Piranha (94 minutes)

They're eating the guests, sir.

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Water has been scaring us lately. Between violent orcas, failed ocean expeditions, and an oarfish discovery, we’re being reminded almost daily that we don’t truly know all there is to know about our planet. I mean, just this past weekend a woman suffered a shark bite while swimming off of Rockaway Beach. So, what better way to celebrate our thalassophobia than by watching Piranha (1978, 94 minutes). 

I know you want to say, “Hey piranhas are freshwater fish!” I’ll get to that. First I gotta give you the plot of this now classic animal horror flick. When two teenagers go missing, skiptracer Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is sent to find them. She recruits Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman), a down on his luck recluse who the town drunk calls the town drunk (yikes), to be her guide up to the area where the teens were thought to be hiking. There they stumble across a military compound where scientist Dr. Hoak (Kevin McCarthy) has been breeding genetically engineered piranhas for a now defunct project called Operation: Razorteeth. Of course, Maggie first releases said piranhas out into the wild before knowing all this. Maggie and Paul are soon up against the clock, local police, the military, and the proprietor of a new resort, as they try to save as many people as possible, including Paul’s daughter. 

You probably already guessed that this movie was made and released as a response to Jaws. What you maybe didn’t know is that when Universal wanted to take New World Pictures to court over the release and subsequent marketing of the film (it was releasing around the same time as Jaws 2) Steven Spielberg stepped in to convince them not to. He liked it and he is/was a powerful guy. I feel like everyday I’m thanking Spielberg for something. Lord help us if any skeletons come popping out of his closet one day… After its release, Piranha made an incredible $16 million dollars at the box office against its $600,000 budget. This of course would lead director Joe Dante to the rest of his success, including making Gremlins. (My favorite Dante flick is The ‘Burbs which I must cover here soon.) And it leads to the creation of many more Piranha movies.

Look, it took some time for this movie to settle into my psyche. (A good reminder to myself of why I shouldn’t rate movies on Letterboxd right after watching them.) The more I think about this move the more I like it. The more I want to dislike it, the more I want to watch it again. It’s that powerful. I guess at first I didn’t know what to expect but now I know. A thinly veiled criticism of the military, the government, and the Vietnam war folded into a gory monster flick.

Most interestingly, the monsters of this movie - a free roaming pack of genetically altered piranhas - are often unseen and when we do see them they appear in a flurry of swirling water and glimpses at sharp teeth. They devour humans down to the bone in mere moments. Regular piranhas are freshwater fish, living in warm bodies of water, but our Piranha piranhas have been bred to withstand colder water temperatures and salt water, so once they’re released into a river headed for the ocean, you better believe the greater population is in danger. This is a great example of how important varying stakes are in a script. Sure, we care about Paul’s daughter and the resort goers who are all downstream, but the impending doom of releasing the piranhas into the world heightens the responsibility and urgency of Maggie and Paul. Though we rarely get a visual lock on the creatures, the movie employs sound to drive our fear of them. According to this article on National Post, foley artist Velue Yewdall used the sound of dental drills to create the now iconic sound of a piranha feast. 

And piranha feasts we get. Every time someone falls or jumps into a body of water, your body will flinch with expectation for something gruesome. About halfway through the movie, Paul’s neighbor is sitting with his feet in the river at the edge of his dock. We know where this is going and he is attacked from the feet up. What we don’t expect is for his body to be found later with his legs up to the knee stripped of all skin and muscle, leaving behind two bloody skeleton legs he tried to flee on. Trust me this visual will somehow make you chuckle and also have nightmares. 

Despite Maggie and Paul’s multiple attempts to warn the town of what’s happening (they are thwarted by the military and local police) the piranha make it to the opening day party of a new river resort owned by Buck Gardner (Dick Miller). What ensues is an all out blood bath as the piranha devour resort guests who struggle to make it out of the water in one piece. The best line of the movie occurs here when Buck is interrupted by his right hand man, Whitney:

Whitney: The piranhas...
Buck Gardner: What about the goddamn piranhas?
Whitney: They're eating the guests, sir.

This is a fine taste of the sense of humor this movie has about itself, which is what ultimately makes it so fun to watch. Yes, some of the performances are a bit dry and befuddled, but if you look past that you can have a wonderful time. I also need to mention that at one point in Dr. Hoak’s lab, a strange stop motion dinosaur creature appears. It is brief, it is strange, it never comes back or pays off. Take from that what you will… At first it drove me crazy, but now I just embrace it as part of the charm of this bizarre movie. 

Excuse me sir are you in the wrong movie?

And finally, I will leave you with a photo of Paul’s daughter. Who my husband INSISTS looks like me as a little girl. I didn’t have the time or energy to pull better photos but… you all can be the judges.