Hi, Burl here to review a fine old
classic about munching fish! Ha ha, I’m talking about Piranha, the great original that was such a marvelous rip-off of Jaws that Steven Spielberg himself
apparently championed it when Universal Pictures was mulling an infringement
lawsuit!
But Piranha is its own thing, most definitely! It’s a Joe Dante
picture, and you all know what that means: Dick Miller is in it! He plays a
good, meaty role, essentially the Murray Hamilton part from Jaws, but with a lot more humour and
dimension! Ha ha, he’s as great as ever, and his reaction shots to the things
his glasses nerd assistant says are priceless!
It seems that a scientist played
by Kevin McCarthy, who was in almost as many Joe Dante movies as Dick, created
the mutant piranhas to destroy any ‘Cong who dared dip a toe in the waterways
of Vietnam, but they were never used! I guess they’ve been languishing around
in this strange swimming pool for years! And then two teens get the Big Munch,
and our heroes turn up and immediately manage to release the fish into the
river! Ha ha, they never really apologize for that one, but at least they try
to help!
I could go on about the cast of
this movie! Dick Miller is there of course, and McCarthy, but we also get the
great bellowing deaf man Keenan Wynn whom you’ll remember from The Dark; the spooky Barbara Steele from
Shivers and of course the hero,
Bradford Dillman, whom we know from that fine 70s classic Bug! The fate that befalls old Keenan is particularly gruesome and
has stayed with me every time I sit on a dock and let my feet dangle in the
water!
A lot of people object to the
strange little monster seen in the laboratory, but I think it’s a marvelous
addition to the picture! I’m also pretty fond of the piranha fish themselves,
who seem whipped up into such a frenzy that you’re afraid they’ll just wiggle
themselves into a heart attack or a stroke! And they make a funny noise:
rrrrrrrrrrrr! You have to hear it to know what I’m talking about!
Anyway, Piranha is a fine little picture with its heart in the right place,
and I’ll always be glad it was made! Thank you Joe Dante, John Sayles and Roger
Corman and everybody else too! I give Piranha
a solid three disintegrating rafts!
Ha ha, a little note! Sorry I
haven’t been putting up too many reviews lately! I’ll try to step it up a bit! Thanks
for sticking with me, everybody!
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