When the rubber piranha “attack” victims, it’s hard not to laugh at the film rather than with it.
Roger Corman’s 1978 Piranha was one of the better low-budget films “inspired” by Jaws. It received a relatively warm critical and financial response and a sequel was planned. However, the journey that Piranha II: The Spawning took from conceptualization to the screen is a far more interesting tale than the resulting movie.
Corman sold the film’s rights to producers Jeff Schechtmann and Chako van Leuwen who had to secure financing. Original director Joe Dante was tied up with The Howling, so Miller Drake came aboard. However, Drake was fired by Italian financier Ovidio G Assonitis. Special effects director James Cameron was promoted to fill the director’s seat. Depending on who you believe, Cameron was eventually fired as director after a couple of weeks and Assonitis finished the picture uncredited. Or, possibly, Cameron edited the film from Assonitis’ direction. In any event, Cameron received the screen credit as director and went on to direct The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar. (Perhaps you’ve heard of them?)
Anyway, Piranha II jettisons most connections to the original film aside from a cursory mention of its plot. The genetically modified killer fish from the first go-around have been further enhanced by the military to include DNA from flying fish and grunion. Now they can not only fly but can stay out of the water for a while. These unholy creations have holed up in the Caribbean near a resort called Club Elysium. They live in a shipwreck and only come out at night to feed. (Unless some unlucky diver investigates the wreck which, of course, happens during the opening credits.)
Club Elysium’s scuba instructor, Ann (Tricia O’Neil), teams up with her policeman ex-husband, Steve (Lance Henriksen,) and her boyfriend, Tyler (Steve Marachuk,) to investigate strange deaths in and around the resort. Of course, they stumble onto the piranha and have to figure out how to deal with the threat. Ann used to be a marine biologist and Tyler has a certain degree of knowledge that becomes useful later in the film. How convenient.
I’d love to say that watching Piranha II would give you some clue about the gifted director Cameron would eventually become. But I can’t. The film looks every bit as bad as one would expect a $150,000 film to look. (By comparison, that’s less than a quarter of the budget of the original Piranha.) The special effects are laughable and the acting is hampered by poor dialogue dubbing. The majority of the supporting cast were Italian and didn’t speak English, so their voices were replaced.
What made the original Piranha so fun was that everyone involved with making it knew exactly what it was: a tongue-in-cheek Jaws knockoff. That translated into a fun (if completely ludicrous) way to spend an hour and a half. On the other hand, Piranha II plays everything seriously, even though it’s a movie about flying fish killing oversexed tourists. When the rubber piranha “attack” victims, it’s hard not to laugh at the film rather than with it. Even if the special effects were improved and the acting wasn’t supplied by disembodied voices, the plot is so threadbare that the film is padded with pointless scenes of tourists being obnoxious to each other and the resort staff.
Piranha II: The Spawning may or may not be James Cameron’s directorial debut. Even if it is, it’s still a hot mess.
1.5 out of 5.0 stars
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