PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Forty years ago this month, Piranha was gracing cinema screens, playing to audiences hungry for anything that would bring them even remotely close to the aquatic anxieties they got from Jaws three years earlier. So Piranha was, in its most elemental form, a cash-in film. That’s usually a derogatory term, but that’s what makes it so special. Despite the fact that it was quickly thrown together just to make some money, it was really good. It’s the kind of good that probably happens less than ten times in any cinephile’s life, where you’re not expecting much, and then you get completely blown away. Of course, only two films made me think differently about summer camp as well – Friday the 13th and Piranha.
Roger Corman is creativity and capitalism’s love child. He’s done more for exploitation cinema that anyone could ever write about. Any attempt to call him a hack could be easily refuted by his eye for talent. Six degrees from Kevin Bacon could be substituted with three degrees from Roger Corman. Everyone that was in the business in his heyday worked on one of his films in some capacity. He knew the formula for success was to find talented people. He took it even further by finding desperate and hungry talented people that worked really cheap. It was a good arrangement for everyone. The actors got some gainful employment and priceless experience, and Corman got champagne on a beer budget.
The film was written by John Sayles (Clan of the Cave Bear, Lone Star), who would go on to to team up with Piranha director Joe Dante (Gremlins, Innerspace, Burying the Ex) on The Howling. If you found any film absolutely magical in the 1980s, it was either directed by Steven Spielberg or Dante. He was like Spielberg, but much more subversive. He appreciated some well placed, clandestine satire. Stock the cast with some veteran professionals and indie upstarts, and stock the river with some militarily mutated killer fish and voila, a new classic is born.
The opening scene of the couple finding the research facility tank is still one of my favorites, and I don’t know if it was intentional, but it was very similar to the first scene from Jaws. I’m still wondering why they would ever swim in something that, at first guess, would basically be a sewage treatment plant, but it was the 1970s and everyone threw a little more caution to the wind.
One of the best compliments I can give Piranha is that there are a lot of characters, and I can follow all of them. It has a really great script and cast driving it. The most tropey character is Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman), the pickled, bitter guy that goes so far as to carrying a canteen on his belt full of booze. Dillman was a really great actor, and totally pulled it off. Maggie (Heather Menzies) is the skip tracer prodigy that pulls the wrong switch and lets the piranha loose into the river. These are definitely people that have faults and have made really big mistakes, but by the climax of the film, it’s easy to be vested in them. There’s also a stellar supporting cast with Keenan Wynn as the literal “old man river,” and the usual Corman stable of actors like Dick Miller (Gremlins, The ‘Burbs), Belinda Balaski (The Howling), and Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul).
Once again, this was the 1970s, and there was no CGI. All of the piranha were rubber fish on sticks that were expertly manipulated and photographed to achieve the most realistic effect possible. Pretty impressive. The shot of Belinda Balaski being devoured and pulled down into the depths of the murky water until she vanishes from sight is still unsettling and is still nightmare fuel for anyone with any water phobia.
In the last 40 years, Piranha is still held in high regard as the King of the cash-in flicks. It’s much more than that, though. It’s to freshwater what Jaws is to saltwater. Did anybody know what a piranha was before 1978? Maybe, but when I watched Jeremy Wade jump into a pool of them on River Monsters, I immediately thought the worst, all because of this film. Just like Jaws, none of the sequels or remakes have ever been able to recapture the magic of the first. Joe Dante went on to direct another summer film, Gremlins. That film had a cash-in related counterpart called Critters that has went on to become a cult classic in its own right as well. I’ll take a really good cash-in film any day.
