Piranha (DVD)

Possibly Roger Corman's most famous, or at least most loved movie, Piranha was an early directorial job of a man named Joe Dante, who would later earn fame with excellent movies such as Gremlins and Matinee, often infusing horror and comedy seamlessly, creating very entertaining films that could be watched under any mood. When Jaws hit cinemas in 1975, a huge impact was made on cinema, and naturally numerous remakes about nature run amok followed, hoping to cash in on the success of Steven Spielberg's tale of a giant shark. Surprisingly, it took Corman, king of the rip-offs, until 1978 before his company, New World, would release their 'Jaws homage'. Joe Dante ...  Read the complete review

Director Joe Dante showed some of the potential he would have in later movies with this, his first offering. He of course went on to direct some classics like The Howling, and in Piranha shows some of the tongue-in-cheek humour that would be displayed to better effect in these later more accomplished efforts. That is not to say that Piranha can not stand up on its own merits, because it most certainly can. No, its not the mst brilliant movie in the world and does strangely have few really suspenseful moments, which seems somewhat impossible when you are basically talking about a movie which ought to have rested upon the same ideas as Jaws which was around at the same ...  Read the complete review

Piranha was Joe Dantes first attempt at directing a movie and it shows that he had some potential to go on and become a good director. Made in 1978 the year horror was changed by Halloween and Dawn of the Dead it is stil quite a fun film to watch now and again. The film opens with two people who are hiking, they come across a copmex with a fence around it, they see a swimming pool and decide to climb over the fence and go for a swim. Soon after getting in the pool they disappear, people start to notcie that the two are missing and the father of one hires a private investiagor Maggie McKeown (in the shape of Heather Menzies) to try and find them. When looking around the ...  Read the complete review

This is one of my favourite horror films. Basically a mad scientist has these highly dangerous piranhas in a pool in a secluded research centre. One night two teenagers break in and decide to go for a swim, well it pretty obvious what happens to them. The parents of the dead teenagers employ a private investigator to find them, she follows a trail until she comes across the research facility she knows there are some where in there because she finds there clothes. She suspects they may be in the pool, so she drains it, but by doing so she releases the piranhas into the river network. The piranhas make there way upstream, in their wake they leave a ...  Read the complete review