Director Joe Dante may be best known for Gremlins, the undeniably awesome 1986 film about adorable little fur balls that turn ugly and raise hell when they get wet or are exposed to sunlight, but this 1978 collaboration with legendary B-movie producer and director Roger Corman about killer flesh-eating fish should not be ignored. Piranha is a pretty clear knockoff of the 1975 megahit Jaws, and it makes no attempt to be something it’s not. A hackneyed plot — Operation Razorteeth created a strain of killer fish for use in the Vietnam War that (naturally) escape into civilian waters — and shoddy special effects raise the camp value as a drunk and an insurance investigator try to destroy the fish in the river before they make their way into the ocean, where they would cause the end of recreational swimming as we know it. A scene in which the bloodthirsty devil fish attack a children’s summer camp and feed on the fingers and toes of helpless campers is genuinely disturbing, but mostly Piranha is low-rent, lowbrow fun. A young auteur named James Cameron (you may have heard of him) took a stab at the sequel, but the original reigns supreme. We can only hope Piranha 3D can do the franchise justice.
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