Overrated

Absolutely amazing

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Sadly these days whenever most people will hear the title of Piranha they'll probably automatically think of the obnoxious and tacky "Piranha 3D", a movie that while I did find it fun in a brainless kind of way, it didn't have an ounce of the good old-fashioned charm and character that this flick had going for it. I mean how could anyone ever forget about the original Piranha? It's a classic and one of the best killer animal movies ever made. It's one of the pictures that really captured my imagination in a fun scary way when I was a kid and I still love it now, it's such an easy charming movie to sit through, and if you absolutely have to label it as such, then it's certainly a B-movie that's done tremendously well. I don't personally think it's all that much of a Jaws ripoff. Some people talk as if that's all it is.. Jaws had one big fish, this has many tiny fish that pose a far greater threat, the thing that's most similar to Jaws that I see is just the underwater shots of the piranha closing in on victims from below. Jaws chillingly killed one child, this movie had the gall to make the first bloodbath of its story an attack on a whole bunch of kids at once, and that took some serious "intestinal fortitude" back in 1978 when kids in movies were considered a lot more sacrosanct than they are today. I love the way the good guys actually fail to reach the summer camp in time to save the children, because it goes against what you'd typically expect to happen, and that was different and interesting to me. I find that there's a great sense of menace to the movie as well as a good comic timing, with the scary moments being more shocking because I was just chuckling at something a minute before, and I can take it perfectly serious as a picture and still have fun with it at the same time. I love the music score which gives it a lot of added atmosphere, to me it sounds very similar to the iconic theme from Carrie and it gives me the creeps. They do a good job of just making the water seem spooky and dangerous. I remember being bothered as a kid by how you never really see the piranha all that much at all, but now I think that it works out much better in that more subtle and shadowy way, with the mutant fish as a mostly unseen threat lurking beneath the darkness of the water, and the noise of them feeding is actually a little scarier than they are! I loved that sound, I don't know what they did to make it but it goes together with the underwater photography and the quick shots of the piranha relentlessly ripping at people to sell the effect of them fantastically. Something else I quite enjoy is that it had good characters that are fun to watch, even just the bit parts. I love the overly strict ridiculous blowhard who happens to be the boss of the summer camp and has no sense of humour and takes his job way too seriously, he's such a funny buffoon and is such an ignorant jerk but he does kind of redeem himself in the end, which is something that happens a few times in this movie.. I like Kevin McCarthy's regretful scientist who originally created the genetically engineered piranha, he's manic and energetic and his death while he clumsily tries to rescue a boy is genuinely sad, and nobody ever believes Kevin McCarthy about impending doom until it's too dang late! Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies were great together, they were both very likable and had such a fun cute chemistry that really carries the whole movie. She's very spunky and resourceful and was not at all above her 'feminine wiles' to get them out of tight spots, and while she was no airhead she did kind of cause everything that went wrong in the story in one way or another! And Dillman's character at first is just a good-natured honourable drunk who tags along but he becomes more of the hero the audience expects him to be as it goes on. Most of the film is just their race against time to stop the piranha from reaching the sea, which they ultimately fail to do as Barbara Steele reveals as the movie ends in a hilariously wink-wink moment as she huskily says to the news media in her lovely British accent that "There's nothing left to fear..." But of course it's really to you...the viewer! Everything we've seen has just been mere prelude to a much bigger fishy nightmare to come, and now blood's *really* gonna run and the oceans of the world will run red forever!!! As stupidly over the too as it is, I still find the ending to be more strangely eerie than funny. So to me it's a movie that's both funny and scary whenever it's trying to be either, and it really shows how good the animal attack movies of their glorious 70s heydays could be. Still brilliant fun, it's an easy 10 out of 10 bizarre bipedal peeping fish lizard creatures for me! x

Actually better than I thought it would be. Apparently, the normal piranha is not as dangerous as its reputation, but here we have a kind of mutant variety. Two young people are eaten right away and set the stage for more and more fish delicacies down the road. The fear is keeping these things confined to a limited area and out of the ocean where they could create a gigantic imbalance ecologically, not to mention these things running rampant (swimming rampant?). This is one of the movies that rode on the back of the popularity of "Jaws." It does have some good suspense and some terrifying scenes, but it is another gratuitous gorefest. Perhaps a bit of communication by the military might have helped prevent the carnage. Anyway, it's worth a watch for those who get into the right spirit.

Steven Spielberg called PIRANHA his favorite of the numerous JAWS "rip offs" but it really deserves better than that label. Though clearly made in response to Spielberg's monumentally successful film, it has its own unique style and attitude and is really no more a rip-off than JAWS itself was a rip-off of the numerous 50s creature features that inspired it. I also wouldn't refer to it as a spoof or even a comedy. It's a horror movie first and foremost; one that just happens to have a good sense of humor. Released just months after the first JAWS sequel (itself a big hit), Universal strongly considered filing an injunction against producer Roger Corman and his company New World Pictures on the grounds this was an unauthorized spoof of their big money-maker. Supposedly, it was Spielberg himself (a fan of the film) who actually talked them out of it. As a result, PIRANHA became one of New World's biggest hits; grossing 16 million dollars worldwide (6 million in the U.S. alone) on a budget of just 660,000 dollars.A couple of young hikers stumble upon a remote, abandoned government facility late at night and decide to take a dip in what they believe to be a swimming pool, which turns out to actually be a large holding tank housing hundreds of flesh-eating fish. Needless to say, neither of the teens make it back home that night. Skip tracer Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is hired to find them and travels to the small town of Indian Springs to start her investigation. The first man she happens to meet is Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman); a gruff, sarcastic, unshaven, divorced single dad who's been wasting away at a cabin in the woods and drowning his sorrows in booze. Maggie insists he take her to the military installation and he begrudgingly agrees. After finding evidence that the teens had indeed been there, Maggie drains the pool to make sure they didn't drown. Instead, she inadvertently unleashes a slew of vicious, scientifically-altered, rapidly-multiplying freshwater piranha into the river, which were part of an abandoned Vietnam era army experiment called "Operation Razorteeth." From then on, it's a race down the river to try to reach a dam before they're released into more heavily-populated areas.PIRANHA is about as close as you can come to being a perfectly realized B horror flick. There's sharp dialogue (courtesy of the talented John Sayles), action, laughs, blood, enjoyable characters and even some effectively suspenseful and horrific moments. Best of all is perhaps the truly excellent cast; many of whom were chosen specifically to appeal to fans of these kind of films and each bringing their own special spark to the proceedings. Kevin McCarthy gets to channel some of his INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS hysteria as Dr. Hoak, a straggler who's still doing experiments at the closed installation. There are other memorable roles for horror queen Barbara Steele as a sultry (and corrupt) "fish geneticist," Paul Bartel as a drill sergeant-like summer camp owner and Dick Miller as a Texas businessman whose new family lake resort becomes an an all-you-can-eat buffet because of his refusal to shut down. Dillman (an under-appreciated actor if there ever was one) and Menzies have good on-screen chemistry and make for very likable leads.In addition to the fine cast, there's a good score from Pino Donaggio (which has obvious echoes of his earlier CARRIE score), a clip from THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD (1957) on a TV set, in joke references to everything from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON to "Moby Dick" and they even briefly throw in a great little stop-motion critter inspired by the Ymir in 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957), which was designed and animated by Phil Tippett. The piranha effects themselves, while not great, are fairly effective because they were smart enough not to dwell on them for too long and utilize rapid editing, lots of water thrashing and gallons of blood in the attack scenes. Fx wizards like Rob Bottin, Chris Walas and Robert Short (all of whom went on to win Oscars) were just a few of the names to, uh, cut their teeth, on this one.The film's success prompted the sequel PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING (1981) a few years later, which featured the novelty of flying killer piranha but is best remembered these days as the directorial debut of James Cameron (who was fired before the film's completion). PIRANHA was also remade in 1995 for cable TV (Corman also produced that version) and was then loosely remade a second time into a sleazy / gory trash-fest by director Alexandre Aja as PIRANHA 3D (2010), which itself was followed by a sequel: John Gulager's PIRANHA 3DD (2012). The original is easily the best of all of these, though Aja's film is also surprisingly fun.

A shoal of ravenous, genetically engineered piranha, the result of a top-secret US army experiment, are accidentally released into an American river system, threatening the lives of everyone downstream, including a group of children at summer camp and the guests of a riverside resort.Not just another lame Jaws rip-off, but rather a fabulously entertaining parody of the whole killer fish genre that emerged in the wake of Spielberg's classic, Joe Dante's Piranha brilliantly combines the director's trademark black humour with surprisingly disturbing scenes of genuine horror (FX legend Rob Bottin supplying the delightfully gruesome gore), features a superb cast of cult-movie legends (including Dante regulars Dick Miller and Kevin McCarthy), and, as befitting of any self-respecting schlock horror about killer-fish menacing helpless bathers, delivers some welcome female nudity, the film's obligatory skinny dip scene occurring within the first few minutes, with several other gratuitous boob shots throughout (sadly, the toothy critters fail to nibble away at the bikini strap of camp counsellor cutie Laura Dickinson, played by Melody Thomas).All in all, a great little film to sink your teeth into.