You know it’s a Jaws ripoff. I know it’s a Jaws ripoff. Director Joe Dante knew it was a Jaws ripoff. Super producer Roger Corman insisted it be a Jaws ripoff. Hell, it even came out the same summer as Jaws 2, much to the chagrin of the executives at Universal. But, which movie are we still talking about today? It ain’t Jaws 2. It’s Piranha.
Dante’s gloriously handcrafted B-movie creature feature remains as entertaining, outlandish, and subversive as the day it was released. The director was on hand Friday at Vidiots in Eagle Rock for a screening of the film in celebration of the 13th anniversary of Scream! Factory, a boutique DVD label specializing in mostly ’70s and ’80s horror.
“You gotta remember, this was a Vietnam War picture. This is a picture made during the war,” Dante told a sold-out house of rapt admirers. “It’s got a lot of political undertones, which can’t help but be overtones.”
It’s hardly surprising Dante and co-writer John Sayles – the pair would collaborate again on 1981’s The Howling – came together to make such a straightforwardly political film. Both men represented a kind of independent-minded, ‘60s free spirit radicalized by the Vietnam War, so of course they brought that into their art. What is more surprising is how entertaining they were able to make the film on a shoestring budget and a short schedule.
This is accomplished largely by cranking the mayhem and carnage up to 11, in that perfectly Corman-esque way of throwing ever more blood at the screen. The thing about Jaws is that the shark attacks are quite visceral and memorable, but they are few and far between. In total, five people and a dog die in Jaws. In Piranha, five people are dead before the real action is even underway.
Now, it should go without saying that Piranha is not a perfect film by any stretch. It’s a tremendous amount of fun, but it’s still flawed in the way so many B-movies of its ilk are flawed. The acting is occasionally suspect, some of the effects shots don’t hold up, and the plot is a structural mess in which many things happen just for the sake of having them happen. And getting back to the mayhem of it all, the film has two climaxes when surely one would have sufficed.
At the same time, there’s not a thing I would change about it. That’s the magic of this brand of filmmaking, and seeing it in a packed house only makes that magic more powerful. Yes, we laugh together at the absurdity of it all, but we also cringe together and cover our eyes at the moments that still horrify. As he would later prove with Gremlins, Dante is a master of making you chuckle with delight then scream in terror within the same breath.
And, that brings us to the first of the film’s two climaxes: the summer camp. One of the fascinating things about the movie is that the heroes, played by Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies, are always a step behind the piranha. In the first place, they are the ones who inadvertently release the genetically modified killer fish into the river system. Then, they spend the rest of the movie following a trail of corpses.
The Dillman character’s daughter is attending a summer camp downstream where, naturally, the kids are earning their swimming badges on this fateful day. So, it becomes a race against time to get to the camp and save the kids. But, here’s the wild thing about Dante’s film: They don’t make it in time. And they’re not just a little late. The piranha have a veritable feast on a couple dozen 8- to 12-year-olds and some counselors before the heroes show up to pull the body parts out of the water.
At this point, it’s worth mentioning the piranha exist in the first place as an army experiment intended to destabilize Vietnamese river systems as part of the war effort. And, the army is largely concerned with ensuring this secret never becomes public knowledge. Allegorically, we understand the campers as stand-ins for the young men sent off to die in war. In actuality, though, it’s just viscerally upsetting to watch a lot of preteens screaming at the top of their lungs as they are eaten.
Had that been the ending, it would have been enough. Instead, in true Jaws fashion, we must have the civic leader who knowingly serves up the community as a buffet for the carnivorous fish. In this case, it’s the resort owner played by Corman stalwart Dick Miller, who not only insists the lake is safe but is, in fact, in league with the army. It’s as if Mayor Vaughn and the shark were business partners.
As must happen, all hell breaks loose. It’s carnage on a scale heretofore unimagined. In one of the film’s great satirical jabs at a nation that had spent more than a decade watching young men return from Vietnam traumatized, maimed, and worse, the event is covered by the local media in alarmingly deadpan fashion: “Horror. Terror. Death. Film at 11.” It’s a great laugh line, but it’s also a damning indictment of the media in 1978 and how far we have not come since.
The film spawned one direct sequel – pun intended – and a pair of remakes. I have almost certainly seen the also-Corman-produced 1995 remake more times than I have seen the original simply because it was the Piranha film of my youth. I also saw Alexandre Aja’s 2010 remake, Piranha 3D, in theaters. It’s a lovely night at the movies, but the CGI fish make one miss the tactile nature of Dante’s rubber puppets.
In the end, I think that’s the lasting legacy of Piranha. Sure, it’s a ripoff, but it’s also a film in its own right, made by true artists who said, “If we’re going to steal, we may as well steal the best we can.” And, their best was so strong that nearly 50 years later, people still gather to laugh and scream together on a Friday night.
Dante summed it well in his Q&A before the screening: “It’s a completely different business as, as you may have noticed, it’s a completely different world right now. It’s a completely different America right now, and we’re all in it together. And that’s why we gather in places like this to have shared experiences because that’s all we have left.”
A brief word on Scream! Factory
It should be self-evident but bears repeating regardless: If you can’t hold it, you don’t own it. In an era of streaming, when so many films are just instantly available with the click of a button, it is worth remembering how many films are not available. Whether it’s because an executive decided the rights weren’t worth the cost or the film simply never made the leap from one technology to the next, the history of an art form is shrinking before our very eyes. Media consolidation and corporate conglomeration do not take place for the benefit of the consumer.
Physical media mean more now than they ever have, and this is true across all art forms, by the way. Wait for the day your favorite musician no longer appears on Spotify, and you’re going to wish you’d kept a few of your old cassettes and CDs.
After the film screening, I dropped by the small pop-up store Scream! Factory had set up inside Vidiots. I snagged a 4k restoration of Brian De Palma’s Carrie and blu-rays of personal favorite Tales from the Hood and cult classic Sleepaway Camp. With horror season right around the corner, I can guarantee each of these discs will be getting a spin very soon. I say all of this just to say: If you love something, preserve it.
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