Piranha
(1978)
(SPOILERS) Joe
Dante’s first movie-proper, complete with a singularly solo directorial credit,
in which he’s armed with John Sayles first screenplay (rewriting Richard
Robinson’s effort), Piranha has
considerable fun riffing on Jaws (from
the very start; a character plays a delightfully basic Jaws arcade game over the opening credits). It was a little late to
the party, admittedly, surfacing a very un-cash-in-like three years down the
line (so much so that Universal’s own cash-in Jaws 2, from which Spielberg demurred involvement, was released two
months earlier). You can see a huge step
up aesthetically between this and Dante’s next film, The Howling, but Piranha’s
tongue-in-cheek scares effectively establish the director’s approach to both
horror and humour; the DNA of the maker of Gremlins
is all over Piranha.
Reputedly, Universal
were all set to sue over Piranha
copying Jaws, but Spielberg
intervened when he saw and liked the film (he considered it the best of the Jaws rip-offs). For a studio known for
its quickies, it took New World a long time to bring it all together. Peter
Fonda turned the movie down because he didn’t think the effects would work (Bradford
Dilman took the role). To his credit, Corman didn’t think it was worth doing if the effects didn’t work, and to be
fair, they still look pretty good, thanks to sped up footage and an aural
accompaniment that resembles a hive of subaqua bees. Rob Bottin and Phil Tippet
provided the effects, both of whom went on to great acclaim in their fields
over the next decade.
For his
part, Dante was convinced the movie was terrible (he had wanted to direct Rock and Roll High School, on which he
filled in for his Hollywood Boulevard
co-director Allan Arkush for a couple of days), despite the cutting and
recutting he did, so its success came as a surprise. Hollywood being prone to thinking
out of the box, he would subsequently be offered the watery likes of Orca 2 and Jaws 3 People 0 (the latter might have been the Jaws sequel equivalent of his later Gremlins 2, a decade early). The plot is
replete with the usual essentials of such horror fare, mostly involving people
doing really dumb things, but there’s a knowingness swimming through Piranha that complements the daftness.
This is, after all, the sea (river) menace as a full-blown science fiction
beastie.
Dr Hoak: Of
course they paid. There’s germ warfare, the bomb, chemical warfare. There’s
plenty of money, special agencies. They pay. They pay a lot better than they do
in private research.
The
piranhas have been bred in “some kind of
army test site up the mountain”, through messing with genetics and
radiation as part of Operation Razorteeth, overseen by Kevin McCarthy’s morally
wayard scientist Dr Robert Hoak. Courtesy of Sayles, there’s a witty commentary
on politics and the environment. The project was designed to produce a creature
that would destroy the river systems of the North Vietnamese, but alas,
operations ended and the project was put into turn around. However, a mutant
strain (of mutants) resisted the poisin and Hoak nurtured them.
While Hoak
is ethically compromised, so representing the stereotypically self-deluding
figure who denies culpability (“I’m a
scientist. I never killed anybody. If you want to talk about killing, talk to
your politicians, and the military people”), he redeems himself in a wash of
frothing river blood to save a small child.
McCathy,
most famously a veteran of Invasion of
the Body Snatchers, would go on to work with Dante another half dozen times
over the next quarter of a century, and it’s those 1950s B-trappings that most
inform Piranha, rather than the ‘70s “realism”
of Spielberg’s Jaws. They’re there in
the monster feeding frenzies, and the oblivious holiday makers. The military
even show up, although they are completely useless and it’s down to Dilman’s
Grogan to save the day.
Amusingly,
both our heroes are responsible for the same kind of destruction the army
blithely profess is in our best interests (“Sometimes
it’s necessary to destroy in order to save”). It’s insurance investigator
Maggie (Heather Menzies) who lets the piranhas out (Hoak has a point when he accuses
her “You pulled the plug and your holding
me responsible? You’re actually blaming me?”), while Grogan’s plan to rid
the river of these carnivorous terrors is “We’ll
pollute the bastards to death”, through releasing industrial waste from the
smelting plant tanks. Eco-disaster is thus heralded as the salvation of
humanity.
Dumont: People
eat fish, Grogan. Fish don’t eat people.
You can frequently
feel the langoruousness pace of Piranha.
At 90 minutes, it could probably have shaved 15 off and been more effective. It’s
a leisurely, mostly unatmospheric ride. While there are incidental pleasures
involving Dick Miller’s Lost River water park, and Paul Bartel is, yet again (following
Hollywood Boulevard), a scene stealer
as summer camp officiator Mr Dumont (reacting to kids throwing darts at his
picture; telling Grogan – whose daughter is in attendance – to sober up during a phone call where the
latter is warning of the fishy threat; having a piranha bite his nose), too
often the pace dips to a crawl.
Dante
throws in occasional pleasures and distractions, from references to aquatic
literature, old movies and their assorted clichés (the skinny dippers – this is
still a Corman film - at the start reference the Creature from the Black Lagoon, it’s a full moon, and someone is
reading Moby Dick), to crass gags (a
fat chap’s deck chair collapses beneath him), good ones (“Lost River Lake. Terror. Horror. Death. Film at Eleven” announces a
TV reporter) to little bits of weirdness (the stop-motion mutant in Hoak’s lab,
as well as the puppet one) and the occasional eye for a memorable shot
(Grogan’s hand rising out of the water). There is also a fair share of nasty
deaths, Keenan Wynn’s particularly, and Pino Donaggio, who was slumming it, relatively
speaking, provides an effective score.
Buck Gardner: What
about the goddam piranhas?
Assistant: They’re
eating the guests, sir.
Piranha naturaly provides a set up for a sequel, with
scream queen Barbara Steele (as military employee Dr Mengers) assuring us “There’s nothing left to fear”. Some
bloke with no future called James Cameron would handle Piranha II: The Flying Killers, as Dante would be off directing
werewolves accompanied by a portion of the cast (McCarthy, Miller, Belinda
Balaski). The movie’s reputation as a little gem is a bit overstated, to be
honest. It’s too fitfully paced to exhibit the consistent wit and unbridled flair
of the director’s ‘80s efforts, poised at is between the cheap-and-cheerful
Corman approach and the sensibility Dante was developing, but it’s undoubtedly
been influential. And remade. Twice.
