In 1978, a clever balance of bite and tongue-in-cheek humor knocked out the box office with that summer's PIRANHA.
This was Director Joe Dante's (Gremlins, Innerspace) first big (okay, kind of big) film and he does a hell of a job casting veteran actors that are very in on the joke.
Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) is a slightly mad scientist whose training killer fish for the army (huh?).
When a nosy reporter Heather Menzies (The Sound of Music, SSSSSS) releases the fish into the river by mistake, she and a local resident Bradford Dillman (Escape from the Planet of the Apes) follow the swimming bloodbath downstream.
It's all a funny excuse for Dante to stage B-level antics and tributes to JAWS, with plenty of underwater nibbling, fountains of blood, topless antics and canoodling campers giving it a mild R seventies rating.
It's never scary but fairly funny in a really dumb way.
Writer John Sayles went on to write some pretty great films, including 'Eight Men Out". He cut his teeth on his screenplay here, riffing on everything from corrupt land developers to the industrial military complex.
As JAWS knockoffs go, its got plenty of humorous charm. Universal threatened to sue Roger Corman's New World Pictures over the knockoff, but Spielberg saw the movie, loved it and convinced Universal to drop the legal action.
Classic TV fans should watch for plenty of TV stars, including Richard Deacon (Mel on "The DIck Van Dyke Show), Keenan Wynn (Wagon Train), Dick Miller (McCloud) and Barbra Steele (Secret Agent).
It's all goofy b-movie fun, truly harmless and lightweight. It's teeth are pretty dull, but I'll give Pirahna a B-.
Followed by bad sequels and a silly remake in 2010.
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