The water’s filled with carnivorous fish.

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.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek , but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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