Blogorium Double Feature Review: Piranha and Piranha 3-D

Designed to be a Jaws-ripoff, Piranha has the benefit of fond memories on the part(s) of kids who saw it on TV during the 1980s. It doesn't hurt that producer Roger Corman, screenwriter John Sayles, and director Joe Dante are held in high esteem among geek culture, so 1978's Piranha tends to get a "pass" without much need for revisitation. After watching the film again yesterday (for the first time in years), I'm afraid that the Cap'n is going to have to be the Grumpy Gus that ruins that nostalgic glow.

The story is reasonably simple: after two teenagers (Roger Richman and Janie Squire) go missing, "skip tracer" Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is sent to find them along a mountain stream. She enlists the help of hermit Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) and unwittingly sets loose a pack of genetically modified piranha from a disused military base. Warned by Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy) of the danger these piranha pose to the summer camp and water park downstream, Maggie, Paul, and Hoak travel in a homemade raft in a race against time to stop the piranha.

They're blocked in their efforts by the military - including Colonel Waxman (Bruce Gordon) and fish expert Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele) - local police, and overbearing camp director Dumont (Paul Bartel), as well as the impending opening of the Aquarena, a water park on the other side of the dam. The piranha are moving all over the place, and seem to always be right ahead (or behind) our heroes, who take a while to get where they're going (reasons why are not limited to being arrested, being held in a military camp, being stuck on the raft, and driving through town in stolen vehicles).

It isn't that Piranha is awful by any means; it's just that for a movie about killer piranha, there's surprisingly little killing, and between the (mostly off-screen) kills, there are long stretches where people wander around, or where the audience is continually introduced to new characters (this happens at least six times in the last thirty minutes).

Mind you, the characters are mostly worth keeping up with, it's just that the ones introduced near the end (particularly Dick Miller's Buck Gardner) don't actually do much but stand around during the chaos. I could understand if Miller's sleazy businessman (who insists on opening the Aquarena water park despite warnings of impending piranha attacks) got more comeuppance than wandering around, dazed, after the massacre, but that doesn't happen.

Considering the three main names behind the camera (Dante, Sayles, and Corman) one would expect Piranha to be a) funnier, b) more subversive, or c) more titillating than it is. There's a handful of exposed breasts, two or three good gore shots, and the occasional shot at authority, but more often than not there's a lot of chatter and very little piranha action. Almost all of the kills take place underwater, so the audience is left with shots of blood bubbling up from below the surface, punctuated with a stop-motion or puppet piranha every now and then.

There are weird touches, like an air-breathing fish with legs that sneaks around Hoak's lab for no reason (while the camera continually cuts away to the stop motion creature, it serves no purpose in the narrative), or an animated shot of a piranha opening its eye when the teenagers dangle their fingers in a military test pool (the best place to go skinny dipping!).

On the whole, though, Piranha is a bit of a patience test when one considers that it comes from the producer of Death Race 2000, Humanoids from the Deep, Rock N Roll High School, and Galaxy of Terror. It has enough going for it not to be terrible, but Piranha is certainly slower than your expect (or remember) it being. There's a lot of waiting for something to happen and not enough happening to in Piranha, which keeps it from being better than it could be. While it's watchable, even if purely for nostalgic reasons, you might want to consider checking it out yourself before inviting over the gang.

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Piranha 3-D, on the other hand, wastes no time on giving the audience what it came for: nudity and gore, at first alternating but eventually combining them. If the Aquarena in Piranha was the set piece for carnage, the Wet T-Shit contest elevates it to grand guignol levels: gallons of blood, missing limbs, porn stars cut in half, faces ripped off by boat engines, an Eli Roth head explosion, and more than one back torn open (an image lifted directly from the original).

Sensing that audiences wouldn't have the patience for long sequences of chatter, punctuated with the occasional suggested piranha death, Alexandre Aja packs the 89 minute running time of Piranha 3-D with the cgi devils, chomping, stalking, and tormenting an exponentially larger crowd of college students. And of course, this time they deserve it; compare to the Aquarena, Lake Victoria (joke no doubt intended) may as well be Sodom, and the ancient piranha a wrath visited upon Spring Break co-eds.

The truth is that Piranha 3-D falls somewhere between the realm of Skinemax and USA Up All Night and doesn't aspire to do much more. Oh sure, there's the proverbial "bone"s thrown to horror theorists: a strong female protagonist (Elisabeth Shue), semi-defined character types (more on this in a second), and a not-even-implied castration of Joe Francis-esque Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell). While it's not my favorite castration related joke in a horror movie (that still belongs to Black Sheep), the Cap'n can say with certainty that he's never had a 3-D severed member spit in his direction before Piranha 3-D.

Speaking of which, the post-conversion 3-D is put to reasonably good use. The abundant nudity and gore gets the lion's share of "third dimension"-ing, but there are also a handful of very nice underwater perspective shots that benefit from a better sense of depth. Most people will point you in the direction of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan-esque all nude underwater sequence featuring Kelly Brook and Riley Steele, but that should give you a very good idea who the target audience for Piranha 3-D is: thirteen year old boys. Unfortunately, I have no idea how they're supposed to sneak into the movie without 3-D glasses.

While the film delivers on the gratudity and gore, there's not much in the way of character development. Most members of the cast don't even have time to be "types", since the film is in such a hurry to get to the piranha gone amok action. Richard Dreyfuss barely registers in a cameo before he's fishmeat, and Christopher Lloyd has two scenes to make an impression (which, admittedly, he does). There's a lot of talking and not much character development, which some might argue is the point in a movie like Piranha 3-D, but if that's the case, why even suggest that Danni (Kelly Brook) might be competition for Kelly (Jessica Szohr) in winning Jake (Steven McQueen)'s affections? Danni actually turns out to be one of the more decent characters in Derrick Jones' entourage, so when she (is this even a SPOILER) dies late into the picture, it's slightly more surprising than it should be. Adam Scott, Ving Rhames, and Elisabeth Shue do a lot of reacting and riding around, and there are at least two more deputies that simply show up during the Wet T-Shirt massacre.

I sense that lots of Piranha 3-D is sitting in storage somewhere, waiting for an UNRATED release on home video. Not that the film feels like it's holding back, but there are clearly scenes in the trailer that aren't in the movie as it was released. Unless I missed something, Paul Scheer's character disappears completely from the movie without explanation, and Ving Rhames' death left a lot to be desired. It seems like the mantra (probably from Aja) was to keep it short so it doesn't wear out its welcome like the original Piranha did.

To that end, Piranha 3-D is exactly what it sets out to be: dumb fun. It won't change the world or make you feel better about yourself (unless you're a teenage boy watching Piranha 3-D on home video) but it's not even trying to be high art. I hate the term "critic proof", but a movie like Piranha 3-D isn't something you're going to win people over to seeing or scare them away from. Either they were on board from the get-go or it's a lost cause. Those inclined to enjoy its dumb pleasures will have a field day with the last minute, "holy shit that's the end of the movie?" sequel tease, which may or may not ever come. As it stands, it's a great way to close out Piranha 3-D, which has the good sense not to stop once it gets rolling, a mistake Piranha made more than once.