. Emeralds.

The smooth operator is Paul Diller (James Franciscus) and he’s the mastermind. He has a hobby. Tropical fish. Carnivorous tropical fish. He has a tank full of piranhas. At first it just seems like an odd hobby. The duo who made the break-in are Paul’s girlfriend Kate (Karen Black) and Lasky (Lee Majors). We get the feeling that there could be a bit of a romantic triangle here. This suggests the possibility of a double-cross. In fact there will be lots of double-crosses. The first attempt is made by the two guys who are the gang’s hired muscle. The emeralds are hidden in a lake. These two guys think that grabbing the emeralds for themselves will be easy. Big mistake.

The heist story intersects with a separate plot strand involving a fashion photo shoot in the rainforest. The organiser is the glamorous Ann Hoyt (Marisa Berenson). The star model is Gabrielle (Margaux Hemingway). The thieves are lying low in a luxury hotel and they get to meet the fashion photo people and it’s instantly obvious that Gabrielle and Lasky are hot for each other. That will lead to big trouble.

The plot then gets complicated when the hurricane strikes. And what about those piranhas? Don’t worry, they get plenty to do (and plenty to eat).

So this is a hurricane disaster movie, a killer fish movie and a heist movie. Bringing that all together might seem like a challenge but Margheriti pulls it off with style.

The action scenes are excellent. I’ve already mentioned the excellent miniatures work. We do see the piranhas but mostly we see the results of their activities. And we get scenes of spectacular destruction during the hurricane.

James Franciscus is very good - smooth but with a hint of obsessiveness bordering on madness. Franciscus handles this with admirable subtlety.

Lee Majors isn’t called on to do any fancy acting. All he has to do is project a brooding intensity and a sense of being a dangerous bad boy. He does this effortlessly.

And then there are the women. Three very glamorous women played by three glamorous actresses. Marisa Berenson’s job is to be classy and stylish, which she handles with no problems. Karen Black as Kate shares top billing with Lee Majors and she’s in terrific form. Kate is sexy and dangerous, possibly treacherous and she’s a passionate woman. She’s a bad girl but we like her a lot. She has spirit.

Margaux Hemingway was not a great actress but she’s playing a fashion model and Miss Hemingway was a fashion model. Gabrielle is beautiful, blonde and dumb but maybe not so dumb. A girl doesn’t survive long in the cut-throat world of the super-model without learning a few survival skills. Maybe Gabrielle shouldn’t be under-estimated. This was a role that was just within Margaux Hemingway’s limited acting range but she’s adequate and she looks super-glamorous.

There’s no nudity or sex (although Margaux Hemingway does share a shower with Lee Majors). Considering the presence of thousands of piranhas the gore is very very restrained. The intention was obviously to avoid a US R rating at all costs.

The pacing is excellent (Margheriti always knew how to pace a movie). The plot has the necessary nasty little twists. You get a fine heist story plus a large-scale disaster plus piranhas. This is what cinema is all about! Killer Fish is hugely entertaining. Highly recommended.

I have the Spanish Blu-Ray and it looks great. It includes the English-Language version with removable Spanish subtitles.

Stoney (1969)

I bought Code Red’s double-feature DVD Stoney/The Killer Likes Candy on the assumption that these were eurospy flicks, a genre of which I’m very fond. In fact Stoney (AKA Surabaya Conspiracy) hails from the Philippines and isn’t really a spy movie. It’s still worth a look.

Made in 1969, it’s more of a heist movie but with a background of international intrigue that makes it at the very least a first cousin of the spy thriller.

The details of the plot are somewhat murky and convoluted and there are so many players all trying to double-cross one another that it’s easy to lose track of exactly where everyone fits in.

Harvey Ward (Michael Rennie) is a businessman with various interests in the East, almost all of them illegal. Gunrunning is one of his businesses. Now he’s got wind of a possible fortune in buried treasure. During the war the Japanese had looted the vaults of various Dutch banks in Indonesia (or the Dutch East Indies as it then was). A Japanese general serving a long prison sentence for war crimes has revealed the hiding place of the loot. It’s an enormous fortune, and Harvey Ward wants it.

Ward doesn’t like getting to personally involved so he sends his mistress Irene Stone (known to her friends as Stoney) to make arrangements to have this loot smuggled out of the Indonesian city of Surabaya. Her qualifications for the mission seem to be that she’s extremely beautiful and thus finds it fairly easy to persuade men to do what she wants them to do, and her ethics are exceptionally flexible.

Steven Blessing, who appears to be a kind of freelance adventurer and who happens to be an old acquaintance of Stoney’s, is also on the trail of the treasure. Other players include Indonesian government officials and a guerilla army. Things have the potential to get messy, and that’s exactly what happens. Much mayhem ensues.

Before we get to the mayhem we get the sex and the glamour. Stoney has been negotiating with a very senior Indonesian official who introduces her to the glamorous side of life in Surabaya. He also hopes to make her his mistress. Stoney is more interested in bedding the hunky Steven Blessing. These are characters who find it easy to combine the pleasures of flirtation with the fine art of the double-cross.

Once the heist is under way the action starts and it’s fairly relentless. The body count is prodigious. The movie was morally pretty dark to begin with and it gets steadily more cynical as it goes.

Mike Preston plays Steven Blessing and while he’s not the world’s greatest actor he’s competent enough. He doesn’t have the charm you expect of a protagonist in a movie of this sort but that makes him slightly more interesting. Whether he’s the good guy or the bad guy is a moot point. It depends on who’s paying him. But he’s the closest the movie has to a hero. He does have some redeeming features.

The movie’s biggest asset is Barbara Bouchet as Stoney. Apart from adding considerable glamour she gives a nicely cynical performance with some amusing tongue-in-cheek moments. Some viewers might also be interested in the fact that she doesn’t keep her clothes on for the whole film.

Technically it’s surprisingly good given that it was presumably made on a shoestring budget. This was Wray Davis’s only directing credit but he does a reasonable job.

If you’re prepared to make allowances for this being a very cheap movie trying desperately to jump on any bandwagon that happened to be passing then it’s actually fairly entertaining.

There’s some print damage but on the whole (considering the obscurity of the movie) the picture quality is quite acceptable, and it is in the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

Maroc 7 (1967)

I just love 1960s spy movie but despite the claims on the original movie poster Maroc 7 isn’t a spy movie. It is however a 1960s crime caper movie, and I love them almost as much.

The movie opens with Simon Grant (Gene Barry) stealing some very valuable jewels from the safe belonging to Louise Henderson (Cyd Charisse). It turns out that she had stolen them from somebody else, and Grant’s object isn’t the theft. He wants to become her partner. Louise is a model who runs a photographic studio that acts as a front for her real business, the theft of jewels and art treasures.

She doesn’t have much alternative, and Grant seems like he could be pretty useful anyway, so he joins Louise and her little band on a jaunt to Morocco. They’ll be doing a fashion shoot, and of course some thieving. Louise’s employees include a creepy photographer with a scandalous past (played by Leslie Phillips) and a bevy of beautiful models.

Simon Grant has a bit of an eye for the ladies and he’s especially attracted to one of the models, Claudia (Elsa Martinelli). The gang has not managed to avoid the notice of the authorities and the indefatigable Inspector Barrada is hot on their trail.

There are plenty of double-crosses in store, as you would expect.

The plot is a bit creaky, but this kind of movie doesn’t really require dazzlingly original plotting. The qualities that are required are a sense of style, some tongue-in-cheek humour, a lively pace and glamour. And Maroc 7 has all of those qualities.

It also boasts some eccentric but interesting casting. Leslie Phillips (who co-produced the film) is best-known for countess appearance in British comedies but this time around he’s a heavy, albeit a sleazy and slightly cowardly heavy. With his fruity voice and pompous manner he makes an unusual but effective villain. Cyd Charisse as a diabolical criminal mastermind is a even more surprising casting choice. She doesn’t seem entirely comfortable but she gives it her best shot and she’s a lot better than you might expect.

Elsa Martinelli just has to look glamorous, which she does quite successfully. The other female cast members who play Louise’s models are also suitably glamorous and there’s some amusing bitchiness. Gene Barry was better known for his television work in series like Burke’s Law. He always brought and effortless charm to his performances ad this is no exception, and the role is perfectly suited to his talents.

Gerry O’Hara does a more than competent job as director and keeps things moving along at a good pace.

These kinds of movies are pure lightweight entertainment and should never take themselves seriously, or be taken seriously by the viewer. This isn’t Citizen Kane. It offers some nice location shooting. There’s a good mix of romance, humour and action. There’s glamour in abundance. It’s stylish escapist fun.

I caught this one on TV, in a sadly sub-standard print. It’s been released on DVD and copies are around although you may have to do some searching. If you’re a fan of the 60s caper movie genre it’s worth adding to your collection.