Product description

Piranha [1978]

Price: £1.75
RRP: £5.99
Average customer rating: 4.0

Binding : VHS Tape
EAN : 5050070004021
Label : MGM Entertainment
Manufacturer : MGM Entertainment
Publisher : MGM Entertainment
Release date : 2001-09-17
Title : Piranha [1978]
Actor : Array
Audience rating : Suitable for 18 years and over
Format : PAL
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Original release date : 1978-01-01
Running time : 90
Studio : MGM Entertainment
Theatrical releaseDate : 1978-08-03
Number of discs : 1

Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
Roger Corman produced this shameless Jaws rip-off at the height of the "nature gone wild" boom of American cinema and struck B-movie gold. Scripted by John Sayles and directed by Joe Dante, this tongue-in-cheek thriller stars Bradford Dillman (doing his best Rip Torn impression) as an antisocial mountain man and Heather Menzies as a rookie detective who race a school of mutant piranha down river. Dante and Sayles provide the requisite blood and gore for this drive-in meat market: a kids' summer camp and a waterfront amusement park await the little beasties. Along the way, riverside retiree Keenan Wynn gets his ankles stripped clean, camp counsellor Paul Bartel is chomped on the cheek by a hungry little sucker who takes to the air, and hordes of unlucky bathers are caught in the centre of a feeding frenzy. What differentiates this little gem from the legion of similar knockoffs are the satirical swipes at military arrogance and crass commercialism, Dante's energetic enthusiasm and the bursts of black humour: "Lost River Lake: Terror, horror, death. Film at 11". The culty cast also includes Invasion of the Body Snatchers' Kevin McCarthy as the hysterical scientist guarding the creatures, horror diva Barbara Steele as a devious government researcher and long-time Corman regular Dick Miller as an unscrupulous entrepreneur ("Sir, the piranha are eating the guests"). --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

Customer reviews

review by: s.vernon date: 2007-11-03 rating:

A GOOD JAWS SPOOF
Two friends go missing, and private investigator Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is assigned to track them down. After searching with no luck, her trail leads her to Paul Grogan, (Bradford Dillman) a recluse living up in the mountains. He tells her that the only way people would be up there is if they were swept away to a nearby damn. They pack up and head over to the damn, which also houses a secret military base. Breaking and entering, the two discover that the supposed closed facility is still operational. After getting away from a guard, they accidentally throw a switch, draining a pool in the middle of the facility into the river. Later, they discover that the pool housed a giant swarm of mutated piranha, which the military created for use in Vietnam and kept in the facility when the war ended. Now drained into the river system, Maggie and Paul work together with their creator, Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy) and local hotel owner Buck Gardner (Dick Miller) to keep the voracious predators from devouring everything in their path.

The Good News: I think this is Roger Corman's best movie he ever made. Sure, he's done others that are more famous, including his Poe films from the early 60s, but few can match the sheer fun that this movie is. This is pure campy fun, and the actors know that and don't try to get too serious. The situations that they get into even further the cheese along. Seriously, how can you take a film with mutant killer piranha without a grain of salt? It has to be like that, because then it wouldn't be so much fun. Off course, it wouldn't be that way without the generous gore. It was obvious that they wanted to up the stakes of gore that "Jaws" had, and this film blows it out of the water (no pun intended) in that respect. In here, we get slowly munched limbs, a lot of very gory bite marks on faces, skin seen visibly eaten away, and an infamous scene where a piranha takes flight and latches onto a person's eyeball. At the end, there are plenty of wounds seen inflicted on survivors as well, and with tons of blood spilt in between, this will not disappoint the gore hounds out there. That ending, wow, what can I say. It has it all: plenty of action, tons of gore, deaths, survivors, and the bad guy gets what's coming to him. To have the kind of coordination and creativity to make that whole sequence a success is astonishing. It is the kind of scene that newer Hollywood action directors needed to watch because this scene gets it right. The action is shot in plain view for you to see what's going on, not that hyper-stylized jump cuts that so plague those films. You want to be able to see the action, not be confused by it, and that scene is a great example. It is a fast paced scene, but you know exactly what's going on all the time. That's the hallmark of a great director. He lets you see his set-pieces in great detail and care. This is also true of the special effects. I have to say it; the miniature piranhas are very well done. They look exactly like the pictures of piranha I've seen in pictures and on the National Geographic Channel. Back at that time, to actually make a believable animal in these kinds of films was so rare that it was embarrassing. Hardly any film from 74 to 80 had believable animals in these films, but this is one of the rare exceptions. The piranhas are believable and look evil, just like they should be.

The Bad News: About the only negative thing I can say about this movie is that the film might be a bit too "70s" for some people to handle. It has that "We're spoofing Jaws and having fun doing it" feel to it ruins several of the other films that came out at the same time, and this is one of them. Luckily, this is one of the better ones.

The Final Verdict: I really love this film, and it is one of the best of its kind of films. The spoof works for it, mainly because there isn't a lot of seriousness in it. Give it a shot if you like those kinds of films, or if you simply like to see killer sea creatures on the loose films.

review by: date: 2006-03-21 rating:

Great "B" Movie
"Piranha" is a cautionary tale about the perils of genetic engineering , yet it manages to inject an element of humour into it's critique as well as portraying the horror of a mass piranha attack. Make no mistake , these are fierce and very dangerous fish and "Piranha" contains some gruesome scenes. Perhaps "Piranha" is also an allegory about the Vietnam War , however I think that may be overanalysing the film a tad. The acting and dialogue isn't the greatest, but the piranhas themselves are superb. What about the flying one that took out the camp leader ! The highlight of the film for me was the sound of the piranhas on the attack; one of the most chilling sound effects I can recall in a horror film.

review by: date: 2004-07-05 rating:

Fun film
A spoof of 'Jaws' this is a highly entertaining film. It's got a good cast and great director, Joe Dante (who also made 'The Howling' and 'Gremlins 1 and 2').

Not particulary scary, it has a few moments where you cringe for the characters, but the film is mostly humourous, and is meant to be.

The plot is basically genetically-modified Piranhas escape from where the government was breeding them (to use in future wars!) and go on a rampage on a lake by a children's summer camp.

Great fun!

review by: date: 2003-01-20 rating:

"The piranhas...they're eating the guests, sir..."
We all know that producer Roger Corman made "Piranha" to exploit the success of "Jaws"--just look at the poster art for Spielberg's sake. But what was intended to be a low-budget knock-off became a classic B-movie because John Sayles produced a clever script and Corman assigned Joe Dante to direct. Dante would later go on to direct "The Howling" and "Gremlins," as well as "Rock and Roll High School" and "Amazon Women on the Moon" (the man does not forget his roots). Ultimately, "Piranha" is every bit as much of a spoof as it is a ripoff, which raises it to the highest level of B-Movie grandeur. The story, such as it is in such things, has flesh-eating piranhas being released into the river of the Lost River Lake resort. Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies, and Keenan Wynn are the most recognizable faces trying to avoid being eaten by the wee beasties, although you horror film buffs will also recognize not only Kevin "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" McCarthy but Barbara Steele, Queen of the Italian Horror Films. The DVD extras clearly reflect a grand affection for this film with commentary from Dante and producer Jon Davison, deleted footage, theatrical trailer, a "making-of" featurette for this 1978 film, material from the film's press kit, and more. When you have a classic B-Movie with A+ extras on the DVD, you have to give it five stars. Ironically, "Piranha II: The Spawning," the 1981 sequel, was the first film directed by James Cameron, who also went on to some notable successes in his later films.

review by: date: 2000-07-31 rating:

Man meddles again, a great film is the result!
This will remind you of Jaws. It is funny and suspenseful and will make you want to watch it again and again. With a great cast including Dick Miller from Gremlins it has everything. Joe Dante directs and it has a great story to it. Its also not very dated and wont go out of date very quickly. Its fx for some of the dead bodies is very funny actually but also gets pretty scary and serious near the end. By the look of the End though you know there will probably be a sequal and there is. It is a class piece of film though and will have you reeling to watch it again.

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