|
On
a bright, moonlit night, somewhere in the
backwoods of east Texas, two back-packers
trying to find the river that leads to
Lost River Lake instead find themselves
hopelessly lost. Stumbling upon what looks
like an abandoned factory in the middle of
nowhere, their curiosity gets the better
of them. Ignoring the No Trespassing
signs, they crawl through the fence, and
aside from a few derelict buildings, find
a large pool filled with water. After a
long hot day of hiking, they decide to do
a little skinny-dipping, and after some
splashing and general horseplay, it
quickly becomes quite obvious that they aren't
alone in the water. The boy accuses the
girl of biting him -- but she's all the
way over in the deep end. Whatever bit
him, bites him again, and again, and as he
screams a warning to the girl to get out
of the pool, the water around him comes to
a bloody boil as he's sucked beneath the
surface. The girl almost makes it out, but
the unseen attacker starts shredding her,
too, and her shrieks are quietly drowned
out. And as the roiling waters quietly
simmer and settle, we ominously pan over
to one of the buildings, where a door
slides open, and we spy someone
silhouetted in the light...
Time
passes and it turns out one of the missing
teens was in some trouble with the law,
and after missing his court date, the
bondsmen (Richard Deacon)
who posted his bail needs to find him. All of
his other skip-tracers must have been
busy, so he winds up sending the
addle-brained and disaster-prone Maggie
McKeown (Heather Menzies) to
round them up and bring them back. Her
investigation leads to the cabin of one Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman)
-- who after losing his job, and his wife,
has become a bit of a drunken and bitter
recluse. The only bright spot in his world
is his young daughter, Suzie (Shannon
Collins), whose currently at a
summer-camp down the river a spell.
Denying ever seeing the missing hikers, he
says they probably drowned in the river
and the bodies are hung up in the dam.
Both teens were good swimmers, so McKeown
keeps pressing him for some possible
hideouts -- and finally gets some
information about an old fish-hatchery up
the mountain that the army took over for
awhile before abandoning it. (Uh-oh.)
McKeown wants him to show her the way, but
he wants no part of it and tells her to
get lost. Now, the reason Grogan is a
little bitter over all this is simple: It
was the EPA that shut down the smelting
plant he worked for because they were
poisoning the water, and all the land was
turned over to the army very cheaply. And
now that same land has been sold to a
developer who built the dam to create the
new Lost River Lake Resort. So while
Grogan lost everything, some fat-cats got
a little fatter.
One
movie-cliché induced jump-cut later,
McKeown is dragging him up the mountain
where they break into the old hatchery.
Near the pool, they find the missing
girl's locket, and when looking in one of
the buildings find two discarded
back-packs. They also find a strange
laboratory filled with hideous things
preserved in dozens of jars -- and a few
more live specimens that God had not
intended for this Earth. Creeped out,
Grogan wants to leave, but McKeown finds
the control-box to drain the pool and
flips the switch, wanting to make sure
there aren't any bodies at the bottom of
it. Suddenly, a crazed man bursts into the
lab (Kevin McCarthy). He
attacks them, but seems more interested in
the drainage switch than with them. As
they struggle, he almost gets the switched
turned back off before getting knocked out
-- and the water drains away into the
nearby river. The pool emptied, they find
a few bones caught in the grating.
Thinking they have a murderer on their
hands, they hear McKeown's jeep start-up
and realize the kook who attacked them
must have woken up -- and is stealing
their ride. But he doesn't get very far
before blacking out and totals the jeep.
Hauling
him to Grogan's cabin, the injured man
raves about something with
"razor-teeth" and warns
"They breed like flies" and
bemoans "You let them out!" --
and by doing so, "You've doomed us
all..."
*
* * *
A
person can only scratch one's head and
wonder why it took so long for film
exploitationeer Roger Corman to try and
cash-in on the phenomenal financial
success of JAWS.
The man who slapped Carnosaur together to beat
Jurassic Park
out of the box-office gate waited almost three years
before ripping off Bruce and the boys over
at Universal. But you have to remember,
during the build up to the summer of 1978,
audiences were waiting with baited breath
to be scared out of the water again with
the much anticipated premiere of JAWS
2,
and old Roger finally got a financial itch
that he just had to scratch.
Enter
producers Jeff
Schechtman and Chako van Leeuwen, who had
a story by Richard Robinson about a school
of piranhas being set loose in a river
that terrorized the local inhabitants.
Seeing the potential for fresh-water
scares, Corman agreed to finance the
picture through New
World
and turned the production over to two of
his fledgling filmmakers: Jon Davison and
Joe Dante.
Dante's
notorious film career began when he
cobbled together The
Movie Orgy by splicing scenes from
hundreds of old serials, drug-scare
propaganda pieces and military hygiene
films. Coming in at a staggering seven
hours, the end result proved impressive
enough that the Schlitz Brewing Company
sponsored a college tour -- once it was
cut down to a more manageable four hours,
and Dante took his show on the road. It
was childhood friend Davison who got him a
job at New World editing together
trailers, and it was Davison who bet
Corman that if given a chance, his old
friend would be a great director. Corman
gave him one week and $500, and the result
was Hollywood
Boulevard -- that skewered and
poked fun at the way New World made their
pictures. Liking what he saw on so little
an investment, Corman tabbed Dante to
direct his next picture -- Piranha.
Pre-production
commenced, and the film ran it into it's
first snag: Saddled
with a script that required a forest fire
to cause a bear to chase the people into
the water to get eaten, the decision was
made to scrap it and start over. Using a
crowbar, Corman ponied up $10000 for first
time screenwriter John Sayles for a little
punch-up -- and the famed independent
filmmaker would go on to pen such lurid
fare as The
Howling,
Battle
Beyond the Stars
and Alligator
before
moving on to more higher aspirations.
With the script set, filming was set to
commence, but Corman grew a little antsy
over the film's budget and abruptly pulled
the plug. Apparently
skewered before it even began, Piranha
was saved when United Artists offered to
co-finance the picture for the foreign
distribution rights. They would put
$400000 and New
World
was supposed to match it. But as
production was set to begin again, Corman
cut his half in half, reducing the
budget by a fourth. Nearly scuttled again,
scrambling madly, producer Davison managed
to scrounge up some money to almost make
up the difference. Still, Corman wasn't
sold on the F/X and demanded to see a reel
of the piranha in action. With the help of
effects-men Jon Berg, Phil Tippet and Rob
Bottin -- all fresh-off of working on Star
Wars,
they slapped together some underwater
carnage -- including the fish nibbling on
some naked breasts, and screened it for
the executive producer. Even without the
breasts, Corman was sold. And as filming finally
commenced in earnest, his only edict was
that they had to have at least one piranha
attack per reel -- and to pile on as much
gore as possible...
Back
in the cabin, thinking the raving man is a
lunatic as well as a killer, they need to
turn him over to the proper authorities.
Having no phone and no car -- I assume
this was lost in the divorce settlement --
the only option left is to load him up on
an old-fashioned log-raft and ferry him
into town. Grogan says he built it with
his daughter after reading her Huck
Finn,
but it's never been field-tested because
she's terrified of the water. With that,
the uneasy crew shove off into the
current. Meanwhile, whatever McKeown
unwittingly let out of the pool moves on
down the river ahead of them and shreds an
old man's legs that were dangling from the
dock, killing him, and then attacks a
father and son in a canoe.
While
following
the trail of bodies, the kook finally
comes clean. His name is Dr. Robert Hoak
and he was leading scientist for a
Top-Secret government project called
Operation: Razor-Tooth. Hoak's goal was to
destroy the North Vietnamese river system
by introducing a strain of piranha that
would wreak havoc on the local ecology.
But the war ended before they were ready,
and the project was abandoned. Most of the
fish were poisoned, but Hoak did his job
too well, some of them survived, and he's
been babysitting them ever since -- until
they came along. Grogan doesn't buy it --
piranhas are tropical and could never
survive in the colder climates. But that's
where Hoak's experiments came in: He's
built a bigger and better and more
intelligent fish -- and now these lethal
eating-machines are no longer contained,
so nothing can stop them. The mounting
evidence proves Hoak is telling the truth:
They spy an overturned canoe with a boy
clinging to the top. Hoak dives in to save
him, and while his creation turns on and
eats him, he manages to get the boy to
safety. They pull Hoak onto the
raft behind him, but he's dead. And all the blood
soon saturates the ropes holding the raft
together and the piranha start to tear it
apart. With the raft slowly disintegrating
beneath them, they paddle for shore and
make it in time -- barely. Once ashore, an
air-horn sounds off, and Grogan freaks. He
knows what it means -- the dam is about to
open the floodgates. The piranha can still
be stopped if the dam remains closed.
Again, Grogan barely makes it in time. The
dam remains closed.
Miraculously
-- a little too miraculously for Grogan,
the military answers their call and sweeps
in to clean up. Conferring with a Col.
Waxman (Bruce Gordon) and
Hoak's partner, Dr. Mengers (Barbara
Steele), they ignore Grogan's
warnings that there's a small stream back
up river that circumnavigates the dam, and
assures them that the danger is passed --
Mengers claims the fish aren't smart
enough to backtrack like that. They would
also appreciate it if they'd keep the
whole incident a secret, but Grogan thinks
they need to warn everyone downstream --
including the summer camp where his
daughter is, and the new Lost River Lake Resort
that is due for a gala opening the
following morning. Something stinks about
the whole set-up and they ask to leave,
but Waxman won't let them and confines
them to a tent under armed guard. Turns
out Waxman was behind the shady land deals, and is a silent
partner in the new Lost River Lake enterprise, and
he won't let
a few killer-fish jeopardize his financial
venture -- no matter how many bodies they
pile up, or in this case, devour.
It
was around this point that I realized a
huge topographical error made by the
script. Shouldn't Lost River Lake be on
the upstream side of the dam?
E'yup. The whole thing is ass-backwards.
Back to the review...
The
always resourceful McKeown engineers their
escape by flashing the guard -- with
someone else's breasts (Menzies
backed out of the nude scene and used a
double), but when
they find the nearest payphone, Grogan's
reputation for drunk-and-disorderly
proceeds him and Dutton (Paul
Bartel), the head camp-counselor,
tells him to sober-up and sleep it off.
The Sheriff doesn't believe them either.
Tipped off by Waxman that it's all a hoax,
he throws them both in jail until the
military can come and pick them up in the
morning. But McKeown comes through again,
and using a few tips she picked-up from
some bail-jumpers, the jailbreak is on.
The
next morning, at the summer-camp,
all the campers are in the water -- except
for the fearful Suzie. In collusion with a
couple of the younger counselors, Betsy
and Laura (Belinda Belaski and
Melody Thomas), she hides from the
tyrannical Dutton under a canoe and
escapes the dreaded swimming competition.
While Betsy and Laura float around in an
innertube, encouraging the swimmers on,
the piranha swarm and attack. As the water
turns red, the shrieking and screaming
children thrash toward shore. To his
credit, the wounded Dutton does his best
to pull the survivors out of the water,
but the two girls are stuck out on the
tube in the middle of the river. Suzie
tries to come to their rescue. Dragging an
inflatable raft into the water, she
paddles out in time to save Laura, but
Betsy doesn't make it and is dragged to
her doom.
Having
successfully escaped from the jail, Grogan
and McKeown arrive on scene. While he
heads to the water to help the kids, he
tells her to call and warn the resort. She
gets through to Gardener (Dick
Miller), the owner, but he's been
tipped off by his buddy Waxman. Gardener hangs up, and hands Waxman
and Mengers a drink. The Grand-Opening of
Lost River Lake Resort is on, and hundreds of
people make their way into the water --
all of them paying customers.
After
a brief reunion with Suzie, and making
sure medical help is on the way, Grogan
and McKeown head on to Lost River Lake to get
everybody out of the water. But they're
already too late. The ferocious fish first
take out a few scuba-divers, and then go
after some water-skiers. (And I
really think somebody snuck a peek at the
script to JAWS
2.)
These appetizers out of the way, the fish
head for the main course swimming around
the beach. Soon, the massacre is on. As
the water fills up with blood and body
parts, the panicked crowd tries to get out
anyway they can -- including crawling onto
the floating barge where Waxman and
Mengers were enjoying those drinks. The
barge is soon overloaded and threatens to
cap-size. Waxman tries to knock several
people off to lighten the load, but winds
up in the water where he is promptly
eaten.
Arriving
too late to warn them, Grogan and McKeown
wade through the wailing and the wounded
and steal a boat. Grogan has a plan. The
only thing in-between the piranha and the
open ocean is the smelting plant he used
to work for. Mankind's last hope rests on if they
can get some valves turned on and release
some toxic sludge to poison the fish --
yes, they're going to pollute the problem
to death. (Somewhere, I'm sure, an
Indian is crying.) To complicate
matters even more, the man-made flood to
create the lake has submerged the majority
of the plant. Tethering himself to the
boat, Grogan tells McKeown to make a slow
count to 100 -- that's how long he can
hold his breath -- and then gun the
engine, hopefully pulling him to safety
after the task is done. Into the water he
goes, and swims his way into the
waste-treatment plant below -- where by
some miracle, the valves aren't completely
rusted shut but begrudgingly crank open.
As he slowly cranks, the piranha catch up
and rip into his flesh. Above, McKeown
continues the countdown, while below a
pipe starts spewing out a noxious cloud.
And after the longest 100 seconds in
screen history, the throttle is thrown,
violently pulling Grogan away from the
predators. After going a safe distance,
McKeown tries to reel him in, but the rope
has been severed. Fearing she's lost him,
a bloodied hand breaks the surface.
Back
at the besieged Lost River Lake, military and
civilian medical personnel have arrived
and are tending to the wounded. The media
have also arrived, and one of the
reporters corners Dr. Mengers and asks if
the threat is over. The doctor puts on a
Cheshire smile and assures the danger has
passed, and even if the poison missed a few
fish, they'll never survive in the salt
water of the ocean. Of course, we know
better, and with this being the 1970s...We
cut to the Gulf of Mexico and hear the
interview wrap-up over some beach-bunny's
radio...And as we pan out to the water --
that quickly turns blood-red, we leave the
film with the ominous sounds of the
swarming fish.
The
End
At
it's heart, Piranha
is nothing more than a good old-fashioned
monster movie -- and should be celebrated
as such. And like a lot of those movies, a
lot depended on how effective the monsters
were. Here, after the stop-motion method
was scrapped due to budgetary constraints,
the piranha were realized by articulated
rubber mock-ups puppeteer'd by Tippet and
Berg. Mostly filmed dry for wet -- because
the chlorine in the pool dissolved them
too quickly -- the F/X, for the most part,
pass muster. And when combined with
Bottin's bloody prosthetics and make-up
effects, the results are quite remarkable.
Also,
in case you wondering, the sound of the
swarming fish was actually a chorus of
distorted dental drills.
On
top of the several false starts in making Piranha,
the production met and overcame many other
challenges to get the film on screen. Cast
defections, technical problems and a
terminal lack of budget were just the tip
of the iceberg. Filmed in about 30 days,
the first ten were spent in pre-production
at USC's Olympic swimming pool to get all
the underwater shots of the piranha
attacks. And after filling the pool with
gallons and gallons of Karo-syrup, fake
foliage, and strangling mono-filament,
a wild "biological outbreak" occurred -- and
after filming wrapped, the pool had to be
drained and the concrete sandblasted off
to kill the, as of yet, unidentified
micro-organism. The other twenty days were
spent on location in San Marcos, Texas,
using the Aquarena Springs resort
as a substitute for Lost River Lake. Filming in
early March, the water was freezing and
shooting had to be stopped several times
as the local volunteers started turning
blue. Somehow, despite all of this, they
persevered and brought the film in on
time. Every
dime was spent, and stretched as far as it
would go, and I think the end results more
than speak for themselves.
If
you can, track down the
20th Anniversary Edition on DVD. It features a ton
of bonus material, including a
reproduction of the film's press-kit,
and a hilarious
commentary by Davison and Dante about
the trials and tribulations of bringing Piranha
to the screen that's worth the price
alone. And basically, the whole crew got
back together again a few years later
and did The
Howling
-- yet another film that really needs to
be reviewed around here. And I implore
all of them to reunite and start making
monster movies again.
When
Piranha
was released it broke all kinds of New
World box-office records, and Corman made
over 50 million off his $200000
investment. Drawing the wrath of Universal
for cashing in on their franchise, they
moved to enjoin the picture until Steven
Spielberg saw it and told them to lighten
up. Corman wasn't done making money on it
yet, either. When the film was remade for Showtime
in the mid-90's, they only re-shot the
actors and used all the piranha footage
from the old movie. Rumor also has it that
a remake involving some giant pre-historic
piranha is due out in 2008.
Despite
it's harrowing trek to even get to an
audience, Piranha
overcame the odds and overachieves to
delivers the goods -- thanks to all the
talent involved. Personally, I found it to
be an absolute riot: An old-fashioned
thrill ride that makes no bones about what
it is, or what it's trying to be. It is
what it is, and I love it -- and end in the end,
it was a helluva lot more entertaining
than JAWS
2.
|
