Piranha

2 Guys And A Chainsaw - A Horror Movie Review Podcast

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This week on Corman Week, we went with a Corman-produced film, this one being Joe Dante’s first directorial effort. And what a banger it is too. Stephen Spielberg called this his favorite Jaws knock-off, and we can see why. It’s just cheesy fun from beginning to end, with great underwater photography and terrible, horrible mutant piranhas on the attack.

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Automatic Transcript

Piranha (1978)

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: We are in week three of our Roger Corman retrospective, and I just could not be happier. And the reason I chose Parada, you had mentioned something earlier in one of the first movies that we did, I think it was House of Usher, you had said, I don’t know what we have chosen, but you know, Roger Corman, he was maybe even more of a producer than he was a director, wasn’t he?

And so, are we gonna be doing some of that? Yes. You’re right, he ultimately produced more movies than he directed. He directed a sizable number, we’re talking like 56, 57. But, um, at some point he decided to, you know, to really focus on producing and gave the reins to other directors. This is why I really wanted to highlight Roger Corman as a producer in at least one of these because he was well known for being so successful as a producer that he gave a lot of famous people their start.

And I thought this movie was a good representation of that. Look at the laundry list of Hollywood big shots that came up through Corman’s shop first. We’re talking Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, John Sayles, Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovich. It’s just Jack Nicholson, Robert Towne, it’s a who’s who.

Of Hollywood and a lot of other people who you might not know their names, but you’ve seen their work People who rose up in special effects people who rose up in writing makeup set design all of these things Corman just gave the first opportunities to so many of these people through his low budget movies They learned on the job, they got their chops, and then they went on to do bigger and better things.

On the actor side, you know, Jack Nicholson. We just did The Shining a couple, you know, weeks ago. Jack Nicholson got his first jobs in Corman’s Pictures. You know, he was in The Little Shop of Horrors. We referred to that movie last week. Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, David Carrady, Tommy Lee Jones, Sandra Bullock, William Shatner, Pamela Greer, The list goes on and on.

Even Dick Miller, who you see as a bit actor in so many, so many movies. He had a starring role in the movie that we talked about last week. He has a sizable role in this movie as well. And I just love seeing him on the screen.

Craig: Well, and he, you know, he was a favorite of Corman’s, but then he also became a favorite of this.

Directors. Yeah. He must have been a good guy to work with. .

Todd: He must have been, even Spielberg put him in, you know, this film was one of Joe Dante’s first directorial efforts, and Joe Dante, in case you’re unaware, just the only thing he directed before this was another picture for. Corman called Hollywood Boulevard, which I’ve always had on my list to see I’ve heard it’s a lot of fun But then after this, of course the howling we’ve covered the howling fairly recently actually Twilight’s on the movie did a segment in there gremlins obviously was his really really big hit Uh, that he did in collaboration with Steven Spielberg.

Then, uh, Explorers, which is a movie we love. Yep. Innerspace, which still stan I mean, have you seen Innerspace lately? It, it holds up today. It’s such a I’ve seen Innerspace a million times. It’s such a good movie. I love that movie. The Birbs. Small Soldiers. He did a movie called The Hole, which I think is a fun kids horror movie.

Hopefully we’ll get to it at some point. I saw it, yeah. Yeah, I don’t think he’s doing much directing right now, because he’s getting older, and I, more or less, uh Probably feels more or less retired, but he’s still in the business. He’s still in the scene. And then, uh, the writer, John Sayles. It was his first screenplay, actually, and he took the money that he made from this, uh, to fund his other projects.

He wrote some novels and did some things, but he started writing for Roger Corman. A lot of his the writing he did was Cleaning up scripts and ended up completely uncredited. But after writing the screenplay for this, he went on to do the screenplay for Battle Beyond the Stars, which is another really fun Corman picture.

We did Alligator, 1980, and he wrote the screenplay for that. So teamed up with Dante on The Howling, and then just kind of went on to write a lot of stuff from there. Clan of the Cave Bear got a lot of critical acclaim when that came out in 1986. In any case, John Sayles is still writing. To this day, and again, got his start from this.

So those are two, two big people, but then, uh, this is a movie about piranhas, and so there’s a special effects needs here, but they’ve got to do it on a cheap, supposedly, you know, 50, 000 budget. And who would jump in, but this would be the first opportunity. For Phil Tippett. Well, I don’t want to say first opportunity.

He was doing stop motion animation for the last two Star Wars episodes. By this time. 1977. But this is a 1978 movie. So he did was creature designer and animator for this. And then Phil Tippett started his own studio after this. And went on to do creature effects and things for it. We’re talking Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Yay. Howard the Duck, uh, RoboCop. All the RoboCops. Wow. Uh, all the animation sequences for that. Willow, uh, Jurassic Park. The list goes on. He’s just one of these guys. And then, uh, you got a little bit of stop motion in this one too, which is kind of fun to talk about a little bit later. So there’s Phil Tippett.

And then I do also want to call out before we move on, so I don’t forget. Rob Bottin, who did all the makeup effects in here. Again, he had done a few things before this. He was an assistant makeup artist in Star Wars Episode IV. Then we did the Fury. He kind of cut his teeth on that one as well, before doing this film, and then went on to do makeup effects for so many things.

The fog. Maniac. Airplane. The howling. The thing. He was special makeups effects creator and designer of the frickin thing then legend, you know again RoboCop total recall one of my favorites seven mission impossible right

Craig: so point point being that Roger Corman really was pivotal in some amazing So whether or not, you know, his name, if you’re a fan of horror or movies in general, you are exposed to his legacy because so, so much talent came out.

Well, and, and, and who’s to say, you know, it’s not to say that these people would have been nothing without him. Who knows? Maybe they would have found other paths, but obviously he made it easy. Well, he, yeah. He had a penchant for hiring very talented people.

Todd: And, and, uh, people love to work with him. You know, we talked about this on an earlier episode.

People just respected him so much in the industry and they were watching what he was doing and they fought to, to, to work on his movies. And get paid, you know, much, much less. But, uh, to get those opportunities. So I thought this movie was just kind of a nice little tribute to that aspect of him as well.

He didn’t direct this. Now, he did put together the team, as a producer always does, but this was among many Jaws rip offs that were coming out around this time. And, uh, he got a script from, I believe, uh, it was from a Japanese distributor or script writer or something like that. He said it was, it was not very good.

So he hired John Sayles to rewrite it and gave his input on that, gave the final approval, and then hired Joe Dante to direct it who had, like I said, had just come off of Hollywood Boulevard for him. He slashed the budget. The budget was supposed to be like 600, 000. He took 200, 000 away because he was doing a big disaster movie called Avalanche.

Which by the way, I’ve seen and that’s kind of I think I’ve seen it too. Yeah. Yeah, it’s not bad It’s not nearly as good as this movie, but uh, so he took money away and then he was just so busy on avalanche They said he didn’t even visit the set or pay attention to what they were doing Even when they were cutting the film He only saw like one of the final cuts and made a few more notes on that and that was it So it’s not like he had his hands in this production once it got going But obviously, you know a little bit green lit the final product

Craig: I read that he said Less nudity, which is shocking.

That was weird, right? I mean, not to say, I mean there’s still boobies. You still get boobies, but, uh, apparently, I read that he felt like it would take away something from the movie, like, uh, make it seem more cheap than he felt like it was. Which I kinda get, because I was a little bit surprised that you picked this.

This seems a little bit more up my alley as far as, like, mainstream stuff. If not famous, this movie, at least infamous, I feel like pretty much everybody knows about this movie. Of course, there was a remake, not, what, I don’t know, like, ten years ago, or I have no sense of time. Anyway, I was, uh, I was a little surprised that you picked it and.

I wasn’t looking forward to it, because I knew that I had seen it before, and I just didn’t really remember a lot about it, and I thought,

Todd: ugh,

Craig: boy, if I don’t remember anything about it, it’s probably lame. I was really pleasantly surprised. In fact, of the three that we’ve watched so far, in terms of watchability, I think this is my favorite so far.

I found this movie to be incredibly watchable.

Todd: I did too. I, I’m not going to say I wasn’t looking forward to it. I was looking forward to revisiting it because I remembered seeing it when I was in high school and being disappointed. I remembered it being a little too talky. I thought, you know, there weren’t enough piranha attacks, and I might have just stopped paying attention at some point in the movie.

And that’s kind of how I left it. And so, to come back here and sit down and watch it from beginning to end, I really wasn’t sure how I would feel about it. But knowing That Steven Spielberg himself said that this is, uh, the best of the Jaws rip offs that he saw. In fact, that apparently saved this movie from getting sued.

Universal just c was just putting out Jaws 2. And, I don’t know, some people think they were afraid this movie might be even better. Ha ha ha ha ha! But, um, Steven Spielberg’s comments and support for this film basically made them drop it. So it came out and it did really, really well. This was a huge hit for them.

Made them a ton of money. Generally got, I mean, the reviews were favorable to mixed, but Yeah, I thought it was funny. Roger Ebert, who I always go to, gave it a pretty decent review. He said it’s campy, it’s fun, it’s got the humor that it’s going for, it’s got everything like that. He said the only thing that he thinks is a little weird is the propensity for people to dive right into the water just as soon as they find out there are piranhas in there.

And there’s a little bit of truth to that in some of it. So yeah, I mean, it was a big hit. That’s, I think, why it was remade. That’s why it kind of lives on. Again, I think it had to have boosted the career of Joe Dante and John Sayles, who, when they first saw the first cut of this movie, were both convinced that it was going to be the worst film ever made, was going to ruin their careers.

Joe Dante was practically ready to give up on filmmaking, and Sayles said, I was just going to go back to writing novels. Right. So, uh, even they were a bit surprised by how well this was received. I’m not surprised.

Craig: I’m not either. I think it’s really fun. It rem It definitely is a Jaws ripoff, and it doesn’t even try to pretend that it’s not.

Like, it makes direct references to Jaws. Oh, yeah.

Todd: It’s putting it in your face. It’s, it’s, it’s a deliberate comedy. Yeah. It’s got very comedic, groan worthy, it’s, you know, in a ways it’s a parody of Jaws, as much as it’s a rip off. That’s true, but

Craig: part of the reason that I found it so entertaining was that it felt more, to me, it kind of felt like a throwback to the creature features of the 50s, where it’s very silly, but they play it straight.

Yeah. And that makes it, Even more fun and more silly and funny and fun to watch. Yes. And it’s, and it’s really hammy. Like the, the characters are all really hammy.

Todd: The stereotypical, you’ve got the Texan investor. Who’s got the big resort on the lake. That’s getting ready to open. You’ve got the mad scientist, the drunk protagonist kind of washed up.

Craig: Yeah. Loner guy you only know he’s a drunk because they tell you like he doesn’t he never acts drunk But they tell you he’s just certainly like this washed up Man’s man who just lives in the woods and the oh, you know, like he only has one friend old River Jack who lives the river

Todd: Right. Well, all he needs is his dog and the river

Clip: at the river wakes me up in the morning Gives me a bath, does my laundry,

gives me my dinner, puts me to sleep real gentle, I got my river, got my brandy.

Craig: Oh my god, old Jack, I loved old Jack and old Jack just delivers booze to this guy and they just enjoy their solitude out in the woods and like the main guy Paul, he literally looks like the brawny man, like the. He does. Yeah.

With the, the beard and the red flannel sweatshirt and, or not sweatshirt. Lumberjack red flannel shirt. Yeah. You kind of like the lumberjack. It’s funny. So there’s that hamminess to it, which I appreciate. Then you get into the hamminess of the piranha, which just worked perfectly for me, like they, it just struck the perfect balance of showing it, like showing the fish.

enough, but not too much. And I, you know, I’m, I’m obviously kind of glossing over things. We’ll get more specific about, but like the sound effect of the fish that I liked all of the, and just throwing it in all of these different scenarios, you know, you’ve got like a military test facility, but then you’ve also, and then you just got the river.

So like, you know, it just seems like nature or whatever, but then you’ve also got a children’s. Summer camp and like a water theme park. There’s so much going on. It was just, I found it very, very fun to watch the opening scene even. Oh yeah. It’s at night and the camera is panning, you know, like across this outdoor scene and you see a fence with a great big sign on it.

That says military test site, no trespassing.

Todd: And two hikers who are like, that’s okay. We’re going to go right in. Who cares? Not only that, well, we’re going to start skinny dipping. In this murky water that we know nothing about. I know,

Craig: and the guy who is reluctant, he even says, What if it’s like a, like a sewage treatment facility? Which, if I walked into that, it was outdoors, so I assume it was actually some sort of facility.

But the looks of it, that’s exactly what I would think it was. That’s what it looks like. Industrial looking site. It’s gross. And even the water’s green. You couldn’t get me to dip my toe in there. You

Todd: know, no way. But the enthusiasm with which these people dive in here is, uh, is something to see. So we get our boobs.

She strips down, she pushes him in, they go in and they swim. And it’s just, it’s almost, I’m not really, but it feels shot for shot, like the opening of Jaws.

Craig: Yes. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. That’s what it feels like late night swimming. Oh, what was that? I felt something. And I also loved, you know, he, she pushes him in.

He doesn’t want to go in. She pushes him in and then she dives in after him, but it’s the second that she’s underwater that he gets bit the first time. I loved the timing of that. I thought it was hilarious. Why’d you bite me? I didn’t bite you. You’re crazy. Paranoid. This is a thing. And then he starts getting hit and it does, it looks so much like that opening scene of Jaws where he, like, he’s surprised.

He doesn’t know what’s happening. And then the water starts churning and all he’s screaming and then blood comes up and she’s watching and she doesn’t, you know, of course know what’s going on. And. It’s really fun. And then it cuts to the full moon and you just hear her screaming. She’s obviously attacked and killed too, but it’s mostly off screen.

You just see her bloody hand, like reach up for the side of the pool or whatever it is. Um, and then it cuts to the title and I love how the title bleeds into the water and turns the water red. And after that first five minutes, I was like, Oh, I’m not dreading watching this anymore. I’m excited about it.

Todd: And then. Once the title sequences are done, it dissolves into our main character, Maggie, playing a Jaws video game. First of all, I didn’t realize there was a Jaws I mean, this would be 1978. Video games were not sophisticated at this time.

Craig: Oh no, it was arcade style, like, uh Asteroids. Yeah,

Todd: it was very simple, but she’s playing a simple jaws themed game.

And, uh, and she is doing, what did they call it? Skip tracing. I couldn’t figure out for a while. I thought it was bounty hunting, but they called it skip tracing. I guess he’s hired by a guy who I still don’t know who that was. I don’t

Craig: either. At first I thought maybe she was a reporter or actually at first I thought she was a kid because she’s playing that video game and she’s, you know, I don’t know how to describe her.

She’s sassy. She, I thought she was a kid, but she’s not. She’s, she said at some point that she can find anybody. She’s found all kinds of people. So I, I think that that’s her job is to locate people. And we find out soon that she’s looking for these. Kids the the kids that got killed by the piranhas. We were introduced to those guys We already talked about Paul and by the way,

Todd: Heather Menzies played Maggie and she got her start as a child actress She was a Louisa von Trapp in the sound of music.

Craig: Oh, I didn’t know that I didn’t recognize any of these people except obviously for the mad scientist who we’ll get to So I didn’t bother to look them up But that’s interesting. I didn’t know that. She didn’t do much

Todd: after this like she she was pretty busy like again it’s like a child actress in the 60s and then up to kind of the the late 70s with this movie and then after that she’s on tv a bit and then just kind of Kind of fizzled out by 1990, I think is, is, is her last credit here, and she did die at 68 in 2017.

So, uh, so she’s not with us anymore. She, she does a fair job, and I think she’s fine in this movie. She’s fine. She’s just plucky, very happy go lucky. Woman who’s not gonna take no for an answer and somehow manages to convince that guy, Paul, who’s this grizzled, grumpy, grumpy guy, to, to drive her out to the military installation.

I, I don’t know, that was a little weird, like, he just goes along with it. It’s not a character driven

Craig: film.

Todd: Well, for

Clip: sure.

Craig: It’s, it’s, it’s action driven, but it’s cool. You’re right, she’s plucky, and he’s grizzled, but she gets it out of him that there’s a military thing up in the woods or whatever because he lives in the woods.

She’s like, you’re gonna take me there, and he’s like, no I’m not. And then the very next scene is them in the jeep going up there. Yeah,

Todd: it’s such an old gag. Just like that gag where she’s about to leave on the plane and the guy’s like, you’re gonna be alright. She’s like, you know me, I can find anything, anywhere, nothing gets by me.

And then she’s like, oh. Wait a minute, where’s my ticket? It’s like,

Craig: Oh, uh, thanks. Goodbye. Yeah. And, and then from, from that point on, from the time that she gets him to go up there with her, they are like the dynamic duo. They they’re together solving this mystery and dealing with this. Scenario for the rest of the time

Todd: I’m actually kind of surprised that they didn’t try to throw a little romantic angle in there Was it there but I missed it.

It seemed like the movie was trying to go there, but then would just stop short every time

Craig: Well, I’m glad they did that’s boring. Yeah, I don’t certainly unnecessary in this movie. Okay, so they they go up there It seems deserted. Now we know that there’s somebody up there already because after the kids got killed, a light went on in the facility and somebody opened the door like they heard something, but you just saw a silhouette.

But we know there’s somebody up there. They go up there, they look around. She doesn’t know what’s going on. She finds a locket with the girl’s initials on it, so she knows they’ve been there. So her brilliant idea is, we don’t know what this facility is, but let’s drain it. He has a bit of background

Todd: on it.

He’s bitching about the military, and they came in, they did this, they did that, and then they just kind of up and left. But he doesn’t know what was going on there. And they look in, and you’re right, she just decides she’s going to drain it, so then they go in. And I was shocked. I was shocked when they opened up the door to that facility.

Facility. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Because I wasn’t expecting it to be that elaborate. Almost the first thing you see is this beaker that looks like a human fetus is floating around in it. Yeah, there’s a lot of weird stuff. Yeah, there’s just jars of weird things. Again, it’s like, almost like typical mad scientist stuff.

Then, there is this little stop motion Creature that almost looks like a fish with arms and legs that springs up pokes its head around. They never see it It’s just in the foreground. It’s really well done. Yeah, I like it. It’s super fun Yeah, and it and it kind of scurries away and you’re like, oh, this is gonna be interesting

Craig: It reminded me of the stop motion creatures from the gate.

Yes, but it looked it looked more like In Spaceballs, the spoof of the, the Xenomorph chestburster that like does the little song and dance. Hello, my baby. Hello, my baby. That’s what it looked like. It looked more like that, but yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was, it was stop motion, but not only do you see it kind of like walk across the frame on a countertop, but there are also close ups on its face that are really well articulated.

I was just shocked to see it here and they never see it. We see it several times, but they never see it. There’s also some sort of like weird eel, Godzilla thing in a

Todd: like in water that they do see. And that’s like a puppet, but it’s It’s impressive.

Craig: What makes me sad about that, and I read that Dante, I think, had intended for that little creature, the walking one, he had intended for it to appear later in the movie and for it to continue getting bigger and bigger, and they just didn’t have the budget, which is really upsetting because I want to see that movie.

I know. That would have been

Todd: such a great, I mean, that would have been a great zinger at the end. You know? That’s, that’s what they wanted to do. They wanted to have it kind of like at the very end after everything was done, like it was sort of looming over the beach. Like, this is the next big threat. It’s fine that these

Craig: things are confined to the lab, and that these things aren’t the things that escape the facility.

Yeah. But it’s still It’s unfortunate because I would have loved to have seen that, but they find, I don’t know, they know somebody’s there. They find like a cup of warm coffee and, but they don’t know who’s there, but they find this big lever, I guess. And she’s like, okay, well, let’s drain it. Like these assholes, it never crosses either of their minds that this might not be a good idea.

And, and she pulls the lever or whatever. And then immediately the mad scientist, Dr. Hoke, who works there. And it’s Kevin McCarthy who we’ve talked about a million times. We just talked about inner space. He was in that. That’s what I know him from, but he’s been in everything. He had that cameo in

Todd: invasion of the body snatchers, which we only did about a month ago.

Craig: He starred in the original. Yeah, right. Yeah. He’s been in so many things and he jumps in and he’s like, He’s like, no. And he tries to turn the switch back off. And in response, they attack him and fight him and knock him out so that he’s never able to turn the thing back on. It never occurs to them to ask him why.

Yeah, just, they just like, when he goes for the thing, like, I guess she’s right there. So she’s kind of in the way. So I guess he has to get a little bit physical with her, but it’s not like he’s even going for her. He’s going for the. The switch and they just attack him

Todd: and knock him out. They just treat it as like a personal affront.

Like this guy was crazy and attacking them even though he’s yelling, no, don’t do it. It’s uh,

Craig: and the little creature is like running around watching it. Like Get away from my dad!

Todd: Like, it like, in almost a very cute way, pokes its head out and blinks a couple times from around a pipe. I mean, it’s this cute little darling creature that for a very brief moment I thought, this is like the genesis of gremlins right here.

Like this Yeah, yeah,

Craig: cute little darling to us. I mean, it’s, it’s still like a gray, hairless, weird creature. It’s, it’s not, it’s not gizmo. It’s no, but it’s more gremlin y, but, but I get what you’re saying. I find it adorable as

Todd: well. It’s not toothy and evil looking. Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of funny that, you know, you want, you would kind of think that maybe he would, once he came to would.

Would have a little something to say about his little pet, you know, that just completely dropped. Well,

Craig: they don’t even, they don’t even wait! Like, they just leave him in there, and then they go outside to find that the whole thing has been drained, and when they find a skeleton that they think is a dog, maybe, it didn’t look human, but if it was a dog, it was a really big dog.

Yeah. But it’s, it’s only when they find that skeleton that they’re like, hmm. Where does this drain? And the guy’s like, um, probably the river. It could have been anything in there. It could have been toxic waste. It, it could have been absolutely anything, but yeah. Uh, the doctor that they have just ignored and, and.

No nothing about steals their Jeep, but then also because they knocked him out. He’s still woozy. So he passes out and he crashes and rolls it. And when they run to him and when he wakes up, all he says is razor teeth. You don’t know what you’ve done.

Clip: What’s he doing? You don’t know what you’ve done. The question is what you’ve done, mister.

I told you. You don’t know. They breed like flies. There’ll be no way to stop them. Would you talk sense, dammit? Now what about those kids? I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you. Oh, mother of God, they’ll kill us. They’ll kill all of us. Okay, mister, listen.

Todd: He is such a great crazy man.

Craig: So they take him back and then I think he goes unconscious again and they take him back to Paul’s house where they just chat about life for a while.

And I have to admit, I kind of zoned out at that part. I’m not really sure.

Todd: I thought it was amusing that Paul drinks his liquor out of a canteen. Like, even in his house, he’s pouring the liquor into his canteen to to to swig from it. But yeah, they talk about life. This is one of those moments where I thought, you know, Oh, they they they might be starting something here, but no.

That whole

Craig: recap started with me trying to get back to this point, because I they they chat about life, and then they kinda they get under a blanket together, and she teases them, like, Took you long enough to, or I don’t know. She’s like, I’ve been trying to get under this blanket for an hour or something.

It cuts to an exterior shot and she just giggles. And then it’s the next morning. I guess there’s a novelization of this that kind of digs into their backstories a little bit, but I guess it makes it more clear in the novel that, yeah, they banged. In the night. Because that’s what

Todd: you do, you meet somebody, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I

Craig: mean, you

Todd: go through an experience. They’re in the middle of the

Craig: woods, the doctor’s passed out, I mean, what are you gonna do? They don’t have a TV, I mean, what are you gonna do? Yeah, that’s

Todd: true. They don’t even have a car. This guy, Paul, he’s really roughing it because, because her jeep was wrecked, now they don’t have a way to even get this man to the hospital.

So that seems to be what they want to do. So what is Paul’s solution? He’s like, well, you know, my daughter, cause I guess he’s divorced and he has this daughter that, uh, That’s

Craig: the only thing of significance that we learned from their chat about life is that, yeah, he’s got this daughter and she’s at summer camp down the river.

I know,

Todd: and you, as soon as I heard that, I was like, alright, we can see where this is going. And, and he walks outside, he’s like, well, you know, we were reading Huckleberry Finn last year. Yeah. And so, we put together this raft that’s just lashings, not a, not a nail in it, it’s just lashed up with the rope.

And I’m thinking, alright, this is gonna be important too. That’s the most ridiculous

Craig: plot point, but like, I didn’t even care, like. It’s just so there can be a certain scene later. I mean, otherwise it could have been anything. It could have been a, I guess they just had to make them more vulnerable. You know, like if they had been on a pontoon boat, it would have

Todd: been a motor boat or something.

It would have cost a lot more money to probably to have the shark attack it. I shark, what am I saying? The, the piranhas, I liked the novelty of that. What I didn’t get was. So they load everybody up on this raft, and the way that they propel the raft down this river that does not seem to have much of a current at all, is these long Poles, you know, it’s just big, long sticks.

It looks like it is taking them ages to move six feet.

Craig: That, well, that’s what I was going to say about the raft too. Like, I also wonder if they did it for pacing, because if they were in a motorized boat, they could just get wherever they needed to be immediately. But instead they have to laboriously make their way down this river.

So like it takes. All day. Well,

Todd: it certainly gives Kevin McCarthy a lot of time to wake up and explain who he is. And he was a scientist for the military and they were doing experiments. They wanted to create this race of super fish so that they could poison the North Vietnamese waters, which sounds like a horrible idea and yada, yada, yada.

And the military left and closed it up, but he stayed on to continue his research. And now you’ve released them into the water and you don’t know what you’ve done. He freaks out when she dips her hand in the, in the river. Tells her not to do that. And again, it’s going by so slowly that I’m like, you know If they just docked on the side and started hiking there, I think they might get there faster.

Craig: Yeah, maybe maybe I The doctor is laid out on the thing. So I guess maybe we’re to believe that he’s kind of incapacitated I guess I guess they couldn’t carry him. You’re right. You’re right That actually makes sense now that I think of but you’re it does take forever But fortunately for us there are other things going on Like there’s there’s this side stuff going on at the camp where we meet paul’s daughter suzy You Who’s this cute little blonde, like, like white haired blonde girl.

And her whole thing is that she’s afraid of the water. And so there’s this whole thing where she has these two very nice camp counselors, one blonde girl and one brunette, and they’re both very nice to her, but the brunette in particular, you know, tries to talk to her about the water and there’s nothing in the water that would hurt you.

And she’s like, what are you afraid of? And she’s like afraid of the fish or whatever. And she says something like. The fish in the river aren’t interested in little girls fingers and toes. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Todd: Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Craig: Uh.

Clip: Uh.

Craig: Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Yeah, she won’t do it.

So, so it’s a real thing, but I just thought that was hilarious. And then there’s also the jerky camp counselor. Who’s like, you’re going to get in the water. Do you want to be the one to lose the competition for the minnows? Like the, the, the camp is divided up into these teams and they’re going to have this big camp competition that involves a lot of stuff in the water.

And he, he gives her this whole. spiel about how she has to have guts and stuff, but it’s fun stuff. Like it, it feels very seventies of the moment. Like you’ve, you’ve got what’s going on on the river with the doctor and stuff, but then you’ve also got like meatballs, you know, like this little camp movie going on to, Oh, it’s so funny.

I really, I really enjoyed that.

Todd: I liked it, I thought it was just enough. It didn’t feel pa I mean, it was a little padded for time, but, but, but, things moved there too. You could see, okay, we’re establishing this girl, isn’t interested in going in the water, she’s the daughter of this guy, and eventually we kno you know, he knows he needs to go and try and find and save her.

Which, by the way, I always think is really cute in movies, how they always make there to be like, One person or like a dog or something that it’s really really important that they make it out alive and All the other people around them You know the 40 or 50 extras like who gives a shit like we’re supposed to care a lot about this one person because we know That’s the daughter of one of the main characters.

But anyway, that’s what they’re establishing And the guy is Paul Bartel the the guy The red headed, bearded, jerk. And he’s been in a lot of little Corman things, sometimes just little bit parts. Uh, he directed some movies for Corman, he wrote some movies for Corman. He’s, he’s been in some big time movies, too.

Are you talking about the camp guy? Yeah, the camp guy, yeah. Oh, I thought, I thought he, I remember him being bald, I don’t remember

Craig: him being

Todd: Well, he’s got a red beard, I mean. Yeah, he’s got, he’s bearded. Even in, again, because All Roads Lead to Chopping Mall, which is also Corman produced. He had a bit part in the very beginning with Mary Warrinoff, where they’re, Watching the presentation of the robot.

Right!

Craig: I knew he seemed familiar to me and I couldn’t place it. I do, I vividly remember him from that. He has kind of, not because it’s incredibly unique, but his voice was familiar to me. Yeah. And now I can hear him. I can hear him talking in that opening of Chopping Mall. That’s interesting.

Todd: Well, his big break was, um, was with Eating Raoul.

He wrote and directed that, and he and Mary Warrenoff starred in that. And, I mean, that’s another one of those crazy stories where, you know, Corman got him his start and got him going, and then I think he took money from, like, his parents sold their house or sold their apartment or something and gave him a bunch of money to make Eating Raoul, and that went on to be a minor hit.

It was up for Academy Awards at one point. I’m not sure if it won any, but I do remember people chattering about that movie in, when it came out. Yeah, so, so he’s in there and he’s just like, it’s so funny, but they’re like playing darts and shooting, you know, throwing darts openly at this guy’s, uh, photo and, and he’s ordering the kids around like a drill sergeant over the silly stuff, just like swimming and having fun.

And, but every time they flashed to the cam, I’m like, Oh man, I can’t wait. Tell those piranhas. Yeah. Oh yeah. You’re

Craig: just waiting. You know, they’re coming, right? It’s

Todd: such a great setup.

Craig: It’s funny because you know, the, the guys on the raft guys and gal. are moving down the river slowly, but we’re also to believe that this swarm of piranha or school of piranha are also making their way down the river.

So it’s only a matter of time before they get there. And this isn’t revealed until much later, but much later, somebody’s like, Oh no, they, they were. Bread to be able to live in both saltwater and freshwater. So the reason that they’re heading down river is because they want to get to the ocean. And then when they get to the ocean, they’ll just go up every river and they’ll attack everybody, which I thought was because we’re also to believe.

I think that these are intelligent piranha because in the lab, they had like lab rat mazes, but underwater. So these are highly intelligent. Fish. Another part that I really enjoyed again, it’s not, it doesn’t feel episodic, but it just, it just cuts to different scenes on different parts of the river, dealing with different people.

And one of them, we returned to old man, Jack, who, you know, and his dog who loves the river. And he’s sitting on a, Tiny little doc on the shore fishing with his feet dangling in the water. And I just thought it was such a charming scene. He’s obviously drunk, but he’s talking to his dog and he tells his dog a joke.

And I just thought, I don’t remember what the joke was, but I just found the whole thing so charming, but then the dog starts to get nervous and he’s like, what’s the matter boy. And then his feet start to get attacked. Eventually, when the, when the raft people get down there, the dog is freaking out, and they, you know, stop, and, and they find the guy.

And apparently, Take the time to bury him.

Todd: I’ll go get a shovel. He wouldn’t want to be buried in town. Oh my god. Do you guys not have phones? Should somebody call the cops?

Craig: Just give me a few hours. I’m just gonna bury him, and then we’ll get back on our way. And like, dude, don’t worry about it. Like, Nobody is coming there.

He will still be there when you get back. I mean, I guess if, if you’re worried about wild animals, there’s like throw him in his house, it’s right there. Throw a sheet over him or something.

Todd: Oh, God. Well, and then we also get a scene of a guy and his son fishing in a canoe, and he reaches over to pull up a fishing net, and he’s got some funny things to say about that, and then he gets pulled in.

I thought that scene was really good. Also, I mean, a little heartbreaking. Again, maybe I’m just getting a little too sensitive because I’m a father now, but, like, anytime you have the scenes where this young kid sees his father die in front of him, God, yeah, that kind of bothered me a

Craig: little bit. That kid, we never get any character with either of those, the father or the son.

And the kid is around for a while and then he’s just not like, he doesn’t have much to do. But in the time that we know him, he sees two people brutally killed. He’s obviously, I was impressed with this scene too. I wondered how many shots it took because The the piranha get a hold of the dad’s arm and start pulling him underwater, which is ridiculous Doesn’t even make any sense.

No, but in pulling him underwater it they also flip the canoe, but the kid Somehow manages to like squirrel monkey him Like he never falls in the water like as the canoe is tipping he’s able to Kind of climb over it so that he’s now on top of it, you know, it’s underside up, but he’s still on top. It seems like that would be a difficult thing to do in the

Todd: best of times.

That was a miracle of stunt work. I swear that kid didn’t even dip a toe in the water doing that. It was insanely good. And I was super impressed when I saw that happen. Cause I thought, Oh yeah, if he dips a foot in the water, like what, why are they just attacking dad? You know, there’s supposed to be thousands of them down there.

But, uh, he didn’t, and he gets up back on top of that boat, and he’s just there for the raft people to meet up with him.

Craig: Right.

Todd: And then this is the part where I think Roger Ebert was talking about the most, where I just rolled my eyes and was like, I cannot believe this is in this movie. It’s really stupid.

They see the kid up on the boat. The doctor, not the doctor, the scientist, Kevin McCarthy’s character, starts freaking out. And as they are canoeing towards the kid, he decides, instead of waiting for them to get over there to make a safe transfer from the top of this overturned canoe to their raft, to jump in the water and swim towards him.

It doesn’t make any sense. The very water that he warned that woman to keep her hand out of. I mean, like, what? Why did he do that? Were we to believe that he sacrificed himself? Because, you know, he does sort of end up in between the two, kind of handing the kid over as he’s being eaten apart. It

Craig: doesn’t make, no, it doesn’t make any sense.

The reason that we’re meant to believe that he jumps in is because that kid’s canoe is sinking and the raft isn’t getting there fast enough. I don’t believe it. The canoe is not sinking that fast. They have plenty of time. In fact, after he dives in and swims there, They get there in plenty of time. If you just stayed on, if you just stayed on the raft, the kid would have been fine.

Everybody would have been fine. He was no help. They try to give him, I think, you know, cause there’s a lot of talk about who’s to blame. He, the scientist thinks that. Paul and Maggie blame him for this. And he’s like, I’m not to blame. It’s the politicians. The politicians were, you know, making these weapons.

I’m just a scientist and I’m not to blame. I think this is supposed to be kind of his redemption, but it doesn’t make any sense. So he, he does get to the kid, but the piranhas are attacking him. And then there’s a shot that doesn’t make any sense at all of him. Like lifting the kid over his head as he’s being eaten by the piranhas.

Onto the raft. Entirely unnecessary. If he hadn’t been in the way, there would have been no reason for him to have to lift the kid over.

Clip: Mm hmm

Craig: and and then they pull him on the raft alive just for him to die That’s right, but they needed him on the raft for the next scene where? He’s bleeding and his blood seeping through the the logs on this log raft Caused the piranhas because apparently they’re brilliant to chew at the the that are holding the logs together.

Another scene that I like in concept, but in filming it didn’t make any sense. And I also think that there are a lot of scenes. I don’t know about a lot. There are several scenes in this movie that I felt dragged on for too long. Like, like I like the scene. I like the idea of the scene, but it just goes on for too long.

And this is one of them because we see this raft breaking up For several

Todd: minutes one log falls off another log falls off another and you’re like, how many logs are on this raft? I know

Craig: they just keep falling off until eventually you would think that the three people remaining on the Raft were standing on like two logs, right?

Todd: Which would they float? I don’t even think they would but honestly I have to kind of disagree with you. I do agree. It was kind of silly and it did last a while, but I thought this was kind of masterfully edited because when you consider this is a low budget film, you know, and the complexity of trying to film a raft breaking apart like this from a nice wide shot, I thought they did a really good job in cutting this together to show the piranhas chewing at the the ropes underneath and For some reason, I felt like that was relatively convincing, you know, for what it was.

Craig: I liked the look of it, I just felt like it went on too long.

Todd: Yeah, okay, fair enough. Well, at least they only had like, uh, about eight feet to go to get to the, to the edge of the river. So they all kind of jump off the raft by the time it’s done. I thought the underwater photography in this movie was quite good.

I

Craig: liked it. They were smart about the way that they presented it because you never, they never lingered on it. You would just get shots. And so the fish that were just done with what, like plastic fish on sticks, I think.

Todd: Yeah, I think, I think they were just rubber fish on sticks. Phil Tippett made like 73 of them and I don’t even know why he made that many.

I don’t feel like you ever see more than a dozen on the screen at once, if that, but they just get these really quick closeups on them. Right. And they’re, and they’re very fast moving. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it looked fine. Jabbing at the things and there were even moments, some of the fish, I think four of them had metal teeth so that they could, you know, kind of do the ripping stuff and they cut that in just enough so that you can see the fish literally, well, you know, when it gets to people, especially, you can see it literally taking a bite out of these prosthetics and pulling the skin just enough, it was really great.

I really, really was impressed.

Craig: Yeah, me too. I thought it looked great. The fish make a sound. I read how they made the sound, but I Was it a dental drill? Yeah,

Todd: dental drills that they just kind of stuck underwater and tried to film from underwater.

Craig: It’s just kind of a buzzing sound. It’s simple, but I like it.

I can only imagine that fish don’t really make sound. But, in a movie, I

Todd: It was menacing. It neatly solved a big question, which is, what does it sound like for 30, 40 piranhas to be slowly biting away and flipping around at something? And I thought it was good. I thought it was appropriate. It might not be accurate, but it worked.

Sure. Sure. Right. It worked. It’s like a swarm of bees,

Craig: right? Exactly. Exactly. You know, in terms of filmmaking, the sound, the sound design, what are you going to do? Just have it, that all be silent. I think that would be kind of boring or just lots of just, just lots of splashing. That’s not, that’s, that’s not scary.

It’s true. Not scary enough anyway, but the funny thing is once they get, okay. So they’ve been trying to make it down river because the camp is on the other side of this dam. But apparently every day or every other day or something, they don’t dump the water on the other side of the dam. I don’t know anything about dams.

I don’t know if this is a real thing, like regulating water levels and stuff. I don’t know. But they’re trying to get to this dam. And the funny thing is, we know that the camp is on the other side, so we’re just waiting for this water to get dumped. But as soon as they get on shore, Paul takes off running for the dam, and he runs for a long time.

It takes too long. Too much buildup. Like they’re trying. So we’re seeing the dumb guy at the dam and we’re seeing him running and then we’re seeing the dumb guy at the dam and then we’re seeing him running and then it goes on for a long time. But I, I was surprised. I’ve seen this before, but I didn’t remember he gets there in time.

And so like the whole, the whole threat that they’ve been worried about, that we’ve been worried about, that the Prana are going to get there. They’re like, Oh, well he saved the day. He got there in time. The military shows up and they’re like, we don’t believe that these are Piranha. Yeah. But then they immediately do, cause they throw some meat in there and the piranha eat it up and they’re like, Oh, okay.

Well, it is piranha. Well, we’ll just poison them. It’s no big deal. Well, then the next plot point out of nowhere, we see Paul looking at this map of the river. And he’s like, if you look at this map, if you just go back a little bit upstream, then there’s like this tributary that they can circumvent the dam.

Like they can go around the dam and they can get to the camp and they can get to. The ocean and the military lady is like, that would never happen. They’re, they’re not that smart. Well, we know they are. And I think that we’re led to believe that she knows they are too.

Todd: They’re like cover up people.

Craig: Yeah.

And, and the military guy, he’s trying to cover everything up and we have not heard anything about this until now, but we also find out that just beyond the camp. A water park is opening.

Todd: It’s so perfect. And he’s an investor of all, of all the coincidences.

Craig: This is funny to me because this, it was, you know, it was accused of ripping off Jaws, which it does not deny in any.

Way, shape or form. But the last part of the movie is Jaws 3. I wonder if the people who made Jaws 3 ripped off this movie. Cause it sure seems like it.

Todd: Yeah. By the way, every bit of water sports in this movie, I wanted to be right in there with them. I mean, you know, without piranhas, but this place looks like a place I’d want to go.

Definitely. And

Craig: before we get to. The montage of water sports. They, they get to the camp first and, and this part, it, frankly, it still surprises me. This is a camp full of children, kids. These aren’t young teenagers. These aren’t 30 year old actors playing teenagers. These are children and the piranhas just come and eat them up.

Yes.

Todd: I was so. Because the whole time I’m like, Are they gonna get the kids? Are they gonna do the kids? They’re not gonna do the kids, are they? Oh yeah, they’re gonna do the kids.

Craig: To be fair, you don’t really see a lot of kids die, and you don’t really, I don’t remember if you see any kids die. Right. And, and they don’t linger on, like, dead children’s bodies.

Right. But this whole camp of kids are out like on inner tubes. Like they’re doing like a, an inner tube race or something. And they’re getting attacked and they get that attack goes on for minutes. Yes. And it’s bloody and they’re getting bit. And again, like you said, you’re seeing the piranha rip off chunks of these prosthetics and the kids are screaming and flailing about and it’s violent and crazy.

It is so

Todd: great. Yeah, it’s great. I loved it. If I had popcorn in my hand, I would have been chomping on it during that scene. But you’re right, it goes on for a long time. It’s a lot of edits and stuff, but a lot of quick cuts and a little bit of gore here and there. And at one point, that mean guy, I can’t remember his name, is like pulling kids out of the water.

He seems to be okay. I thought he would bite it. He doesn’t bite. Me too. No, he doesn’t. He gets attacked, but he, to his credit. As he’s being attacked, he stays in the water and keeps getting kids out. Yeah, that was, uh, surprising. I’m, I, again, I felt like he was being set up to be the evil guy who’s gonna get chomped up and, and he wasn’t.

Right.

Craig: Susie has kind of a hero moment where she pulls, cause she wasn’t in the water. She was never getting in the water.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But she takes a canoe out and tries to get some people out. She tries to rescue her two nice counselors and she rescues one. I, I think the only person that we see for sure killed.

In this scene is the brunette nice counselor like she was like the nicest one and I was shocked I thought the blonde was going to be the one to go. Uh huh And that was a very jaws moment. She gets taken down and and we watch her from underwater. We watch her Being pulled down deep through her own blood by the fish.

That shot was amazing. It looked fantastic.

Todd: It

Craig: was

Todd: amazing.

Craig: Maybe my favorite shot of the whole movie,

Todd: by the way, her blonde friend, we’ve seen her before. We’ve seen her in The Fury. She was played by Melody Thomas Scott. She’s had lots of little bit parts and and, and roles and other movies and things, but she has been a mainstay on the Young and the Restless.

Huh. Since 1979, up to now.

Craig: Hey, you know, all this is happening and then Paul and Maggie show up there, like, they, they just keep showing up everywhere. Too late. Yeah, I guess there are through

Todd: line, whatever, I don’t care. By the way, the whole time I’m watching this and I’m seeing these two, these are our heroes showing up and trying to solve things, I’m thinking, You’re the ones who let the piranhas into the water.

Uh huh, yeah. You know? You created the problem. Yeah. When I

Craig: talk about fault, it’s really your fault.

Todd: It’s their fault, a hundred percent. So I’m just like, yeah, you better, you better clean this shit up.

Craig: Okay, so we find out that the general or colonel or whatever his name is, is invested in this water park that’s opening, and his co investor and the guy who owns the water park is named Buck.

Played by Dick Miller. Yep. In a great role for him.

Todd: Typical Dick Miller. Kind of skeevy business man. Brash Texan oil man, whatever. It’s funny, he has a Texas accent that comes and goes. Did you notice that? No, I didn’t know if that was on purpose or if that was a mistake because when he’s given the big speech for the crowd He’s got this thick Texas drawl going on but every other scene.

He’s just typical Dick Miller, New Jersey sounding guy

Clip: It’s been a great pleasure to invite you here this afternoon to our opening day festivities. Hey, at dawn today, if you have any questions about the purchase of the land up here, our people will be immediately in the crowds to answer your questions, help you out anywhere they can. Just remember, you’ve got no obligation to buy anything, only to enjoy yourself.

Craig: Well, maybe that’s kind of the showman in him, you know when he’s addressing the people he’s could be but I do like the scene Where it’s apropos of nothing really like we don’t need to know this but there’s a whole scene where he’s talking to somebody and he’s talking about how every attraction in the Park has been salvaged from some other place for whatever reason I don’t know if it was Dick Miller or it must be I guess cuz Again, like I said, it really doesn’t make any difference.

It’s not like that means anything, but I was just intrigued by his story. But anyway, it’s the huge opening of this water park, I guess it’s called Aquarina. It was a real, real water park too. Was it? I couldn’t, I couldn’t really get a grasp on what it was. Cause it, it seemed like just. You know, it’s on the river.

So like there’s swimming, but there’s also like those, those barges that are like floating bars. But like you said, water sports, water sports. montage, but I liked it because I felt like, and they were, I felt like they were setting us up for look at all the potential for what can go wrong with the piranha show up and they’re about to like, who are they going to get?

Are they going to get the swimmers? Are they going to get the scuba divers? Are they going to get the people on the bar barge? Are they going to get the water skier? And the answer is no. Yes. Yes.

They will get

Todd: everybody, I think, except for Dick Miller. That water skiing scene. Oh, God. I loved that water skiing scene so much. Yes. Great stunts too. That water skier is amazing. He’s on one ski, first of all. Yeah, he’s

Craig: really good. And, of course, who knows, They may have done it in a million shots. I’m sure they probably did.

But the way that it’s set up, like we see the scuba diver, like who is scuba diving in this river, like in the river, but the scuba diver gets eaten and then the water skier skis by. The guy’s floating body being eaten by a school of piranha. And he’s trying to communicate with the people on the boat to take him into shore, but they can’t understand what he’s saying and they’re messing with them.

And they’re actually trying to get him to fall. It’s so funny. It’s very funny, but I also found it really tense. I wanted that guy to get away. I don’t remember if he did or not. Did he remember? I don’t know if we ever saw what happened to him because. Somehow, I think he ends up going into the water, but we’re distracted away from that because the boat, like, crashes and explodes, doesn’t it?

There’s definitely a boat explosion.

Todd: There’s two boats, like, there’s another boat coming around at the same time, and somehow it flies over the other boat and it explodes. And I was like, were those girls in there? Did they just kill those girls in an explosion? I don’t know what happened. Yeah, that wasn’t

Craig: even piranha related.

It all happened very fast. The people who are swimming are getting eaten, the pe the people who are swimming are like, flocking the, the barge, the floating barge, and so like, it’s getting pulled down and eventually, the colonel who’s on there, he’s a villain anyway, so he ends up falling in and getting eaten, we don’t care about that.

The funny thing is, eventually Maggie and Paul show up, To do nothing. Yeah! Except for steal a boat

Todd: and head further downriver. He was like, if we go further down there’s, I don’t remember if it was a treatment plant or something, and his idea was they can pollute the water.

Craig: They’re gonna kill them with pollution.

Todd: It’ll kill everything. Okay, well, I guess you do what you gotta do.

Craig: We’ve already been told that these fish have been like genetically engineered to withstand poison. Hmm, but Apparently, I think he even says, we’ll pollute them to death. Yeah. I don’t know if that was supposed to be some sort of environmental message.

I don’t know, but they go to this facility. They, they take the boat down to this facility. I don’t even understand what’s happening because as soon as they get there, he’s like, Oh no, it’s flooded. Half the facility is underwater. What? Why? I don’t like the, the dam didn’t even release today. Like how, how is it flooded?

I don’t understand. And then he ties a rope to himself and he’s like, I’m going to jump in the water and you count to a hundred. Because at a hundred, I’ll either have taken care of it or not. But either way, I can’t hold my breath past a hundred. Okay. Whatever. And so then he dives in the water. This also irritated me.

Why would they not have parked the boat right next to the facility? I know. Like a hundred yards away. So he has to swim through the lake. River or whatever to get there really good underwater photography of him swimming and you know He gets into the facility and he finds the wheel that he’s supposed to turn or whatever But he’s struggling with it and then the piranhas show up and they start attacking him now some people they can kill Instantly, but I guess maybe they’re a little bit full now having eaten hundreds of people.

So I guess they’re just pecking. It’s like picking at your dessert. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s a, he’s getting torn up or whatever, but he gets the wheel turned and she’s counting to a hundred and it’s cutting back and forth and eventually she gets to a hundred and she takes off and it pulls him through the water and she’s trying to pull up the rope, but it just comes up Cut and frayed, but then he pops out of the water.

Todd: Well, just a hand, a bloodied hand shoots up out of the water. It was, it was almost like a Jason moment. That was, that was kind of cool. I was more afraid that he was going to get cut to ribbons by crashing through that underwater glass window, which yanked him out at full speed. That was the thing I was thinking about as he broke the window to go in.

I was like, if she’s going to pull him out through that window, he’s going to be gone.

Craig: Well, I was thinking about him getting like banged around corners. I’m like, this is not a good plan. He can’t die. I mean, if he were just the hero, it would be okay if he died, but he can’t die because of Susie. So he’s, you know, he’s, he’s reunited with his daughter and great.

And then the lady military guy. is talking to the press, I think, and she’s like, Yes, we’re going to launch a full investigation. I mean, she’s corrupt. We know this. But she says, And there’s absolutely no concern about the fish making it to the ocean. They just absolutely could not. And then it cuts to the ocean and the ocean turns red.

And that’s the end.

Todd: I would have loved a big creature over the ocean a little bit more than that. It felt a little abrupt, you know, as obviously the big suggestion was. Or did they? I thought it was an excellent

Craig: setup for a sequel.

Todd: For sure,

Craig: yeah. And there was. Yeah, but I know nothing about it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.

I didn’t read it. I know nothing about it. I have no idea where they took it. It was called like the swarm or something.

Todd: The Awakening or something like that, The Swarm. I think that’s the one that James Cameron did some work on. But we, we would be remiss if we did not point out that the scientist lady was Barbara Steele.

And, uh, I’m not sure if you know much about Barbara Steele’s work, but she was a goddess of early Italian, mostly horror cinema. She was a title character in Black Sunday, which we are totally gonna do one of these days. And that is Mario Bava’s just like, uh, brilliant, wonderful black and white horror film.

I can see

Craig: the, the VHS cover.

Todd: Yeah, yeah, you can see her there. And also, uh, you know, we did, uh, we did two weeks ago, The House of Usher. And so the second Poe movie in that was The Pit in the Pendulum. And she is the, well, one of the stars in The Pit in the Pendulum as well with Vincent Price. You know, she was starting to work for Corman at this time, in the early 60s anyway.

So by 78, she was popping back and forth and doing a few things for Corman. But, uh, just gorgeous woman. Just did so many great Italian horror films. And it was so cool to actually see her have a small role in this movie. Have, have

Craig: you seen the Piranha remake?

Todd: No, I haven’t. Have you? I saw it in the theater with my dad.

Piranha 3D, you talked about that once before.

Craig: It’s fun, it’s dumb. Yeah, yeah, I liked

Todd: it.

Craig: It’s, it’s dumb. This was

Todd: fun and dumb.

Craig: The remake leans hard into the comedy, but it’s still very bloody and violent. And of course the effects are much better and it’s got good people in it. It’s got Christopher Lloyd plays the scientist role.

It’s a little bit different, but Elizabeth shoe, uh, is in it. Wow. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s funny. It’s, it’s. Entertaining. Uh, much like this, this movie isn’t as funny. I mean, there’s, there’s definitely comedy going on, but they’re not leaning as hard into it. Like I said, from the beginning, they kind of play it straight, which is what makes it funny.

Mm-Hmm. and I, and I think that’s intentional. I think they knew exactly what they were doing. Oh, yeah. But I, I was, uh, I was frankly surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I liked it, and, and, and I would, yeah, recommend it. I found it charming and again. I was entertained. It was just, it was a fun watch.

Todd: Yeah, I completely agree.

I, once again, I was so happy to reappraise this film because I had remembered it as being boring and I don’t think it’s boring at all. I really enjoyed it. You know, Steven Spielberg obviously gave his stamp of approval to this one as being his favorite Jaws ripoff. We did another Jaws ripoff called Orca.

Mm hmm. That we really enjoyed. I remembered that being a fun movie and way better than we thought it would be. This one kind of has the advantage when you’re talking with piranhas. It’s not just one, right? Right. It’s hundreds and supposedly thousands of fish. So those attacks like everybody can get attacked at once and all the way up and down the river.

It’s it’s so great. It’s better. As far as body count and thrills, you know, it’s a better concept than, uh, one lone shark going out there that everybody has to stay away from and, and kill, you know, so, it definitely upped the ante, and I think it took full advantage of that. I love the scenes where people are getting attacked.

It’s just a blast, and I was, you know Quite frankly, chuckling when all of the kids at the camp were getting eaten up because horror movies don’t often go there. And, uh, it was fun to see this movie. I wasn’t afraid to go there as well. I read, I don’t know if this, you know, how true this is or to what extent it’s true, but, uh, Dante said that he and Corman would often cut a movie To fit the MPAA’s requirements, like, uh, to get it to an R instead of an X.

And then after they had gotten it approved, they would go ahead and throw those scenes and stuff back in the movie before they sent it out to distribution. Because they knew the MPAA never followed up on this stuff. That’s really funny. And it makes me wonder how much of that they did with this movie.

By today’s standards, you know, it’s a, it’s a very easy R, you know. But the fact that you’re, you’re eating up kids and things like that. Even though, like you said, it’s not, it’s not that explicit on the kids getting attacked still. Where a lot of movies aren’t always willing to go. And I loved it that they went there with this.

Like, just go balls out. Such a fun movie.

Craig: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I would definitely recommend it

Todd: Yeah, I’d recommend it too, and I’m kind of interested to see the remake, and maybe we’ll get around to doing Piranha 2 at some point. Who knows? Maybe. Well, thank you so much for joining us on our third week of Corman Films.

Stick around, we’ve got one more coming your way. Uh, we’re gonna jump forward a couple more decades to the very last film that Corman directed, uh, after a long hiatus as a director. And I’ve never seen it. Honestly, I haven’t either. Uh, it’s called Frankenstein Unbound. Um It’s got some stars in it, and, uh, and so we’ll see.

We’ll see what that’s all about. Um, until then, look at our back catalog. We’ve got a lot of other Cormen, uh, hits back there. I went ahead up on YouTube, and I put a playlist together of all of our episodes that were Cormen related. Dementia 13, Galaxy of Terror, Chopping Mall, all these other ones that we have done in the past.

Go ahead and check that out and flip through those episodes and get some ideas for your next watch as well. You can always find us online on our website, ChainsawHorror. com. You can find our Patreon, Patreon. com slash ChainsawHorror. Please consider joining the club there. And until next time, I’m Todd.

And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.