I first read about Piranha in the 1997 edition of Leonard Maltin's film guide. Prior to the internet, 1000-plus page tomes with 8-point font by Maltin and Mick Martin & Marsha Porter were not ideal sources for film criticism, but they did serve as a fairly comprehensive guide of what was possibly gathering dust at video stores in your area code. You could care less about their ratings, and often the "Turkeys" or “BOMBS” looked more appealing. Maltin rated it three stars, which was considerably higher than most B-fare in his catalog. More importantly, he included a cast list before the blurb, including both Kevin McCarthy of Invasion of the Body Snatchers fame and Bradford Dillman, the lead in the third Planet of the Apes film - the one where they travel back to the present (the best!). It was also from Joe Dante, the director of Gremlins and more importantly, Gremlins 2: The New Batch - which featured Maltin getting attacked by the titular creatures. To a 13-year-old me, no further sale was necessary. From that point on, I was determined to see Piranha.
To understand why my quest to see Piranha took on Grail-like proportions in my mind, one must first familiarize themselves with the curt, dismissive way Maltin, Martin & Porter could write off a cool-sounding movie. Maltin had disparaged many films I loved, most notably John Carpenter’s The Thing, but these volumes did provide terrific ledgers of film history. The downside would often be the 50-75 word blurbs provided, which left you starving for so much more than their snobbery.
The other reason finding Piranha felt Grail-like is, like many other out-of-print films over the years, it had become such. Tucson, Arizona was not known for its great film libraries, and out-of-print films that weren’t popular at Blockbuster required a bit of searching. By the time I found Piranha, over a year had passed. The quest likely could have been shortened, there were easier ways to find out-of-print movies pre-internet, but age and inexperience left me equipped only with a phone and directory. There was no search engine or database online of where to go, and torrenting was still years away, particularly for a file of that size.
After calling every video store in Tucson, I finally received a "Yep" from a clerk at Director's Chair Video, approximately a 45-minute drive. Carless, my brother and mother surprised me with a rental copy one evening. After messing up trying to dub a copy, I gave up, happy that I'd seen it at least once and more than ready to cite it as "superior to Jaws" at parties. Young cinephiles are prone to that kind of hyperbole, particularly when they reach the age of hip contrarianism where trashing Spielberg is en vogue.
A year later, though, it was released on DVD - just one among a swath of Tuesday releases at Suncoast and Borders - forever putting an end to long, often frantic quests to find forgotten films that so often peppered my youth. I think of those journeys fondly as endless drives through the sweltering summers to antique shops where "antique" was applied liberally to include Kenner Star Wars action figures and old VHS. My brother and I would hit those Sunday fairs once a month at my former elementary school for records that rarely cost more than a quarter; curiosity shops with names like Americana that later would be inherited by the owner's ungrateful children and transformed into gaudy electronic music havens. These unappraised troves often contained ties emblazoned with a golden elephant and the words, "Goldwater '64" and rare copies of Re-Animator. We celebrated the advent of DVD, marveled at the MST3k-esque commentary track on Ghostbusters. DVD included special features for which a film nerd from the past would commit treason, but they could never recapture the unadulterated glee derived from finding something truly precious. A youthful lack of foresight left me only excited at the prospect, not yet disheartened by the loss of long outings in the desert with my brother that would also be associated with first listenings of Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, The White Stripes and Gene Clark. There is much of that era that is forever lost, not the least of which was the affordability of the hunt.
Piranha comes from another transitionary period for cinema, shortly after Jaws had claimed hegemony at the box office and blockbusters became the dominant form. With the first blockbuster came the first attempts to capitalize on it that usually fell into one of three categories — hysterical foreign ripoffs, desperate big-budget ripoffs and cheap cash-ins. Piranha falls quite firmly in the last category and late to the party, with Dante often joking it's more of a send-up of the sequel. The opening scene, though, is unquestionably Jaws-lite, as two teenage campers canoodle in a mysterious swimming pool in the forest. There's something in the pool, and both are pulled under as the water turns crimson and the film's title card rises from the water.
While trying to find the missing teens, a plucky private investigator (Heather Menzies) and a grizzly, extremely divorced Bradford Dillman accidentally set a school of genetically mutated piranha loose on Lost River Lake. As the school descends toward civilization, the two are on a race to warn a summer camp where Dillman's daughter is staying, not to mention the grand opening of a new resort community by a never-sleazier Dick Miller.
The script is as inventive as and playful as its director, though it took a while to get there. Before playwright-to-be John Sayles revised it, writer Richard Robinson had trouble figuring out a reason to get the people in the water, at first relying on a rogue bear. Once that bit of convolution was removed, Sayles wrote a script that references the B-grade horror of the past far more than Jaws and heaping satire. On the sidelines, the TV media deliver salacious commentary: “Terror. Horror. Death. Film at 11.” It’s a level of disdain Dante and Sayles retain for the media-employed cast of The Howling. The film is no less sly about it’s main villains, who one-up Jaws' corrupt mayor at every turn and include greedy land developers, government bureaucrats, irresponsible camp counselors and even mad scientists. It's in the latter that Dante first plays in Gremlins territory, utilizing Rob Bottin's excellent early stop-motion in a Bride of Frankenstein homage early on. The monsters wander around mad Dr. Hoak (Kevin McCarthy)'s laboratory aimlessly, like Harryhausen creations put to pasture or, worse, rejects from the production line. It’s equal parts creepy, vaguely forlorn and strangely funny. Just look at this miserable bastard:
Dante perfectly incorporates the insane demands of a schlock producer - including three climaxes - staged with a sense of humour at once broad and winking. The third finale devolves into an elaborate practical joke on the audience, involving an allegedly tense 90-second countdown that in movie time manages to drag out for five minutes. Dillman must swim to a flooded smelting plant and, in one of the strangest and funniest eco-horror twists unleash toxic waste into the lake to kill the mutant fish. As the scene progresses, the countdown clock stops aligning with objective reality and every cut back to Menzies announcing how many seconds have passed is met with skepticism, then guffaw.
Otherwise, Dante pulls out every trick he learned at Corman film school and uses them masterfully - employing skip-frame car chases and other optical tricks like the aforementioned stop-motion. It’s the kind of early resume work that would impress industry insiders - and did. When Universal levied a lawsuit against New World Pictures, it was Spielberg who screened the film, told them to drop it and later hired Dante. Piranha can also be pretty horrific, saving one of its most brutal deaths for a likable camp counselor who is pulled into a bloody oblivion.
Piranha is a goofy B-grade horror film played almost entirely straight. It's also the basis for a major early aughts remake where much of the same material is played for big laughs as opposed to subtle winks. Piranha 3D, directed by Alexandre Aja, sat in development hell for years in the hands of The Blob remake director Chuck Russell. By production, however, the mid-2000s were in full swing. While shockingly faithful in many respects - can’t help but turn up the laugh track. Not that Dante doesn’t hesitate to have a flying fish leap out of the water and bite Paul Bartel’s nose. In the remake, it’s Jerry O’Connell’s penis.
The only thing worth mentioning about the Corman-produced 1995 direct-to-video remake is it's cast list, featuring William Katt, Alexandra Paul, Leland Orser and Mila Kunis. Though, if you're curious, you can watch it here.
I still have, among my things, the dubbed VHS of Piranha with no sound, and I’ve since bought the Roger Corman classics DVD and the Shout Factory DVD. I’ve yet to upgrade further, but I will. Physical media has unquestionably had a banner few years, and my algorithm has alerted me to the fact that there’s now a 4K in existence. Further releases have only unveiled more about the film’s history, including stories about why Menzies used a body double for a nude scene and the fact that actor Eric Braeden was used in Kevin McCarthy’s underwater shots. I love those little details found on special features now. They’ve filled in what was once an endless, wonderous, ever-mysterious void that made cinema a little more curious - completely relatable, but never fully attainable.
Time Echoes
It's 2023 and I've found a copy of Todd Solondz' Storytelling at a thrift shop in Montreal. Now, Solondz had gone bankrupt...
