Piranhas

Fish Me Quick


Piranhas aka Piranha USA 1995
Directed by Scott P. Levy
Prism Region 2

Why?

Eh?

Why? Why? Why?

Piranhas is a made-for-TV, Roger Corman produced remake of the original Piranha movie (reviewed here) which was first directed for Corman by Joe Dante.

Now the original film is not exactly a classic movie, in my eyes. Yeah, I know it has it’s supporters but, ultimately, there are a lot of other things I would rather be doing than watching that movie... unfortunately for me, watching this incredibly dull and superfluous remake is not one of them.

I was actually expecting this movie, with the benefit of almost a couple of decades of irony soaked up in the years between this and the original, to actually be a lot better and watchable than the original. Well, I’m sorry, but compared to this, Dante’s version looks like a modern classic. Honestly, if you’re going to do a remake of this material, you should at least attempt to come at it from a slightly different angle, surely. This remake is, if you can believe this, following the original script in almost (with some slight omissions) a shot by shot repeat of the first. It’s like the actors from the original version have all been taken over by seed pods from Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers and are sleepwalking through other people’s lines, zombie-like, without really even bothering to go through the motions... I was so surprised at my lack of interest in this movie while I was watching it.

There’s really not a great deal I can say about this one. The movie opens and the girl taking a swim with her boyfriend has way beyond magnificent and notably humongous bosoms but, frankly, even though this movie has a little more nudity and gore than the original, this young, opening victim brought the only two good and notable things about this movie directly into the foreground of the few shots she’s in. I’m afraid, though, that once you’ve had the opportunity to contemplate her glorious valleys... it’s all down hill after this. Possibly the only other talking point this movie has is that it’s one of the earliest roles of future sex bomb Mila Kunis, here playing the male lead's daughter... although she doesn’t quite share as much screen time as the girl who played Grogan’s daughter in the original.

Pino Donnagio’s score from the first movie has been replaced here by a score by Christopher Lennertz (who also scored the TV remake of Corman’s Humanoids From The Deep) which is, perhaps, a little more serviceable to the on-screen visuals than the former film’s was. Lennertz may well be an underrated composer and I’ll have to look into his work a little at a later date. It doesn’t really manage to elevate the movie into something more watchable however... well, okay maybe it does, but more watchable than what? I suspect this movie might well be the product of Corman wanting to hold on to the rights to the Piranha franchise by making something “quick and dirty” out of the material... in much the same way as he did for another company with his movie of The Fantastic Four (reviewed here).

I noticed the stop motion monster running around the “mad” doctor’s lab was absent in this one, which lends credence to my theory that it was never in John Sayles original screenplay and that Dante had just put that into the original so he could have a bit of a practice directing stop motion. That’s about the only thing I learnt from this movie though...

Well... that and the fact that my tolerance, as demonstrated by my capacity to sit diligently through even the most absurdly dull rubbish, has reached new heights/lows. If I can watch this and review it for my blog then I can probably just about sit through anything. But then again... just because I can do something, doesn’t mean that I should. Just in case you’ve been sleep-reading through this untypically short review... Piranhas, the TV remake, doesn’t get anything like a recommendation from me and makes the original cinematic ventures into similar territory seem like high art. My next stop is to watch the newer version, Piranha 3D, and pray that this doesn’t suffer the same kind of bad decisions going on in this production.

Fish me luck!

Piranha

The Long Fish Goodnight


Piranha USA 1978
Directed by Joe Dante
MGM Region 2

So I finally took a look at the Roger Corman produced, lets-all-ride-the-Jaws-bandwagon movie Piranha because, frankly, I can’t resist the allure of the Piranha 3DD trailer which has been doing the rounds (using a bust size to denote a movie’s chronology... genius) and so I want to see the previous four Piranha movies before this one gets unleashed in cinemas (that includes the first remake of Piranha if I can get it, the TV version called Piranhas). So that’s why, if anyone asks, I’m watching movies about fish with teeth.

However, there’s good compensation to be had from sitting through some of this twaddle. For instance, this first movie in the sequence is only the second feature film by a director you may have heard of... you know, Joe Dante? He’s a great director and some of his trademark signature points are already showing up in this one, such as the use of cartoons on television. It’s also got a few of his usual cast of character actors turning up to help him out including the one and only Kevin McCarthy in the role of a crazy over-acting scientist. Of course, he doesn’t run down a street shouting “They’re here! They’re here!” but, you know, good enough.

In addition to a raft of great character actors, the cast includes Bradford Dillman as the male protagonist Grogan (in kind of a lethargic Burt Reynolds mode) and TV's Jessica 6 from Logan’s Run, Heather Menzies, as the main female protagonist. In addition to these two, there’s also genre favourite Barbara Steele (Black Sunday, Pit and The Pendulum, The She Beast, Shivers etc) as a military scientist and ex-lover to Kevin McCarthy’s character. So there’s a real display of interesting actors (or at least “personalities”) to look at in this one.

And all this is wrapped up in a package scored by the popular Italian composer Pino Donnagio... it’s not his best score but it does have some interesting trademark flourishes and, though I’m used to watching Joe Dante movies when they’ve been scored by Jerry Goldsmith, I’d happily take Pino Donnagio as an alternative.

Oh... and did I mention it’s the first story and screenplay to make it onto the screen that’s been written by John Sayles? So, yeah... there’s that too.

Now you might think that, with all this incredible talent both in front of and behind the camera on this one, it means we have an absolute masterpiece of “death fish” mayhem on our hands. Alas, I’m afraid that’s not true. It certainly wasn’t as trashy or exploitational as I’d expected it to be but, with films of this nature, I find that a lack of sleazy fun injected into the proceedings is not neccessarily a good thing... it could have done with being a lot trashier in my book. Because of the quality of the artists involved, what you have is a movie which strives to be more than its budget allows and, though this is not neccessarily a bad thing, in some ways it’s to the movies detriment. On the other hand, it’s a not bad showcase/calling card for some of these artist’s talent so there’s that too. Worthwhile creatives have begun to forge a career off the back of this one.

There have been attempts made, probably by Corman post-rough cut I should think, to “trash the movie up good”... and I guess in some ways this works better than others. There’s an obvious flash-cut (if you’ll excuse the pun) where a body double has been unceremoniously cut into the footage to make out that Heather Menzies is flashing her breasts... this is so obvious and it kinda kills the mood. Doesn’t work well at all. Kinda makes you wonder what Heather Menzies was thinking, getting involved with a Roger Corman movie.

There are, however, a lot of plusses to the movie as well. For instance, a completely superfluous stop-motion animation a-la-Harryhausen styled miniature creature is wandering around Kevin McCarthy’s lab in some of the early scenes. It doesn’t interact with the human characters, just gets out of their way, and the human characters don’t see it at any point. Now it could be argued that this loosely animated character is there to show the demented nature of Kevin McCarthy’s experiments for the military (in almost direct contradiction to what he tells our main protagonists later) but my guess is that this little creature wasn’t even mentioned in the script. I think it’s probably Joe Dante practicing his craft for his future movies where knowledge of how to handle such scenes would be more than relevant. As it is, it’s a cute curiosity which adds another little layer of interest to this film.

Piranha is certainly, and perhaps surprisingly, not a terrible movie. Nor is it a particularly good creature feature, although to be fair to the producers... it was popular enough to spawn a sequel, a remake and then a rebooted franchise, so it was obviously liked by enough people to make these things possible. I wouldn’t personally go out of my way to recommend it to anyone but for fans of this genre of film (technically I think this counts as a horror film since the plot deals with a genetically altered and mutated school of fish) then it’s always going to be worth a watch and, certainly, for anybody interested in the early careers of some of the cast and crew, it’s a bit of a modern historical document. Fish around for a while in this movie and you might find something interesting.