Which brings us to Piranha<\/em>, the 1978 aquatic horror adventure from New World Pictures, the home of the king of exploitation cinema, Roger Corman. And yes, it was a rather obvious attempt to replicate the success of Steven Spielberg\u2019s Jaws<\/em>, the biggest movie in the land three summers before; Mr. Corman was not unique in this endeavor, as theaters (mostly drive-ins) were flooded with similar rip-offs in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Orca, Great White, Up from the Depths, Tentacles, Mako: The Jaws of Death, The Last Shark, Tintorera, Grizzly, Claws, <\/em>and Alligator.<\/em> And Corman was also cashing in on the presumed success of Jaws 2<\/em>, which was hitting theaters the same summer of 1978 \u2013 <\/em>so much so that Universal Pictures, which distributed the Jaws<\/em> pictures, threatened to sue Corman and prevent the proximate release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Corman had an unexpected ally \u2013 Jaws<\/em> director Steven Spielberg, who got an early look at Piranha<\/em>, liked it, and told Universal to stand down. It was a huge financial success for New World, grossing $16 million on a budget of less than a million, launching the career of its director Joe Dante; it was his first solo directing credit, after cutting trailers for Corman and co-directing the New World meta-textual satire Hollywood Boulevard<\/em> with Allan Arkush. And Dante so impressed Spielberg that he ended up drafting Dante to direct a segment in the omnibus film Twilight Zone: The Movie<\/em>, and to direct the Spielberg-produced Gremlins<\/em>. (The franchise didn\u2019t just kick off Dante\u2019s career; its 1982 sequel Piranha II: The Spawning<\/em> was the feature directorial debut of one of Corman\u2019s special effects artists, James Cameron.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what impressed Spielberg so much? Well, what\u2019s most striking about Piranha<\/em> are the qualities that would reappear throughout Dante\u2019s filmography: his unwavering energy, and his giddy sense of humor. The screenplay is by John Sayles, the great indie filmmaker behind such classics as Return of the Secaucus Seven<\/em> and The Brother from Another Planet<\/em> \u2013 who famously financed those personal, idiosyncratic works by taking on less esteemed for-hire gigs like this one. (He also penned the aforementioned Alligator<\/em>, as well as Dante\u2019s next horror\/comedy mash-up, The Howling<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sayles\u2019s script, and Dante\u2019s execution of it, are winkingly self-aware; they know exactly what kind of movie they\u2019re making, and what movies they\u2019re quoting when they\u2019re making it. The opening sequence apes the skinny-dipping opening of Jaws, <\/em>albeit with a lot more skin and a lot more gore (a good rip-off filmmaker knows exactly what they can and can\u2019t duplicate, and more importantly, what they can crank up); not long after, the actor Kevin McCarthy is trotted out in what amounts to an extended riff on the ending of his Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/em> (or, if you prefer, on his cameo in its remake).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The broad types of Jaws<\/em> are present and accounted for: the outsider, this time Maggie McKeown, a resourceful skip tracer (played by Heather Menzies); a jaded local, mountain man Paul Grogan; a local expert (McCarthy\u2019s scientist); and a money-grubbing opportunist, this time in the form of Dick Miller\u2019s water park impresario. The plot is nonsense, with Maggie tracing a lost couple to an off-the-map \u201cArmy test site\u201d that houses killer piranha, genetically engineered by the U.S. government for deployment in the Vietnam War (yes, really). But Dante and Sayles know<\/em> it\u2019s nonsense, so they fill the film with broad bits (\u201cI wonder why this place wasn\u2019t on your map?\u201d asks the first victim) and ironic dialogue (\u201cPeople eat fish\u2026 fish don\u2019t eat people!\u201d insists Paul Bartel\u2019s camp counselor).<\/p>\n\n\n\n As with many a Corman production, the special effects are not good<\/em>, but Dante figures out how to sell these little monsters anyway, via choppy first-person close-ups in red water, accompanied by furious chomping sound effects. (They\u2019re frantic little beasts, enthusiastic too \u2013 the path from them to the Gremlins is a straight line.) Ultimately, the quality of the effects doesn\u2019t really matter anyway; craft is free, and Dante gets plenty of opportunities to show what he can do, most notably in a sharp, well-executed action sequence on the log raft, which comes apart bit by bit as the fish go at its rope ties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And he also knows that he can go places a major studio production can\u2019t, so the stakes are strangely higher. When he teases the notion of a piranha feeding frenzy at a kids\u2019 summer camp, we\u2019re nervous because it could happen in a Corman movie \u2013 and then it does<\/em>, and they go all the way with it, filling the frame with screaming kids and bloodshed and fish point-of-view shots of little kicking legs. Yet even those moments don\u2019t sour the good time, or cause anyone to take anything too seriously; in the last scene, a television reporter teases his carnage coverage with this memorable line: \u201cLost River Lake: terror, horror, death. Film at 11.\u201d “Piranha” is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/piranha2-1024x691.jpg\")
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