ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 3rd
"PIRANHA" released in 1978
Watch the Piranha trailer below!
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After two teenagers are viciously attacked underwater by an unseen creature while skinny dipping at an abandoned military facility, insurance investigator Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is hired to find them. With the aid of local drunk Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) as her guide, the pair come upon the abandoned compound. When Maggie starts to drain the pool, they are attacked by a hagged looking man they identify later as Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy). He frantically explains that the facility is a militarized fish hatchery used for Project Razorteeth - a defunct Vietnam War project engineering a ravenous and prodigious strain of piranha that could endure the cold water of the North Vietnamese rivers and inhibit Viet Cong movement. Realizing that with the dam now open the school of piranhas would have gotten into the river, Maggie, Paul, and Hoak race to warn people. Hoak is soon mortally injured while saving a small boy from a capsized canoe, dying before he can tell Maggie and Paul how to kill the piranha. Desperate, Paul calls the military, who send a team led by Colonel Waxman (Bruce Gordon) and former Razorteeth scientist Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele) with the intention of poisoning the piranhas from upstream. Knowing the army's plan will not succeed, Maggie and Paul devise their own plan and race against time to stop the piranhas before they devour the thousands of tourists at the Lake River Water park and the children at a nearby summer camp!
Maggie McKeown: That guard is still out there.
Paul Grogan: Fine, I need you to distract him.
Maggie McKeown: What for?
Paul Grogan: So I can get away.
Maggie McKeown: So YOU can get away? What about me?
Top: What begins as a missing person case, turns into a struggle for
survival for Paul (Bradford Dillman) and Maggie (Heather Menzies);
Above: Summer camp supervisor Mr. Dumont (Paul Bartel) gets a piranha
right in the face!
Producer Roger Corman was known for producing films that were veiled imitations of more successful movies, called this film "my homage to 'Jaws'". But it still took a further three years to raise the $660,000 needed to make the film, by which time Jaws 2 (1978) had already been made. Proceeding nevertheless, Piranha had some documented production problems including last-minute cast changes, underwater cameras that kept breaking down, union woes (apparently the extras were only paid $5 a day and given a box lunch), and unusable second unit footage. After Peter Fonda turned down the role, Eric Braeden was cast as Paul Grogan, but he soon pulled out to pursue another project (he had already shot some underwater swimming footage which is used in the film). Braeden's replacement, Bradford Dillman was originally unhappy with his character's two-dimensional nature, and asked writer John Sayles why his character was so thin. Sayles responded that Roger Corman regularly did not use good actors in his film, so he deliberately didn't elaborate on characters. But since Dillman was a "real" actor, he was more than happy to enhance his character's depth.
Whitney: The piranhas...
Buck Gardner: What about the goddamn piranhas?
Whitney: They're eating the guests, sir.
Top: While escaping on the raft, Dr Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy)
explains to Paul and Maggie about the piranhas; Above: Counselor
Betsy (Belinda Balaski) is dragged away to her watery death!
Filmed at The Aquarena Springs and Resort theme park in San Marcos Springs, Texas, Piranha would be the first solo directing credit for Joe Dante (his first film, Hollywood Boulevard, Dante co-directed with Allan Arkush). Rick Baker was originally tapped to provide the make-up effects but recommended the then 17-year-old Rob Bottin instead. This movie was one of the first efforts for effects and makeup artists Bottin and Phil Tippett, and had a budget of $50,000 to create the titular characters (mostly by attaching rubber puppet fish to sticks and moving them about!). Filming for Belinda Balaski's (playing camp supervisor, Betsy) death scene was shot in a pool with thirty fake piranha being attached to Balaski's body with gaffer's tape and a bunch of crew members pulled her into the deep end of the pool with ropes to make it look like her character was sinking into the water. However, Roger Corman demanded a re-shoot of Balaski's death scene because he thought the first version didn't have enough blood in it!
TRIVIA: The piranha were done by attaching rubber puppet fish to sticks.
TRIVIA: A "bobbing corpse" that appears in the climactic piranha attack was modeled after Rob Bottin.
Top: Rob Bottin applies blood effects; Above: The cast with
director Joe Dante (second from right)
With Piranha's release so close to Jaws 2, Universal Pictures had considered an injunction against the film for spoofing Jaws. However, Steven Spielberg saw the movie in advance and loved it and convinced Universal to drop the lawsuit (Speilberg would later produce five films with Joe Dante; Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Innerspace (1987) and Small Soldiers (1998)). Piranha would go to become one of New World Pictures' biggest hits, making over $16 million at the box office! Piranha was followed by a sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning, marking the directorial debut of Avatar director James Cameron, and two remakes; Piranha (1995) was a direct to television movie starring William Katt and Alexandra Paul (produced by Roger Corman and even used footage from the original movie!), and Piranha 3-D (2010), directed by Alexandre Aja, fresh off a previous remake, The Hills Have Eyes (2008).
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 72%
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