Piranha

In the wake of the blockbuster "Jaws"(1975), numerous blatant rip-offs and giant-killer-animals/when-nature-attacks movies flooded theaters in the late 70's. Although this early Joe Dante film/Roger Corman production was an attempt to ride that wave, this horror/sci-fi/comedy B-movie has well earned its reputation as the best of the "Jaws" knock-offs by being a self-aware, dark, campy, classic exploitation B-movie with a surprising amount of technical skill and charm.

They filmed this in the grossest lake they could find. As a kid, one of my biggest fears was piranhas, despite them not living on my continent. Piranhas and quicksand were both things I thought would be issues at some point in my life. The biggest laugh in this film is two girls discussing skinny-dipping, one lifting her shirt up halfway, then getting interrupted, and then deciding they'd swim the following day. Perfect.

It's easy to see why this - unlike other cheap attempts to exploit Jaws' popularity - hasn't completely disappeared from public consciousness. Despite the fact that the "attack" shots become repetitive & the movie even copies Jaws' 70's liberal message (authorities are all selfish & endanger lives), alot of this is effective. Dante keeps things moving; the idea of engineered fish gives it a fun sci-fi flavor; the heroine is ditzy but a go-getter & the underwater tied-to-a-rope finale is great.

(Viewed in 2014): Typically viewed as the best of the Jaws knock offs, Piranha has a fairly distinct flavour of its own, and unlike Jaws it's a shameless b movie that doesn't try to conceal its identity. Sayles and Robinson's script has choice moments of surprising wit and self awareness, and Dante does decent work, even if it isn't his best directorial effort. There are satirical jabs hurled towards America's involvement in Vietnam, and it is funny and gory in equal measure.

Unabashed Jaws ripoff with Roger Corman protege Dante at the helm. Pretty good cheesy gore and good for laughs, but not a good film per se. Dante worked with Sayles again on The Howling, a much better horror film with a similar tongue-in-cheek formula.

Guy with socks and sandals fires a revolver next to a kid's head to kickoff a tube race in a gross lake.

A classic jaws rip-off done by legendary camp producer Roger Corman and Joe Dante who later had some mainstream success with his fun genre flicks. The characters are considerably well written and there are lots of funny one-liners thanks to writer John Sayles. Towards the end the film starts to show its weaknesses when instead of suspense filmmakers opted out for carnage - we get to see long and boring scenes of extras in unflattering swimsuits screaming and splashing the water.

Less fun than you think

Contrary to overreaching rescue efforts in the years since, there is little to recommend here. Never rises above the JAWSploitation, and the kills are just annoying. McCarthy is very enjoyable in his too-meagre amount of screentime, though. Surely one of the great faces of genre cinema.

As far as Jaws knockoffs go, this one is probably near the top of the heap, & there's a reason it's spawned its own legacy over the years. While no masterpiece of the genre, it benefits from Dante's solid direction & two enjoyable lead performances from Menzies & Dillman, who play off each other really well. The writing is often sharp & sometimes funny, but there's some dated humor & iffy dialogue in spots that hasn't aged very well. All in all, it's a pretty fun 70's horror that's worth seeing.

Considering it's a very obvious Jaws rip-off, I guess it's not so bad. As a comedy it's a failure the few quips fall flat and the scattered comedic moments are out of tone with the majority of the film, but the horror is pretty decent even if the narrative surrounding it is rather stupid.

"They're eating the guests, sir." Starts out fun before it inevitably veers into generic territory with some lame quips and repeated visuals of 'piranhas tearing shit up everywhere'. Needed more baby Godzilla.

It's quite fun in parts and the script for a B-movie is surprisingly strong as well, especially when it comes to establishing characters, but then it doesn't quite keep things together for the action where a sound effect I'll describe as "woohoo woohoo" signals the arrival of piranhas and will bore into your skull until all the fake blood stocks have been depleted.

Lively action with no time wasted. A fun romp that could have been cheekier, in more ways to one, but overall gives the audience what it wants. Precious little screen time is given to the real talents of Barbara Steele and Kevin McCarthy unfortunately.

Quite decent for what's essentially a rip-off. The suspense was pretty well maintained throughout its duration.

I remember enjoying this as a young kid watching horrors at sleepovers, but see it now for the (incredibly) cheap Jaws cash-in it is. So bad it’s good at points, with ridiculous character decisions, some dodgy acting and cheap effects, but eventually just becomes stupid, boring, and repetitive, with the warbling sound and shaky view of the fish attacking starting to feel like half the film.

Top badass moment? If the fish don’t get you, the poor health & safety will. A couple of young people with the lightest camping kit in the world, break into a miliary site at night and go swimming in a dirty looking pool, as you do. Then other people do stupid things, brave things and frankly incomprehensible things. And get bitten by fish, although they’re not as bad as Scottish midges. The ensuring ecological disaster is of course, totally glossed over. No cats, chainsaws or decapitations.

The acting is a lot better than I thought it'd be. And the script is actually also pretty decent. It's so weird that Sayles wrote this one.

A bit disappointing. It started promisingly but Dante couldn't quite get the tone right: parts of it were too goofy to be suspenseful, but it never crossed the line to proper horror comedy. There was actually quite little gore and mainly towards the end. Most attacks were done using the same footage which got repetitive. Leads were OK, but the characters remained one-note while others like Barbara Steele didn't get much to do. Still, it's definitely one of the better Jaws rip-offs.

~ "I'm not afraid. I'm a scientist." ~ Badly paced schlock with some fun moments. Didn't expect to see stop-motion mutant miniatures walking around. More of that, please. Dante definitely went on to do better. Inferno, for instance.

Like all Dante every authority figure is a bumbling idiot, a grifter or shown explicitly against the populace at large. Funny and grimy

Like an actual fun version of Jaws. Dante gives us a trashy, anti military bloodbath. Tightly directed (although I still prefer Aja’s version since the end attack set piece is better. A huge spectacle) and one of the grimiest lakes Ive ever seen. Can barely even call it freshwater. Does for lakes what Jaws did for oceans.

This was a good example of something I thought would be "so bad it's good" and while it's not too far off, I feel like it's well made enough to avoid being completely terrible. That being said it's a really silly and cartoonish B Horror movie that's very much of it's time and all for the better mostly. A lot of the death scenes are funny and there are many scenes where children get attacked by killer fish which I didn't expect, nobody is safe! Would be even a better watch with a group, stoned.

Joe Dante's amusing Jaws rip-off. Honestly my amusement while watching was tempered a bit because I didn't feel much tension while watching, cause I never expected the movie to go where it went; the piranha's attacking kids. But overal it is well paced. I liked the protagonists in fact are responsible by default for the whole massacre.

I thought Piranha was going to be a hard to watch creature feature ripping off Jaws. Instead I was surprised by how enjoyable it was. The piranhas were more of a tool and much of the drama was instead fueled by human choices. There was also an interesting political subtext

Amongst the dozens of Jaws rip-offs, Piranha succeeds due to Joe Dante's goofy and dark sense of humor. In no way is this a better film than its predecessor, but its wackiness is what it thrives off of.

Pigeons

Not the silly Jaws satire one might easily disqualify, but a subversive entertainment directed (and edited with fever and brightness) by a true genre master. The plot is pure 70s madness (a bunch of mutant piranhas created for Vietnam, the program went off the books, but one scientist kept the fishes in a tank; dialogues full of one-liners, kids being eaten, a shitty resort funded by a military, pollution saving the day), but Dantes makes sure we get thrilled by one money shot after another.

Oddly enough, overrated. 'Alligator' from more-or-less the same period is better.

It's massively cliché, but knowing the director and writer behind The Howling, that may be a self-reflexive meta-ness lost in the context of time. Dante and Sayles have fun with the ridiculous idea. Surprisingly funny, though usually in a very stupid, corny way. I don't necessarily buy the satire lots give it credit for, but if Spielberg himself counts himself among the movie's admirers, devotees of exploitation films and even recent retreads should check this one out if they can find it.

65.000

Some nice camp, though the attack scenes aren't funny (with one exception involving a flying fish) and they drag it down. The opening scene is especially awful.

Exactly what you'd expect from a project that Corman is attached to. Decent effects but nothing to justify the wait between the kills. Not a touch on the hysterical "Piranha 3D".

Really camp and a lot of fun. That's it.

Most fun I've ever had watching "animal attack" film. Nice humor, cute ladies, children eaten by piranhas - this genre probably can't get better than this.

A great theater experience. Loved all the shoehorned in nudity. The editing is legitimately good.

ger; [Piranhas]; aus einer forschungsstation werden versehentlich piranhas in das örtliche wassersystem freigesetzt - in welchem gerade ein badepark eröffnet.;

Dante plays up the comedy a lot more than Cameron does (or ever has), turning his into both a working monster movie and a pretty funny send-up of one. Not very good, but decent.

A smart, stylish and legitimately witty rip off of Jaws. One of Dante's best films, with a great cast.

Funny B movie. Obviously it has a sense of humor and doesn't take itself so seriously so that helps with the enjoyment factor.

Steven Spielberg's favorite _Jaws_ rip-off. Although bloody and scary in parts, this plays better as a spoof, with a superior B cast abetted by a funny Sayles script and all the usual Dante winks. Who could ask for anything more? How about Steele as a svelte lady scientist with great cheekbones and an arched eyebrow? Miller as a Texas con man with a Brooklyn accent? Bartel as a bitchy head camp counselor? A beach bunny reading _Moby Dick_? It just never stops.

Really funny and bad movie. I love the sound the piranha make, it's hilarious. Also, fastforwarding the car was pretty funny too. So cheesy

A bad knock-off that knows it's a bad knock off, and its self-awareness makes it fun - its campy goodheartedness makes up for its more nonexistent elements, like 'plot' and 'logic'. Surprisingly, there's a great deal of character, like the Camp Counselor. "GUTS!"

You know, the story of piranhas being so ravenous as to strip a cow to the bone is kind of an exaggeration. When Teddy Rooseveldt visited South America, they wanted to impress him so much that they isolated a school of pirahna and starved them for weeks so that by the time they lowered the cow into the water for teddy, they riped the cow to shreds. In truth, they are pretty docile. It's true, look it up.

Slightly spoofy thriller with a high death rate and a better than usual script. On the whole, an improvement on _Jaws_.

Piranhas that jump in people is so bad that it is almost funny, but it is not.

cheesy but worth a look

Score based on distant memory.

You can tell it's by Dante, and there are some fun things in it, but this is a generic and mostly boring monster movie.

Silly.