"Piranha 3D"(2010)d/Alexandre Aja

As you might be able to guess, tonight's review is a good time: gallons of geysering stage blood, ample prosthetic Nicotero piranha bites, and bobbling d cup bikini dumplings as far as the eye can see,served up salaciously by genre director, Alexandre Aja, the man responsible for Haute Tension(2003) and the Hills Have Eyes remake; a veritable seven course meal of mayhem for any self-respecting horror fanatic to wrap his or her 3D glasses around.Despite all the dementedly delectable factors in place here, I still expected a lot more from Aja at this stage of the game, and I somehow managed to come away from this remake feeling kinda flat and disappointed.Judging by the overwhelming positivity towards this feature on the webs, and upcoming sequel from Dimension Pictures, my gut and I might just be alone on this one over here... still, I gotta call 'em like I see 'em.

"Motorboat goes in the lake...prehistoric piranhas in the lake... you go in the motorboat...farewell and adieu, to you fair Spanish ladieeeeees..."
A small earthquake in Arizona causes a split in the lake bottom underneath Lake Victoria, which frees up multitudes of angry prehistoric ancestors to modern day piranhas that have been evolving the past two million years, undetected in an underground cavern below.Feeling more than a little peckish after their prolonged nap, they make a quick snack out of fisherman Matt Boyd(Richard Dreyfuss) after the whirlpool pulls him into the water.With an impending spring break drawing twenty thousand partying half-naked teenagers to the small surrounding community, there'll be no shortage of fish food, either.Enter Jake(Steven R. McQueen),a likeable kid who's trying to juggle babysitting his kid brother and sister, reunite with former flame, Kelly(Jessica Szohr), and scout locations for Wild, Wild Girls producer Derrick Jones(Jerry O'Connell)and his travelling entourage of nude water nymphs, while keeping the peace with his mother, Julie(Elisabeth Shue), who also happens to be the town sheriff.While Jake parties it up on the Barracuda, Derrick's boat, with Kelly, Danni, and Crystal, and his two young siblings unwittingly strand themselves on a sandbar, his mother inspects the newly formed fissure with a team of seismologists who end up a scuba tank Smörgåsbord for the flesh-hungry fish.Novak, the lone survivor, and Julie rush one of the specimens to Mr. Goodman(Christopher Lloyd),a marine biologist-turned-pet store owner, who identifies the uniquely dentified predators from a fossil and warns of the bloodbath of epic proportions that just might ensue, if we're lucky enough.

"Aren't you Jim from 'Taxi'?"
Before too long, tits and asses meet toothy fishes, and all Hell breaks loose on the lake.A wet t-shirt contest(hosted by none other than Eli Roth)on a floating stage is interrupted by thousands of piranhas,and despite the best rescue efforts of Julie's deputies, the water soon turns blood red and is littered with random, floating body parts.The Barracuda's glass bottom(used for some really choice underwater shots of aqua-lesbianism earlier in the day)smashes on the rocks after Jake rescues his siblings from the tiny island,and Derrick finds himself eaten from the waist down(one piranha burps his dick out only to have another one partially devour it!).His lens candy also ends up on the menu, with disembodied silicone tit-bags floating to the lake bottom(!!).The sheriff and Novak arrive via motorboat to rescue the remaining survivors while a rope-tied Jake uses flares and propane tanks on the sinking yacht to eradicate the majority of piranhas Bradford Dillman-style.Goodman interrupts the premature celebration to inform Julie that the fish she brought him earlier was merely a juvenile.Before anyone can question the adults whereabouts out loud,a huge piranha jumps out of the water, knocking Novak off the boat.Roll credits.

Derrick Jones(Jerry O'Connell)gets stripped to his bones.
Among the impressive ensemble cast that includes Dreyfuss(parodying his character in Jaws, which the original movie ripped off), Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd, and Jerry O'Connell, are porn queens Gianna Michaels, Ashlynn Brooke, and Riley Steele, on board to be ravaged by cgi fish instead of the usual(dicks).As much as I hate cgi anything, some of it doesn't look bad here, and KNB once again goes above and beyond for inventive splatter effects as to be expected.The cinematography is pretty lush for a b-movie remake of a b-movie, though choppy editing allows a few major characters to vanish from the storyline without an explanation for anybody who might have been paying attention to such things.Still, this is enjoyable, emptyheaded fun that doesn't take itself very seriously, and you'll probably like it, as I did.With all the factors in place the way they are here, it'd be hard for anyone to foul it up to the point of mediocrity, the way Aja almost does.Two big ones on the scale.

A hapless bimbo's grill gets swum out of like a ceramic aquarium decoration.

Piranha Part 2: The Spawning(1981)d/James Cameron

Take it from ol' B.W.,even the biggest Hollywood hotshot directors have movies under their belts they'd like to forget.Take James Cameron,for example.Sure,he's responsible for big budget spectacles like Aliens,True Lies,The Terminator,and Titanic,but his humble beginnings include Galaxy of Terror(1981) and this particular ridiculous piece of dogshit.Don't get me wrong,I have fond memories of watching it in the rental days,and there are enough elements in place that it manages to entertain despite its shortcomings,but let's not pull punches here:This movie sucks all kinds o' bloated pungent donkey balls.So much so that it's a minor miracle that Cameron went on to have the career he has,I know if I was hiring a director for MY motion picture and he walked in with a nice professional-looking resume that had this movie on it,I'd second guess myself over hiring the bucciaolo to hold my boom microphone.That said,let's reflect on the positive aspects of the film:Lance Henriksen in his pre-leather wallet days,Italian goremeister Gianetto De Rossi admirably assassinates several characters(we won't break his balls about the carnivorous flying fish effects just yet),genre vet Stelvio Cipriani's excellent film score,and of course, Leslie Graves' underutilized D cup gashingas hidden in an eighties-tastic half shirt.If she broke those puppies out,we'd be looking at a different review,my friends.

Even Chief Kimbrough(Lance Henriksen)smirks at the idea of flying piranha hybrids.
At the outset two divers decide to have themselves an aqua-fuck next to the sunken remains of a ship,before they're torn to pieces by hundreds of unseen predators.Their bodies are discovered by a professional scuba instructor and single mom named Anne(Tricia O'Neill)while on a dive with a group of tourists.One of her students,a herman named Tyler Sherman(Steve Marachuk)has a fire down below for her,but her ex-husband happens to be the island's own police chief Yarbrough(Lance Henriksen) investigating the mysterious dual demise in the murky depths,and keeping his former partner on a short leash.Meanwhile,her son scores himself a job as first mate on a pleasure boat for a stuffy old snob who doesn't know his own prick from pumpkin butter about boating,and... AND... his bangin' daughter who's got bountiful busoms just a-burstin' out all over the freakin' place.It's gonna be a good summer,as DeNiro once said in a much better movie.Anne convinces Tyler to break into the morgue to take photographs of the dead bodies,and he obliges,figuring the stunt will score him some easy wizard's sleeve from the curious milf.A cleaning lady bursts in on their hijinks and chases them,before(here comes the "Holy Saint Xenobius" moment,wait for it!) a toothy flying fish flies out of a gaping wound in the corpse's midsection and chews the black woman's throat out before smashing out a window and flying off(!!!).Yeah,I'm rubbing my eyes over here,too.

This diver's got a loverly smile,courtesy of makeup wiz Gianetto "Zombi 2" De Rossi.
Yarbrough discovers his ex-wife's credit card at the crime scene the next day,and when he shows up to question her,she's sleeping off a sympathy fuck with Tyler.Meanwhile,two pirate-esque bimbos cheat a poor retarded stuttering resort chef out of a box of supplies before the flying death-dealers make a meal out of them.Anne's son sneaks off with the pillow chested crewmate in a rowboat,and Tyler comes clean about really being a genetic engineer staying at the resort to try and monitor a lost cannister of hybrid piranha/flying fish he'd helped develop.And just in time for the resort's annual fish-stravaganza,where guests call the fish from the ocean's surf by tiki torch in the moonlight.The hotel manager,Raoul,is more concerned with a succesful party than the impending bloody decimation of his tourists.Sniff,sniff,I smell the Jaws formula in here somewhere.The police chief sets out in his chopper to look for his fleshhound son and his concubine,and Anne and Tyler dive to the wreckage to set off explosive charges to rid the island of its winged threat once and for all.The mutant fish fly out of the water and turn the tables on the hotel guests,flapping,biting,and squeaking like bats in the process.Tyler eats carnivorous mutant death at the jaws of his own aquatic Frankenstein-esque creations,but Anne places the charges and after Yarbrough inexplicably crashes his own chopper into the ocean(?),he scores a boat and saves his ex-wife and the two kids just in time for a giant underwater trademark Cameron explosion,saving the day.Sound ridiculous?It is.It really is.

Smoking ganja would prove fruitless for this poor bastard.
In defense of De Rossi,always one of my favorite makeup artists,his gore is top-notch as always.His boxy-looking "fish" which clunk clumsily through the air like Science Patrol spaceships from the old Ultraman television series and resemble winged trout with choppers,can't really be blamed on him.Look at the assinine script he was given to work with,ferchrissakes.Producer Ovidio G. Assonitis allegedly gave Cameron no freedom,only allowing the director to film the movie,cutting it himself,and then re-cutting it when he discovered Cameron trying to edit it himself.Cameron,when asked about the film,smirks "I believe 'The Spawning' was the finest flying piranha movie ever made."Whether you consider the guy a talented director or a blowjob hack who made good,you have to admit he's got a sense of humour.Director of the original 1978 movie,Joe Dante's gotta wince when this movie comes up.This entry flaps and squeaks its way to a scale rating of an embarrasing:

Insert your obligatory "head" joke here.

Killer Fish(1978)d/Antonio Margheriti

Dire straits over here,droogies.My dvd drive is in the midst of a total dump,which puts a damper on culling screenshots for the very reviews you read here.The only thing I can liken it to,is watching a movie after overdosing on quaaludes.If you try and speed the playback up,it skips ahead to the end of the disc.As of right now,playing certain dvds is hit and miss,so what I can play I'll review until I can replace the whole computer.Eh,whattayagonndo? Antonio Margheriti was another Italian director whose body of genre work was enormous,from horror(Cannibal Apocalypse,Flesh for Frankenstein,Virgin of Nuremberg)to gialli(Naked You Die,Seven Deaths in the Cats Eye),and everything in between(Hercules Against Karate,The Last Hunter).This 1978 Margheriti vehicle incorporates elements of all his genre films,while avoiding classification in any of them,really.As such,it remains a rip-roaring good time,helped along by an interesting cast,which includes Lee "Six Million Dollar Man" Majors,Karen Black,James Franciscus,former Houston Oiler quarterback Dan Pastorini,and is topped off by a fabulous non-performance by model-turned-actress(?) Margaux Hemingway,long before Keanu Reeves first froze in front of a camera for a paycheck.And did I mention piranhas?

A daring jewel heist with an exploding emerald mine power plant as the backdrop.Check.
High roller,Paul Diller(James Franciscus)hires a group of jewel thieves,headed by Lasky(Lee Majors)and Diller's own girlfriend Kate(Karen Black), to stage a heist at a power plant outside an emerald mine in Brazil.The thieves set off multiple explosions inside the plant to divert the security guards while they slip in,in wet suits,and slip out with a fortune in gems.To avoid attention,they sink the stolen jewels in a waterproof box at the bottom of a local reservoir,to be retrieved in two months when the heat dies down.Diller,knowing the nature of his motley crew,has stocked the reservoir in advance with fifty pairs of man-eating red bellied piranha,which by now number in the tens of thousands,to ensure that none of the thieves lift the box from the water before the designated date.You know,I'll just bet some of the thieves are gonna get greedy and sneakily try and dive for the stones themselves,and instead,get the flesh stripped off their bones in seconds like the proverbial cow who's always stumbling into the Amazon River.In the meantime,an overweight effeminate photographer and his toothy subject(Hemingway) arrive at the same resort for a fashion shoot.Lasky throws on some clothes that would make a pimp blush,repeatedly lays his famous Bionic Man squint on her(what Majors calls "acting"), and successfully beds the model,to the disgust of Kate,who's rethinking her relationship with the unscrupulous Diller,that is,until he agrees to fish the gems out of the reservoir with her.A couple of men eaten alive?Nevermind all that.

Dan Pastorini saw better days facing the Steel Curtain at Three Rivers Stadium,that's for sure.
In the climactic finale,all the remaining players wind up on a sinking boat,in a lake filled with Diller's piranha when the dam breaks,leading to the little bastards gnawing on anyone who has the misfortune of contacting the water,including the rotund photographer,who seriously gets eaten for what seems like five onscreen minutes.They're swimming in and out of his cellulite,biting his worn out intestinal tract,he's flailing and mincing,splashing and bleeding.Good show,Antonio.It's no wonder that when Diller makes off with the stones AND the only life raft,the piranha only nibble at Lasky when he swims after him through the deadly waters,as,after all,too much ham will clog even the toughest fishy digestive system.So does Diller get away with the booty?Does Lasky blag them AND endure the company of the chicklet-toothed Gabrielle?Or does he dump the airhead in favour of crooked faced Kate and her annoying flesh-toned nylons?Can ANYONE endure Lasky's poor sense of dress and trademark quizzical tv-squint?Or do the piranha ignore the health warnings and chow down on every last piece of ham involved?Snag yourself a copy on DVD and find out for yourself!

Lee Majors should have been nominated for an Oscar,keeping a straight face while wearing a hat like this like this.
Margheriti's work,though uneven at times,never fails to entertain me.I used to watch this one on a regular basis on HBO in the black pirate cable box days,so revisiting it brought me back to that glorious era for a little while.Karen Black always puts on a game face,even if it IS a bit on the crooked side,while I'm still scratching my head as to how Majors and Hemingway ever made it to the big screen.Lee's got the squint,Margeaux has..well,even less than that.Her sister was great in Star 80,though she could have boosted her implants a smidgeon to get into Stratten territory(I had the Playboys growing up,so I fancy myself something of an expert on her pillowy dimensions!).You'll catch genre vet Anthony Steffen and tv's Gary Collins in the extras if you squint hard enough.There's enough grue to satisfy the gorenophiles,enough espionage to sate the action fans,and the Brazilian scenery isn't half bad either.The deAngelis brothers pile on the disco in the soundtrack,as is expected.Though it pales in comparison to fare like Cannibal Apocalypse or Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye,it will manage to keep you amused,and if I'm wrong,let's remember that I'm NEVER wrong.Even when I'm wrong.Which is never,cos I never am(piss poor cult movie bloggers trivia scores aside!)!Score this one:

These piranhas get bloated,munching on a diet of hammy actors.