When two scuba diving students end up missing, the head diving instructor and her new biochemist boyfriend decide to go in search for them. It doesn't take long for the young couple's whereabouts to be discovered, but their bodies have been horribly mangled, and they seem to be the victim of an aquatic animal attack, specifically something that has been inhabiting a sunken freighter near a Caribbean hotel resort. This "something," it turns out, is a new strain of killer piranha, ones who have gained an ability to fly and glide through the air, making them a threat wherever they may be.
If you're reading that synopsis and wondering "Who in the living hell directed this pile of crap?," well that would be one Mr. James Cameron, thank you very much. One of the most successful and heralded directors of all time, this was the man's first real break in cinema, though he might not acknowledge it as such, and Piranha II has a bit of a messy background for that matter. Cameron was originally hired to do special effects, but was then hired as the actual director for the film once the original director (Miller Drake) left the project. And yet after a small amount of time, Cameron himself was fired and replaced by the Italian producer on the movie itself (Piranha II is a largely Italian-based effort). Yet his name is still credited since they were contractually obligated to have an American be cited as the director. Confusing? Absolutely. Thankfully, the Terminator director doesn't seem embarrassed or angered to talk about this project now these days (unlike David Fincher and Alien 3), referring to it as "the best flying piranha film ever made," so that's good to hear.
All of this being said, Piranha II: The Spawning is an absolute abortion of a movie, and no director in the world could make this movie close to good, or even watchable. Roger Corman's presence was sorely needed here since these filmmakers just have no clue about what they're doing here with the small budget they've been handed, and presumably they blew most of it on booking hotels and getting the women in the movie topless or buying them fancy swimsuits. There's some sort of attempt to try and mix in hammy humor too (I can only guess somebody in Italy loved Animal House or films like it while writing the "script"), but it just proceeds to irritate you more than amuse you and ends up making you wish for a quicker death for everyone involved, be it the characters in the film or those writing the comedy. And don't get me started on the piranha, which were rarely seen in the original outside of flashes here and there, but this time around, these are very obviously props, but entry-level props at best. They look incredibly bad, and while they themselves aren't seen a particularly great amount either, their own presence was sorely needed in order to save me from utter boredom, since we don't get any fatalities outside of the opening sequence until about the 45-50 minute mark.
On the plus side, the soundtrack to Piranha II is actually quite decent, and could work well if this were any other film but this one. This was also the first time, at least to my knowledge, that director James Cameron worked with actor Lance Henriksen, who tries the best with what he has as the irritated ex-husband police officer of the aforementioned diving instructor. This idea isn't honestly terrible either, at least when you consider the other amount of inane, crazy garbage out there that exists in the realm of horror, but the execution is just so awfully done, that it is beyond redemption. It might be best to avoid this one unless you're looking to give yourself a headache.
Besides, it can't be the worst movie out there involving killer piranha, can it?
When a resort owner's daughter and her boyfriend go missing, private investigator Maggie McNamara and local Paul Grogan go on a search for her, stumbling across a seemingly abandoned research facility. While snooping around, they unknowingly unleash a new strain of piranha into the river, endangering the lives of everyone nearby.
As it turns out, Piranha II: The Spawning is indeed the lesser of two evils in this case, but I'm suspecting that my mind may change over time. And by "over time," I mean between approximately one day and one week. 1995's Piranha, as you could probably guess, is a remake of the 1978 film of the same name, and like the original, is also produced by B-movie master Roger Corman. For reasons that I'm still not certain of, but can most likely ascribe to boredom, Roger Corman decided that two of his most beloved films produced during the New World Pictures heyday of the 70s and 80s should be remade for Showtime during the 1990s, the other being Humanoids From the Deep. I was actually considering reviewing the latter for this year's countdown as well, as I have quite the fondness its original as well, but legitimately couldn't track the thing down in time, and decided it wasn't worth my time.
Perhaps one may wonder as to why Roger Corman would even bother going forward with a remake of a film he was fairly proud of producing in the first place, and after finishing this effort (a mere eighty minutes long), all I could ask myself was...why indeed? Why bother sit through this, as it does nothing to improve on the original, and in some ways, actually does many things worse than it? True, you get a few recognizable faces here and there (including a very young Mila Kunis), and the blood & gore makeup effects are almost decent enough to be passable, but so much of the film is littered with stock footage of the original, which is inexplicably lazy by any decade's standards. Piranha's script is nearly word for word a copy and paste of the 1978 version as well, doing a remarkable job of into the territory of insulting, and hurting the overall fun factor. The only real difference I could recall was switching the gender of the main scientist who was experimenting on the fish themselves, and that was completely irrelevant. It is also devoid of nearly any and all humor that Joe Dante's original film had, taking itself far too seriously from the very start.
There isn't anything else to say about 1995's Piranha, besides that at least the women are attractive to look at, and the end credits features a god awful grunge/alt-metal band by the name of Uncle Dog Food playing some song about piranha and how they eat you. Ooh, must've taken you guys weeks to write that little ditty. Speaking of the piranha, remember the sound effects of the original film or two when they were attacking? Well, now they sound like dolphins having sex with eagles when they're in a frenzy. Seriously. Unless you're looking for an expensive coaster, or a nice companion piece to something like Hellraiser: Revelations in your "Let's pretend this doesn't exist" value pack, I don't believe you should waste your time.
Tomorrow, the fishes may have their final say with BARRACUDA!
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