PIRANHA, the little fish that could, chomped into theaters in 1978, ravenously feeding off the blood money wake of kingfish boxoffice predator Jaws. Besides its own three sequels, that apex leviathan of 1975 spawned a school of water-borne ripoffs that finned throughout the 70’s and 80’s. This wasn’t the first: our sonar locates that chum as the 1976 nipper Mako: The Jaws Of Death (featuring Richard Jaeckel as a sort of ‘shark whisperer’) or the biggest—in cost, revenue and size of critter, that would be 1977’s dorky Orca. But bite-above-its-weight Piranha is a prime example of Exploitation 101, a fishing expedition into the undercurrents of Amerimoviecana that takes pride of place on several counts: to be enumerated below. We’re gonna need a bigger review…

“Terror, horror, death. Film at eleven.”

Insurance skiptracer ‘Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies, 28, thirteen past ‘Louisa’ in The Sound of Music) investigates ‘Lost River Lake’ in Texas for a pair of missing teens. She cajoles guide help from sullen hermit/ boozer ‘Paul Grogan’ (Bradford Dillman) but poking around a seemingly abandoned compound facility reveals bizarre (fishy?) experimental specimens, and when Maggie releases a pool of water into the river, they find (‘to their horror’, becuz..) that they’ve let loose a genetically enhanced (as in mutated) mess of piranha, who begin to devour every unlucky Texan having fun downstream. Could crazy scientists have done this? Were they working for the Army? Did the government actually plan to dump the miniature munching machines into the waters of North Vietnam? Did the war end before that lovely idea could help win over whatever hearts and minds not yet converted to freedom by Agent Orange and carpet bombing? Would big business, the military and high-ranking politicians condone such a thing? If you answer yes to the first four questions you get the themes underlying the camped-up script. If you answer no to the last question then you deserve all that’s coming your way.

“We’ll pollute the bastards to death!”

Joe Dante had pulled off a sleeper hit with his first directorial effort, Hollywood Boulevard, done on a dime (Roger Corman’s) and making a mint. Moving up a notch, Corman okayed the expenditure for this, which was scripted by a 27-year-old first-timer named John Sayles, who’d written a couple of novels and wanted to move into movie territory. Dante had an eye for visuals and a grasp of genre sensibilities, Sayles was not only clever with dialogue but wanted to jab cause & effect needles into social ills (environmental degradation, rampant capitalism) and sacred bullshitters cows (the military-industrial complex). Add a few breasts, buckets—make that 55 gallon drums—of blood and whatever icky-goofy special effects hopeful 17-year-old whiz kid Phil Tippet could concoct on time and in budget. Tippet delivered dozens of rubber piranhas and as a tribute to Ray Harryhausen a cool little stop-motion creature resembling the monster from 20 Million Miles To Earth (with a fish aspect for good measure).

Casting drew forth plenty of snicker value via joke-getting pros Kevin McCarthy and Keenan Wynn, Corman standby goofball Dick Miller, dependably flamboyant Paul Bartel (camping it up), Bruce Gordon (immortal as Frank Nitti from The Untouchables) and Hammer vixen Barbara Steele, for some Euro-style corruption vibe. Everyone knows this isn’t Hamlet and they’re all smart enough not to ruin the joke by winking at the audience. Several of them end up as mangled fish bait, as do swarms of extras, including children (!)—quick edit panic-carnage that crossed the line for some fussy critics and would delight the living M&M’s and Corn Nuts out kids and teenagers. Sayles did a cameo as a soldier. Location shooting was done in the countryside around the Texas towns of Seguin, San Marcos and Wimberly and on the Guadalupe River. The sound effects guys add their fun by devising some frantic underwater mass-attack noise when the feasting is underway.

When it was ready to chow down in summer ’78, Universal threatened an injunction, fearing it would tap the money spigot from their just unloaded Jaws 2 but no less a Jedi Master (or Quint) than Spielberg himself gave Dante’s gag his blessing, calling it “the best of the Jaws ripoffs.” He and Dante became friends and worked together on Gremlins and Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Oh, yeah, pride of place—starting with money, because ‘art’ will have to get in line: (1) bang for buck. Made for around $700,000, it chomped $6,400,000 in domestic waters, 77th in ’78, with perhaps as much as $14,000,000 across the seas, akin to going on your first fishing trip and landing a marlin. (2) bumped newby director Joe Dante up a notch on the food chain (The Howling was next) (3) launching career of John Sayles, who instead of almost quitting show biz after seeing the rough cut, went on to become one of the great cinema chroniclers of These United States (4) the casting—speaks for itself (5) turns basic sushi appetizer into a cult item treat, look no further than the racking of 134 blog reviews on the IMNb  (6) got the launch code from B-Czar Roger Corman (7) received the blessing of Steven Spielberg (8) when Menzies refused to do a brief semi-nude scene, a willing local waitress was paid to flash her boobs. One more example of “Is This a Great Country or What?”  Case, rested. What do you mean, you “forgot the beer”?  *

WHITNEY: “The piranhas...”   GARDNER: “What about the goddamn piranhas?”   WHITNEY: “They’re eating the guests, sir.”

94 minutes, with Belinda Belasky, Melody Thomas Scott, Richard Deacon and a horde of happy-to-play-along extras acting like they’re being devoured. Remade twice, in 1995 and then again as Piranha 3-D in 2010.

* Consistently canny Corman had a lapse in judgement (forget taste) in cutting $200,000 from Piranha‘s budget in order to put it into the disaster opus Avalanche, which had bigger stars (Rock Hudson, Mia Farrow) and a budget of $6,500,000. The slope was on him: it was a ‘disaster’ in every aspect.

As long as we’re talking ripoffs, we beg swiping a quote from the consistently fun blog “For A Man’s Number”. His opener for Mako: The Jaws Of Death mirthed our morning: “If you’re a film fan who will watch anything then you inevitably start to work your way through a lot of films that others may consider . . . not very good.”  https://foritismansnumber.blogspot.com/2021/02/mako-jaws-of-death-1976.html