 I'm actually checking out this movie review video. So this is for the 1978 film Piranha. Yes, the original Piranha But it feels kind of weird saying that because Piranha is not so original because it's totally based on Jaws from 1975 Now another thing I want to say real quick puts put down in the comments Do you think I should review the Jaws films because at the moment? Well, I watched Piranha on HBO at the moment because it's there So if you have HBO you have the HBO now or HBO go up go ahead and check Piranha out on there But at the also at the moment they have all four Jaws films So put a comment down there should I review all four Jaws films because I will do that if you want to But anyway, like I said Piranha was based off of Jaws It was totally a Jaws ripoff and I actually like the fact that they kind of make a nod to that in the film Basically making fun of it making a joke and just being like ha ha. Yes We ripped off Jaws, but I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more as we go on So this is directed by Joe Dante if people don't know Joe Dante has done a ton of stuff But some of the most memorable things he's done gremlins gremlins to the howling and the burbs All movies I quite enjoy especially of all those I'd probably say the burbs is my favorite because it's very funny and it's very Horror driven to at the same time but tons of awesome comedy in that one Rick this was written by Richard Robinson who did films such as Kingdom of the Spiders and Highballon which I've not seen Highballon or Kingdom of the Spiders, but Highballon sounds like it's not even horror But Kingdom of the Spiders obviously yes also written by John Sayles who wrote the scripts for Alligator and the howling Obviously the howling he's then again working with Joe Dante. So very cool This is a Roger Corman produced film and if people aren't very familiar with Roger Corman He bankrolled a lot of very low-budget crazy Type of horror films like Piranha like Death Race 2000, which is one of my favorite Corman productions like chopping mall, you know fun cult classic type films like that and for that reason I love Corman I think his body of work is great and inspirational and just a gift to the horror community if you will Kevin McCarthy in this film by far is my favorite actor Even though unfortunately, we don't get a ton of him in the film because he goes out relatively early in a very stupid way Which I'll talk about later Which you know, it doesn't make sense for his character, but like I said, I'll talk about later. So Kevin McCarthy played Dr. Hoke, you know, he's the guy with all the knowledge He was working with these creatures for the government He was in some films such as the howling as well and the original invasion of the body snatchers Which I've seen and it's very good. You should check that out The budget for this film was seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars and it ended up making 16 million this thing was a cash cow for Roger Corman Kudos good good for you awesome that congratulations. I I love the fact that that's the case Uh, obviously this was based off Jaws Universal it was so based off Jaws that Universal actually considered placing an injunction against against the Piranha coming out because it was coming out at the same time as they were releasing Jaws 2 So they really didn't want the competition That was stopped from happening though the injunction that is because Steven Spielberg actually stepped in and gave Piranha a very positive review And encouraged universal to not File that injunction against Piranha. So thank you Steven Spielberg for not crushing a film basically That's a lot of stuff. I've kind of heard about Spielberg is that he's a A nice guy a good guy a fair guy if you will and I think that definitely shows that So this film actually had a sequel in 1982 which I've not seen But I really do want to see and obviously they in at the end of this film Which I'll talk more about they leave it very open to going to a sequel which you know a lot of films Have done that and still do that because hey who doesn't want to make more money So it was Piranha 2 the spawning which was the sequel in 1982. It was then remade in 1995 for tv It was a four tv made for tv movie and then in 2010 there was a more modern remake And then there was a sequel in 2012 to the remake in 2010 now directing wise the The 2010 one was done by Alexander Aja who had done things like high tension and the hills have eyes remake And the 2012 follow-up to that one was done by John Guliger Who was probably best known for being on project green light which he won and then he made the feast movies all three of those Which I could review those at some point Roger ebert when this came out known Enemy to horror films roger ebert. Um, I have a lot of respect for the guy, but he just inappropriately hated horror films in my opinion He mocked the practical effects of this and also called out the fact that characters Upon hearing that there were piranhas in the water would then jump in the water So it didn't really make sense. He kind of had a little bit of a point with the characters kind of doing dumb things but The practical effects like come on like what were you going to do back then especially on a low budget What were you going to do? I honestly think for the time that the practical effects were good You know, yes, it looks a little bit corny when they're showing the the shots of like the school of piranha Kind of coming through the water that looks weird It looks corny because they're not really moving all that much It's just like very stationary thing just being moved through but the attack scenes. I think look appropriate appropriately frantic Um, you can't really see what's going on There's a lot of thrashing But you see little bits and pieces of like the people's arms the blood flying Some bites that they put on the bodies and obviously like little pieces of the actual fish And I feel like that's a good representation of the attack because when piranha swarm Is that the right when they attack? um It's it is frantic and it's it's very um confused as what's going on and especially underwater So I think they did an excellent job Cinematically capturing the attack scenes so eberts off on that in my opinion You okay, so now going into the actual like film itself You just know something is going to go wrong when you see the no trespassing sign in the beginning and people hiking up to that Sign and going past it and that's when we had these teenagers these horny teenagers who won a skinny dip and In a what could be sewage treatment plant as the one guy lays out? He's like we don't even know but the funny thing is too in the beginning What does he say he says exact quote besides a little law breaking will do you good? And I was like will it the a that's a really really weird quote Especially because he doesn't expand on that. He's just like a little law breaking will do you good It doesn't do him good and it doesn't do her good But it's funny because he initially is like let's break the law this dude's risky things And then they get to the water and she's the risk-taker at that point and she flips it on him and is just like Hey, let's skinny dip in this and then he's all of a sudden afraid and it's like Is this poop and pee water basically this could be a sewage treatment plant We don't know but then he just gets in because Boobs and then you also right there within the first few minutes have your blood your breasts and your beast Being shown because you see the eyeball Open up the eyelid open up and show the eyeball of one of the piranhas as the woman kind of splashes in the water with her hand So how fast they get to the boob the sorry the blood breasts and beasts is crazy in this film But it sets it up to be a crazy fun film in my opinion Uh, and I really by the way love that moment of showing like it's just dark and then you just see the piranha eye open I think that's such a cool moment, especially because it's done at night You know everything's scarier at night The music when they find the water has underwater sounds to it like kind of like bubble-ish Which I thought was really cool like incorporating the actual music to make it sound underwater That's a cool thing. The other thing is there's this kind of um This particular noise that they always use to signal that the piranhas are in close proximity and when they're actually attacking And it's kind of like this this rolling warbling underwater type sound like You know If you've watched it, you'll you'll know what i'm talking about which if you haven't watched it You should probably shouldn't be watching this because it's like all spoilers, but so stop go watch it. Come back The jaws video game now This is the moment they jump to this woman playing a jaws video game and that is the funny nod in my opinion to Yes, this is ripping off jaws. Basically. I I love that moment. I think it's super funny It is like this kind of nod to the audience of you see what we're doing here You see we're doing we're fine with it. We're proud of it. Actually, it's funny Uh, the old man talking about his life revolving around the river indicates how catastrophic The piranhas being released eventually is, you know, that's when the guy when we're first introduced to grogan The old guy who ends up getting eaten up Is kind of talking about like, you know, I live by this river You know, I do everything with this river basically and he just goes over all the ways in which the the river impacts his life That's a really good moment of showing how important the river is to that community and the people who kind of live along it Meaning that it gives more Importance to it being infected well infected being Overrun with piranha. Basically it it makes it even worse for those types of people When when he kind of like points out the dog though I did kind of initially get this feeling of like, I think the dog's gonna get it Like I feel like that was indicating it. It makes you a little nervous But luckily the dog ended up being fine, but the old man not so much Uh, they do a good job of establishing grogan as a curmudgeonly hermit boozehound This is the perfect reluctant hero for a corpsman film I wrote down, which is totally accurate This guy is pissy with life. He just wants to drink and be left alone He's a mountain man hermit and when the person trying to track down these teenagers shows up He literally tells her to go away And is just a mean dude, but you know what? He's the hero And I love it when you have kind of like crazy heroes like that And especially in a corpsman film The secret lab scene is amazing in this all the creatures being developed and the one that you end up seen creeping around Which is not a piranha, but what is that you see a bunch of creatures in there like preserved and actually alive Where you're just like, what is this like? What's the government doing with these things? It further kind of deepens the mystery of what's going on at that lab and why that's the other thing Which the great thing is we actually get a why in this which is cool At least for the piranhas we get a why for the all the other creatures You just assume Well, there's other things going on with the government Along the same lines is what they're doing with the piranhas They're tie in of the creation of these Like mutant piranhas basically to the vietnam war is actually a good story point It's really good backstory in my opinion and it kind of deepens that Can't trust the government type situation that was going on with a lot of horror films back then And this kind of impact of the government doing all these things in secrecy and not telling the the The people of the united states about it will eventually come back to literally bite them in this instance To literally bite them in the water and kill them So I just like how they set that up plus the lab that secret lab just looked good Like it looked cool. I love that scene Um, it was a good touch finding a dog skeleton at the bottom of the hatchery that after they had The hatchery pond after they drained it. I thought that was a really cool Kind of extra like oh, they've been feeding something's going on here Which then it begs is a question like did the dog just Happen to wander in and fall in there or were they keeping these alive by feeding it dogs and other things I don't know we need to find that out, you know, maybe Dr. Hoek could have Could have spoken to that but he ended up exiting real quick I love the foreshadowing of that, you know, main counselor guy saying to grogans kid People eat fish fish don't eat people Oh, is that how it is because that's how he feels an audience member like when he says that you're just like Oh, you are so wrong, sir And you're about to find out how wrong you are especially when the fish Eventually jumps out of the water and bites him in the face, which is a really hilarious moment that I just love in the film I feel like the way they shot the attack scenes was good. Yeah, like I said, it was frantic And hard to fully tell what was going on which which feels realistic for these mutant piranhas feels very Brutal, that's another thing very violent very brutal. And that's what you want in this film basically The old guy's body with the stripped legs looks really really gnarly I thought they did a really good job with the practical effects there The actual attack was a little bit, you know, quick and I feel like they could have drawn it out a little bit more But when you see his body actually on land and you're just seeing like the stripped legs It's like it's pretty nasty and they did a good job There's so much blood bubbling up when the guy In the boat gets his arm in there and it gets it gets attacked The guy who was in the boat with his son and then the son gets on top of it On top of the boat and he's fine. Just like all the bubbling that was going on and how much blood was going You're like, whoa, that's a crazy amount of blood It doesn't make sense This is the moment where hoke jumps in and he's like going to try and save the kid And it really doesn't make sense that that hoke would jump in the water to go save the kid because one They were almost close enough to get to the kid like they could have on the raft gotten close enough to get Him safely there and the other thing is hoke is the guy who knows what these mutant piranhas are And he's also been warning people the whole time like don't go in the water. Don't stick your hand in there Um, so he knows the dangers He would not like it doesn't make sense for his character to actually jump in and go after that kid So that's a big moment that where ebert was kind of right where it doesn't make sense That these characters kind of just jump in the water him being the main one Uh, and then hoke's hoke dies and with him all the knowledge of these piranha and how to defeat them The situation at that point becomes so much more dire in the minds of the audience because they know There's the guy with all the information. He would know how to kill them and he's gone Um, by the way, sorry if you hear someone mowing their yard in the background I hope it's not showing up in this It seems like the piranha are intelligent when they're biting through the ropes that hold the raft together That's an interesting thing. So it makes me kind of think they don't really talk about this I don't think unless I missed it But the are the piranha intelligent kind of because it seems like they're intentionally trying to Pick apart this raft in order to get to the people there. So it's this extra You know extra aspect of you're dealing with intelligent beings potentially as well, although they don't really go down that road too far Uh, the government shows up and acts like they know everything and they can take care of it But grogan actually lives there and is actually the best resource of knowledge And he actually shows that first of all, he's a jerk to the government people Rightfully so in this instance because the government created the problem grogan is going to solve the problem But how he points out like your logic and what you're saying here doesn't make sense So let me show you the path that they can take to get to where it becomes a problem Uh, and then obviously they need grogan That's set up very early It's never a surprise when dick miller pops up in movies like this. I loved him has buck gardener in this film He's great. He plays perfectly the guy the politician who's like We're just gonna deny that this is a thing so that we don't make people panic And then once he's faced with the the reality that people are being eaten in a funny way Actually, it's delivered where he's like, I don't want to hear I told you not to talk about that now What about it? He's like the piranha are eating the guests and then he's just like Ah Then he has to deal with it. You can't deny it any longer and he just dick miller as usual does a great job with that They really work up the peril of the kids getting in the water in this film It just gets it keeps creeping closer and closer as you know During the film the piranha are moving further downstream So they keep cutting back and forth between grogan And everyone trying to stop the piranha and then the kids and what peril they're going to be in Now you kind of get the sense that they're not going to go fully go there though And have the kids get attacked, but oh they do and to great effect and I'm surprised they went there back then, but i'm glad they did because it adds to the horror of the film really it And it's more realistic because what are you going to do in that instance? Have the piranha just go for the counselors and not go for the kids No, they would go for whatever they find first whatever fresh meat is available first Even though actual piranha don't eat people, but you know That's the thing Um, you kind of feel like they won't oh, yeah, I already talked about that. Sorry And the one jumping out of the water like I talked about before Biting that guy's face awesome surprise moment in the film Uh, I love the shots of people having a good time in the water because as an audience member You're thinking oh these people have no idea what's coming That's one of those awesome things where the audience's experience of having the full picture Like really knowing what's going on and then observing people who don't know anything And you're like oh you like you see and you're projecting ahead in your mind What is coming what is going to happen and there's a lot of that that goes on with this film when you're watching it They just keep throwing potential victims at you in this film That's another thing I love because it really creates this situation of wondering like who's gonna get it You know of all these potential victims they've thrown out Who's gonna get killed? Who's gonna get eaten up and live or are all of them gonna get it? And it just creates possibilities and you're just like oh man like It's this buffet for the piranha and what are they gonna choose and in what way are they gonna do away with them? You wonder how much action can be worked into a piranha movie in the first place and then there's actually an explosion Uh, the fact that they have an explosion in this is just like yeah, we're gonna take it to the next level We're already giving you a ton of actual piranha action Why don't we just throw in them a michael bay type explosion before michael bay, but you know what i'm saying Why don't you get now you think that Uh as soon as people start swimming to the floating bar Which by the way a floating bar is awesome and that floating bar looked like a lot of fun I would like to participate in that Um, but when people start actually swimming to a floating bar, you know, it's gonna sink You know, it's potentially gonna go down because they intentionally let you see a sign that had the maximum occupancy Which I believe was only 18 people Um, so it kind of like ups the ante, you know as these people are going there. You're aware you're thinking Oh my god, it said 18 people maximum and all these people are climbing on and Here it goes and then everyone's in peril Breaking glass underwater sure looks cool. I wrote down The part where grogan gets tied up and he's gonna go underwater to try and like Uh, let the pollution go he um, he breaks through the glass of the window And it just looks like it's an awesome visual. It looks really cool. It's like the glass just like floats away Um, I just like that Uh, the piranha really messed up grogan by the way I didn't know when I initially watched this which when I just watched it was like the second time I've seen it. I think um initially when I watched it I kind of felt like grogan was gonna end up getting away unscathed But I actually really like the aspect of him getting pretty messed up by these piranha and being in kind of a bad shape at the end Um, because it feels more realistic like those things are relentless They were getting pretty much everyone So why wouldn't they get grogan and they did and I like that aspect of it But when he's getting attacked it kind of feels like he's not gonna survive that And you kind of get that scare when uh, the woman I forget her name in this is pulling him up and the rope is severed at the end and you're just like, oh, no He's done But then his hand comes up and he's alive and they're like, oh grogan And I wrote down and pollution saves humanity Well, maybe in this situation the idea to pollute him and just kill him Is funny because it runs opposite of kind of what we know as a society Where we have to, you know, take care of the environment and not pollute things because then that's going to take us with it Eventually because you're destroying the environment, which we need to live But it's just this kind of funny thing in the film where it's like pollution will save us And it kind of does at the at the time being well for the time being at the end of this film But they don't fully resolve things. They don't Um, tell you or they don't fully, um indicate to you that they're all dead Like it's just this kind of we think we solved it for now And that's kind of how they leave it and I really like that So it's just real unknown and obviously it sets it off for doing another film, which I really really love um And this fits in with a lot of films at the at the time that likes That like to focus on government secrecy and how they basically lead to these dangerous catastrophes I already kind of talked about that a little bit But this was very common with a lot of films back in the 70s back in the 80s It's still being incorporated from time to time into horror films and it works, you know Like people a lot of the times like you don't really know everything that the government's doing at at any time You know, that's why there are things like fbi cia And what was going on with the piranhas in this feels a lot like, you know, of fbi or cia cia operation You know, it's it's that whole thing of what is the government doing at any time and and could they be doing something Super dangerous and and something that's really a bad idea that can end up backfiring on the people who live here, you know That's what piranha is at its core And this film is fun. Uh, that's pretty much all I have to say about it, but I like it a lot I think it's really fun. I think it's actually a good film Now it's interesting because when you look at it and when I was talking about, you know Piranha and then it had the sequel and then it had the made for tv version And then it had the remake and then the sequel of that remake It's crazy to think that those all spawned off of Jaws So and Jaws spawned a bunch of other stuff too. Like, you know, I know Humanoid creatures from the or humanoids from the deep or I have a review for that on the channel and there were there were a bunch of other films that kind of were spawned from from Jaws Including its sequels, but it's just crazy to think about how impactful That film was on horror, especially underwater horror And I feel like when people make underwater horror even nowadays a lot of it Feels like it's still inspired by Jaws. So anyway Thanks everyone for checking this out. Let me give you my rating on this film So out of five stars with half stars in play It's not a perfect film. Obviously there are it's hokey. It's low budget. It but it's it's a good time But you know what all things considered I'm going to give it a Four star rating. I think it's a four out of five stars I really do and I quite enjoy piranha. Joe Dante did a great job with the directing the acting for the most part for what it is Is pretty good And the writing the writing is fun. Like I said super smart having that kind of like vietnam tie in to The whole thing with the piranhas. They could have easily just done this film and just been like The piranhas just exist because it's the government doing bad things in secrecy But they they gave it backstory which makes it so much better and so much richer So I love that but anyway four out of five stars for piranha If you haven't seen it check it out. Um, put some comments down here. Let's talk about it Do you have differing opinions or you just want to talk about piranha? Let's do that Do me a quick favor though If you like anything I do this review or any other reviews hit that subscribe button That's your way to repay me not making money doing this. I'm just spending my time doing this for For people to reach out and say hey, let's connect as lovers of horror And we can talk about it So if you've already subscribed give me that thumbs up just to keep me going and let me know. Hey, I'm still watching. Good job But thanks again for checking this out and until next time keep it brutal