Piranha is a 1978 comedy horror film about a swarm of killer piranhas. It was directed by Joe Dante and starred Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies, Kevin McCarthy, Keenan Wynn and Dick Miller. Produced by Roger Corman, Piranha is a parody of the 1975 film Jaws, which had been a major success for distributor Universal Studios and director Steven Spielberg, and inspired a series of similarly themed B movies such as Grizzly, Tintorera, Tentacles, Orca, Monster Shark and Great White.
Piranha was followed by a sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning, in 1981, and two remakes, one in 1995, and another that is forthcoming. The film was shot at Aquarena Springs in San Marcos, Texas. Screenwriter John Sayles used the proceeds to fund his own films.
Plot
Two teenagers exploring at night come upon an apparently abandoned military installation. They decide to take advantage of what appears to be an inviting swimming pool to skinny dip. Shortly thereafter, the young man is attacked by an unseen force and disappears under the water. The confused woman is attacked immediately after, and fails to pull herself out before she falls back in and also disappears. A light suddenly activates in the main building and a silhouetted figure emerges to investigate the screams, but too late to help.
A determined, but somewhat absent-minded insurance investigator named Maggie McKeown is dispatched to find the two missing teenage hikers near Lost River Lake. She hires surly backwoods drunkard Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) to serve as her guide. During their search, they come upon the abandoned compound, which originally functioned as a fish hatchery prior to the militarization of the facility. Inside the main building, they discover bizarre specimens in jars, and indications of an occupant still residing there. Maggie locates the drainage switch for the outside pool and decides to empty it to search the bottom for bodies; the moment she activates it, a haggard and frantic man appears and attacks her in a frenzied attempt to reach the switch and stop the draining, until he is subdued by Grogan. The two find a skeleton in the filtration trap of the empty pool, and learn that it had been filled with salt water, not fresh. The man awakens and steals their jeep, but accidentally crashes it due to his disorientation, and he is taken to Grogan's home where they all spend the night. Without a vehicle, the three take Grogan's homemade raft down the river, where the man wakes up and tells them that the pool in the facility was filled with piranha, and that Maggie released them into the river when she drained it. They are at first skeptical until they come across the corpse of Grogan's backwoods friend Jack (Keenan Wynn), who has bled to death from an attack on a fishing dock.
The man wearyingly reveals himself to be Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy), the lead scientist of a defunct Vietnam War project called Operation: Razorteeth, which was tasked with engineering a ravenous and prodigious strain of piranha that could endure the cold water of the North Vietnamese river systems and inhibit Viet Cong movement. The project was shut down when the war ended, but some of the mutant specimens survived the poisoning protocols and Hoak tended to them in secret to salvage some remnant of his work. Grogan suddenly realizes that if the local dam is opened, the fish will not only have access to the water park, but also the summer camp on the other end where his daughter Suzie is in attendance. Hoak rescues a boy on a sinking canoe, but suffers mortal injuries in the process; he dies before he can tell them how to kill the fish. Blood from Hoak's corpse cause The School (of Piranha) to tear away the raft's lashings, and they barely get to shore before it falls apart. Grogan successfully manages to stop the dam attendant from opening the spillway and calls the military to help.
Military officials Colonel Waxman (Bruce Gordon) and former Razorteeth scientist Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele) take charge by feeding poison into the upstream section, ignoring the protests that the fish survived the first such attempt; when Grogan discovers that a tributary bypasses the dam to the other side, Waxman and Mengers decide to quarantine them to a field tent to prevent the agitated pair from alerting the media. When they escape, Waxman alerts law enforcement to capture them; although they are, they manage to escape again by smashing a porcelain toilet tank lid on the guard's head. The School meanwhile, has attacked the summer camp during a swimming marathon, injuring many and killing two (one child who bleeds to death and a benign counselor who is devoured); Suzie, Grogan's aquaphobic daughter, evaded the slaughter and even rescued a counselor with an inflatable boat. The School continues downriver, feeding on everyone in its path, emitting a characteristic trilling sound when it attacks.
Colonel Waxman and Dr. Mengers arrive at the water park run by shyster owner Buck Gardner (Dick Miller) to intercept Grogan and Maggie, but The School attacks the resort, killing many, including Col. Waxman when panicking people push him off a floating party boat. Grogan and Maggie commandeer a speedboat and rush to the shuttered smelting plant at the narrowest point of the river; remembering the empty facility pond, he realizes that the fish can survive in salt water, and if The School passes the delta, they will reach the ocean and spread uncontrollably over the entire world. He intends to open the smelting refuse tanks in the hopes that the industrial waste will be toxic enough to kill the fish as they pass through it. They arrive ahead of The School, but the elevated water levels has submerged the control office, and Grogan must do it manually underwater; he ties a rope around his wait and instructs Maggie to count to 100 before pulling him out. Grogan struggles to move the rusted valve wheel when The School arrives and attack him. The relentless assault hyperadrenalizes him and he manages to successfully open the valves just as Maggie guns the engine and pulls him through the pane glass to safety. Maggie and Susie take Grogan back to the water park, where a massive MEDEVAC is tending to the victims; his injuries are severe and he is seen in a catatonic state on a gurney while the three await an ambulance.
The surviving Dr. Mengers gives an on-site television interview, providing a sanitized version of the events and downplaying the existence of piranha; her voice is seen going out over short-wave radios carried by beachgoers during sunset. As she ominously says "there's nothing left to fear", the piranha's characteristic trilling sound drowns out the breaking waves, indicating that The School has indeed made it to the ocean.
Cast
Remakes
Piranha was first remade in 1995, and this version was also produced by Roger Corman's company. It used footage from the original for certain sequences.
Another remake of the 1978 film is to be directed by Alexandre Aja, who will again work with filmmaking partner Grégory Levasseur; the two have worked on other genre films as well, including the 2006 remake The Hills Have Eyes. Distributor Dimension Films' Bob Weinstein told Variety, "We will maintain the fun and thrilling aspects of the original film but look forward to upping the ante with a modern-day twist."[1] Piranha is estimated for theatrical release in the United States in April 2010 and will be in 3D.
Dimension Films had been developing the remake of the 1978 Joe Dante film Piranha for over a year. It intended to have Chuck Russell, who previously reworked the 1988 version of The Blob, direct the film before taking on Alexandre Aja. Aja will rewrite a previous script from Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger. Aja explains, "My goal is not to remake Piranha, but to create a completely new adventure paying homage to all the creature films [...] I am very proud to follow the path of Joe Dante and James Cameron in the Piranha franchise and look forward to working with Greg Levasseur to write, produce, and direct such a fun and gory thrill ride."[2]
References
External links
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Piranha series |
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Films directed by Joe Dante |
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