Piranha

Gimly

January 25, 2018

4/10

Not a terrible film, but there was a remake in the 90s with the exact same story featuring better acting and better effects, so you can probably skip straight ahead to that one. Now I know that if I had been around when that remake came out, I'd probably be the first in line to complain "Why'd you even bother? It's just the first movie over again!", but seeing as I watched them both in retrospect, I can ignore the fact that I'm being a total hypocrite and move right ahead to recommending you jus…

Wuchak

July 10, 2018

8/10

Adventuresome and fun "Jaws" homage with far superior women RELEASED IN 1978 and directed by Joe Dante, “Piranha” chronicles events when genetically-enhanced piranha are accidently released into a river system in central Texas, which threaten kids & counselors at a Summer Camp and vacationers at a lake resort. A spirited skip tracer (Heather Menzies) and a backwoods drunkard (Bradford Dillman) team-up to save the swimmers. Kevin McCarthy and Barbara Steele play military scientists who experi…

Kamurai

July 28, 2020

5/10

Decent watch, probably won't watch again, but can recommend for fans of Jaws or any other version of this movie. There is a 1995 remake of this movie that I would probably watch instead if I wanted to watch this gain. Not-trigger warning: There is a surprising LACK of gore in this movie. This has a decent story to it, but it shares aspects with Jaws, Friday the 13th, other movies of the era. Particularly the "hide the effect" routine that Jaws made famous. The practical effects aren't…

The Movie Mob

November 27, 2022

5/10

**Piranha is bad 70s creature feature gold! It's so bad it's great and a fun ride as long as you expect a total cheesefest.** Piranha is cheesy 70s/80s creature films at their very best! It has everything - evil military generals, obligatory lake celebrations, scientific experimentation gone wrong, horrible dialogue, low-budget effects, and more. It's clear as you watch the film that Piranha was heavily influenced by Jaws, with the city ignoring the warnings of the dangerous underwater creatu…

CinemaSerf

November 5, 2023

6/10

"People eat fish, fish don't eat people"! Well, that might be the theory but when a meddlesome couple accidentally release a swimming pool's worth of genetically modified fish into a river, we discover that that mantra isn't strictly true! It's only because "Dr. Hoak" (Kevin McCarthy) is at the facility that our interfering pair - "Maggie" (Heather Menzies-Ulrich) and "Paul" (Bradford Dillman) learn of the potential disaster scenario looming - especially when they realise that there is a water p…

r96sk

February 22, 2025

7/10

<em>'Piranha'</em> is short on laughs for a "comedy horror", though I did still enjoy this film. The elements to do with the titular fish are pretty strong, they are portrayed in the right way so the humans do feel in suitable danger. The piranhas aren't shown much, which is smart. Obviously it is inspired by 1975's <em>'Jaws'</em> and does fall fairly far adrift of that classic, though that is to be expected and I'd still log it as a respectable attempt at following the mould set by that Ste…