Tag Aquatic Monsters

• AKA:


• Director: John Gulager


• Writer: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan, Joel Soisson, Peter Goldfinger (characters), Josh Stolberg (characters)


• Starring: Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, Katrina Bowden, Jean-Luc Bilodeau


• Run Time: 83 mins

Double the action. Double the terror. Double the D’s.

Marine biology student Maddy returns home to find that her stepfather, Chet, has turned the friendly water park that they both inherited from their late mother into a seedy resort called Big Wet which features strippers as lifeguards, wet t-shirt contests and topless pools. In order to provide cheap water for the park, Chet illegally drilled into an underwater lake. Unfortunately for everyone, the underwater lake is home to the prehistoric piranha which attacked nearby Lake Victoria. On the opening day of Big Wet, the piranhas swim up the drilling pipes and into the pools.

Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3-D was one of the highlights of 2010: a delightfully gratuitous middle-fingered salute to the bastions of cinematic good taste with its unhealthy array of fishy violence, a year’s supply of fake blood in just one shoot, more boobs than a porn convention, not to mention a strong cast who weren’t afraid to send themselves up and a story which finely balanced itself between parody and serious. A definitive B-movie with a big budget and even bigger promotional juggernaut behind it, Piranha 3-D was the rare instance where everything seemed to align perfectly for the ultimate success story against all of the odds. With a strong box office performance, even better DVD/Blu-Ray sales and more importantly, pretty resounding critical acclaim, the film was a shoe-in to receive a sequel.

Only Alexandre Aja wouldn’t be back at the helm and, leaving with him that real sense of perverse violence. If you’ve seen any of his serious horror films, then you’ll know that he can deliver the grim and the intense in equal measure and for all of its cartoon comedy and overblown excess, Piranha 3-D still had a warped sense of the extreme flowing beneath where you knew that you shouldn’t laugh and smile at the violence and gore but it was a nervous laugh because of the underlying cruelty. And that was why Piranha 3-D worked better than it had any right to do.

John Gulager, fresh off the Feast trilogy, was handed the reins to direct this sequel and if you’re familiar with those films, specifically the two junky sequels, then you’ll know exactly the sort of direction that Piranha 3DD is heading. Going into overdrive with the absurdity and ridiculousness, Piranha 3DD is quite possibly one of the worst sequels of all time and easily one of the biggest disappointments of the year. How hard was it for Gulager to mess up the key ingredients that made the original work?

Virtually a lower budget, scaling down of the original, the film’s first mistake is confining the bulk of its action to a small, self-contained water park as opposed to the rivers and lakes of the original. Not only does this lead to incredulous plot devices of how the piranha manage to infiltrate the park in the first place, but it shortens the life span of any tension that may come from the attack scenes. Having piranha attack a flotilla of partying teenagers in a deep-water lake is one thing – having them swim around in small, man-made ankle-deep pools is just not scary in the slightest.

The film barely comes home with a time of eighty-three minutes as well, a disgrace when you consider that there are ten minutes of outtakes and bloopers tagged on to an overlong credits sequence. With such a short running time, you’d think that the rest of the film would go at it like a bull in a china shop to make sure not a second is wasted but there’s plenty of filler throughout. I think it’s simply a case that someone had a couple of clever ideas about the piranha in a water park and then built up an entire film around them.

The main problem with Piranha 3DD is that it tries way too hard to be hilarious and outrageous. In trying to out-do the original’s tongue-in-cheek approach, Gulager is guilty of making throwaway moments a major deal. Take for instance Jerry O’Connell’s severed penis from the original, a scene which provoked laughter (and a great deal of seat-shuffling and leg crossing from the male audience) and terror at the same time. That scene is rehashed here with more focus on the deadpan and comedy instead of the horror of male castration, with the resultant scene providing one of the  worst lines of all time. The majority of the film’s comedy just falls flat on its face because it is too stupid to laugh at – funny to drunken frat boys maybe, not to anyone else watching. Piranha 3DD almost turns into a parody, something that the original was always keen to keep away at arm’s length.

There is a well-cast line-up of characters to bring life to this story though. Christopher Lloyd and Vang Rhames add continuity by reprising their roles from the first one and it’s a shame that some of the others couldn’t return. Rhames’ role is somewhat pointless (didn’t he die in the original?) but at least Lloyd is able to get a few more minutes screen time than he did before. It’s still a criminal waste of his talent to be shoehorned into a five minute cameo but at least he’s back. As far as the newcomers go, David Koechner makes for a particularly unpleasant loudmouth and is perfectly cast in the role of the slimy Chet. He gets one of the film’s best and most distasteful scenes as he tries to make a getaway from the chaos at the park. The younger cast aren’t particularly impressive, with the majority of them filling the usual token teenager roles. Danielle Panabaker is likeable enough in the lead role but the gorgeous Katrina Bowden steals the show with a line of dialogue that would make John Barrowman’s infamous line from Shark Attack 3: Megalodon sound like Macbeth (Youtube it if you don’t know).

The main star of the film is the turn by David Hasselhoff. So often the butt of jokes about his acting ability, ‘The Hoff’ has now gone full circle and embraced his deficiencies, playing up on these jokes and becoming self-aware of his own limitations as an actor. His self-mocking performance is a riot, tearing apart his Baywatch role as a lifeguard completely out of his depth when the piranhas attack the water park. Worth sitting through the rest of the film for? Not quite, but those who have stuck through the rest of the film will at least find themselves finally being entertained.

Piranha 3DD is a catastrophic flop. The decision to debut it in less than 100 theatres in its opening weekend in the US (a travesty considering that the original made $83m in the box office) shows that little faith was instilled in it from the start by the suits in the boardroom and this is reflected in the final product – a shallow, shameless rehashing of the original. Good-natured gratuity has been replaced by ill-fated juvenility and no doubt sounding a death knell to a possible resurgence of big budget splatter comedies.

• AKA:


• Director: Alexandre Aja


• Writer: Pete Goldfinger, Josh Stolberg


• Starring: Elizabeth Shue, Jerry O'Connell, Ving Rhames, Christopher Lloyd


• Run Time: 88 mins

This Summer 3D Shows Its Teeth

An underground earthquake sets free scores of man-eating prehistoric piranha fish which swim down river towards a small town on the shore of Lake Victoria, a popular spring break destination for college students. With hundreds of booze-fuelled and horny teenagers in the water, can the piranha be stopped in time?

Do you want a thought-provoking film which challenges the meaning of life, gives rise to question our existence and will make you change the way you live your life? If you do then clear off now. If you want boobs, blood, boobs, low brow humour, boobs, more blood, killer fish and then more boobs, you’ve come to the right place. Piranha 3-D is a silly, moronic and extremely juvenile horror flick which wears it’s exploitation heart on it’s sleeve…..and I loved every single minute of it. The film is pitched squarely towards fan boys – actually males of any demographic – with its focus on hot young females shedding their clothes at every opportunity. Sort of like a horror film crossed with one of those MTV shows in which they pitch a DJ and stage on a beach somewhere and just let chicks dance for an hour. Piranha 3-D is gloriously self-aware and self-indulgent. I can’t remember the last time I was this entertained in the cinema.

Alexandre Aja has helmed some pretty serious and brutal films during his directorial time including the remake of The Hills Have Eyes so it’s nice to see him ‘relax’ and go for something more light-hearted and trashy. The first two Piranha films back in the 70s were helmed by Joe Dante and James Cameron no less, two men who’ve got on to much bigger and better things (more so Cameron). So Aja is in good company. He knows what modern horror fans want to see and delivers. Let’s face it – 3-D is a gimmick, pure and simple. It’s not meant to be the next coming of cinema. It’s meant to add enjoyment to your viewing experience. Aja knows that and puts the 3-D to uses that James Cameron would never have considered for Avatar. The 3-D is used effectively throughout the film with all manner of things popping, erupting, exploding and jiggling on the screen. Memorable moments include a piranha emerging from someone’s mouth, Ving Rhames’ defiant stand with a detached outboard motor and, well, I’d never thought I’d say this but the 3-D severed penis probably got the biggest laugh from the cinema audience I was sat in with. There’s plenty of 3-D blood and 3-D boobs too. I actually think there were more boobs here than fish.

The flick keeps its promise of blood and delivers it in buckets during the gruesome attack scene in which the piranhas finally get to chomp down on some drunken teenagers. Bodies with flesh-stripped limbs try to drag themselves out of the water. People are ripped in two. Some young woman even has the skin ripped clean off her face. The cameras get right up close and personal during the attack scenes, thrusting you straight into the heart of the action as if you’re almost stuck in the water waiting to be devoured. The deaths are played mainly for laughs (check out Eli Roth’s hilarious cameo), adding to the absurdity of the sheer amount of gore on display. But you can tell that Aja is used to gore flicks and loves the red stuff. He knows how to milk the blood for all of its worth and the camera lingers on each moment with childish glee. The tone of the film is never in question from the opening scene and a nice rich vein of humour flows through the film. Be it funny dialogue or simply the perverse situations that the characters find themselves in, a laugh or chuckle is never more than a few minutes away (tucked in nicely between boobs and blood!)

Its official – 3-D wasn’t designed so that James Cameron could bring to life the world of Pandora in Avatar. It wasn’t to show My Bloody Valentine’s copious amounts of gore in a new and disgusting way. It wasn’t so that kids could gawp at Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 3. 3-D was designed purely for heterosexual males the world over to enjoy the absolutely glorious sight of Kelly Brook’s 32-E chest the way that God intended it to be enjoyed. And enjoy it we shall. Funnily enough she’s not that bad an actress here although her role is to cavort naked and look good and she does both with aplomb.

This is hardly a character-driven film though and the flimsy plot does little to make us care about most of the characters but the main cast do fine in their roles. Elizabeth Shue gets to act tough as the female sheriff, Jerry O’Connell is hilarious as the sleazy porn producer and steals every scene he’s in, Ving Rhames does his typical bad ass persona as the deputy and there’s a welcome cameo part for Christopher Lloyd, channelling some of his Doc Brown character from Back to the Future into his role as the marine biologist. Richard Dreyfuss spoofs his appearance in Jaws with the film’s most throwaway scene and will bring an instant grin to the face of any fan. Spot how many times Jaws can be referenced within the few minutes that Dreyfuss is on screen.

Piranha 3-D is unashamedly cinematic trash but it’s proud of it and hard to resist it’s simple charm. Those who adore high-brow subtitled French art house flicks will no doubt be disgusted at what’s on display here but this film isn’t aimed at you. Inception may be a lot of critic’s choice for best film of 2010 but Piranha 3-D can’t be too far behind for pure unadulterated entertainment.

• AKA:


• Director: Scott P. Levy


• Writer: Richard Robinson (story), John Sayles (original screenplay & story), Alex Simon (screenplay)


• Starring: William Katt, Alexandra Paul, Monte Markham, Darleen Carr


• Run Time: 89 mins

Lost River Lake was a thriving resort… Until they discovered…

A girl and her boyfriend go missing so a private investigator is hired to find them. So enlists the help of a local mountain man to help her search near to the old army test base where they believe the teenagers to have headed. Assuming them drawn in a large pool, they drain the water into the river, accidentally releasing a horde of flesh-eating piranhas which escape into the river system. The fish proceed to munch their way down stream, heading towards a kid’s holiday camp and a newly opened holiday resort.

In my view, remakes are generally pointless exercises in milking cash from an established film. I don’t buy the ‘we need to update it for a new audience’ rubbish because if a film is that good, it doesn’t need an update because it will stand the test of time (The Godfather, case in point). If it could use a remake, then is the film that good enough to deserve one in the first place? When you remake a film, what route do you take? Do you change everything, contemporising it for a new time period? What elements of the original do you save? What do you pay homage to? Or do you simply follow it almost shot-for-shot, word-for-word? We could ask ourselves these questions when we witness big budget remakes of classics like Psycho and Dawn of the Dead. But who in their right mind ever thought about remaking Piranha, a decent but forgettable parody of Jaws from the late 70s?

Roger Corman – that’s who! The legendary producer oversaw a handful of remakes of his old films for cable TV and Piranha was one of them. But somewhere along the line, the writers made substantial changes to tone and content of the original. The screenplay is still virtually the same, with minor alterations to characters and story, and the film runs exactly the same as it did in 1978. Where the problem lies is that they have substituted the wit and humour of the original with more emphasis on gore and violence. This serious tone doesn’t help because at its core, Piranha was a parody and needed this light-hearted tone to make it work. Without the humour, it turns into another generic monster flick with something on the loose in the water.

The pacing of the film isn’t too bad. There’s not a lot of waste in the running time and the piranhas don’t usually go too long between meals. It’s not just semi-naked blondes who the piranhas tend to feast on either because it’s open season here so kids and dogs are also on the menu. Footage of the piranhas from the 1978 version is re-used here despite the obvious improvements in technical advancement. Rather than shoot new footage, they’ve simply ‘recycled’ footage from the archive and it shows. There also seems to be a few more breasts thrown around here than there was in the original which is a good thing. The increased focus in these two elements would be taken to the extreme in Alexandre Aja’s infinitely superior remake Piranha 3-D.

William Katt and Alexandra Paul share little chemistry as the two leads but on their own, they’re more than capable of handling themselves. Katt, in particular, at least keeps things ticking over with a likeable character you can get behind. Monte Markham has his turn as the businessman who refuses to believe that there’s a problem and won’t close his resort for fear of losing business…….you know the score by now with this stereotype. Mila Kunis makes her debut in this but you’ll be hard pressed to recognise the sweet little girl here as the stunning young woman she’s is now. Cast-wise, the film is no better or worse off than the original, though Kevin McCarthy’s barmy scientist was sorely lacking from this one.

Piranha is an unneeded remake which hardly breaks any new ground but at least it doesn’t damage the original too much. It’s hard to really sum up: if you’ve seen the original, you’ll have already watched this. But out of curiosity, you’ll watch it anyway. If you haven’t seen it, you’re better off with the original. But then you’ll watch this as well out of curiosity. So yeah, just watch this as well. It’s pretty solid on its own two legs.

• AKA: The Lucifer Project


• Director: Harry Kerwin, Wayne Crawford


• Writer: Harry Kerwin (story), Wayne Crawford (story)


• Starring: Wayne Crawford, Jason Evers, Roberta Leighton, Cliff Emmich


• Run Time: 98 mins

You Can Almost Hear The Screams! as the water below becomes a CHURNING DEATHBED of FLASHING TEARING TEETH!

In a top secret government experiment, the drinking water of a whole city is mixed with a chemical which makes people aggressive by depriving them of blood sugar. But the dodgy chemical plant doesn’t think straight and pumps the waste out to sea. Naturally there are still chemicals in the water and a school of barracudas are turned into man-eating killers.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this was just another of those mainly crappy Jaws rip-offs released in that classic film’s wake, right? Wrong! Barracuda could win the award for ‘film that goes off on a tangent the most’ as its plot strafes from the creature feature cheapie to some sort of The X-Files conspiracy flick. Its Jaws meets The Crazies in a bizarre mixture of genres which may have worked had they not completely forgotten about the fish when the cover-ups begin.

This one starts off like Jaws as the barracuda swiftly take apart a few random divers and swimmers without any real purpose and significance. The barracuda themselves look very cheap and rubbery and the attacks aren’t done very well. We only get to see some bloody water instead of the barracudas actually chomping their way through their victims although there is a severed head shown in one scene. They attack in packs like the piranha from Piranha and although I’m not familiar with barracudas in real life, I’m sure they’re not anything like this. Coupled with the traditional underwater monster point-of-view shots that Jaws utilised so well, the barracuda might as well be any other fish with teeth because they’re not really the focus of the film. In fact the characters spend more time away from the water than they do near it. It’s the most obvious thing in the world to do – if there’s something killing people in the water, then don’t go near the water. But this is a film, not real life, so I expected to see more dumb people going for swims or fishing.

At about the halfway point, the film switches to it’s The X-Files mode as it turns into a government conspiracy and cover-up mystery film. Once this is given priority, the barracuda are hardly mentioned for the remainder of the film and there’s no resolution to their plot. They’re not killed off or dealt with in any way. I guess they’re still swimming around there, with their low blood sugar levels. It looks like they were just a cheap plot to attract ‘monster on the loose’ fans such as myself. You can actually see by the other title it went by, The Lucifer Project, that this has obviously been renamed to cash in on Spielberg’s masterpiece. I actually wanted there to be some form of ‘local festival taking place in which the local mayor wanted to keep the beaches open despite danger’ plot like there is in all of these Jaws rip-offs. But that was just a cheap ploy and the barracuda are only secondary to the real plot. It’s blatantly cheap, false advertising.

The conspiracy plot is a complete waste of time and you just know which townspeople are in on the cover-up from the way their characters have been portrayed throughout the rest of the film. The film also ends with a real twist which came as a bit of a shock to me but looking back I should have seen it coming. If Barracuda had focused on the title fish a lot more much like Piranha did and then had the cover-up plot as the secondary theme then its overall quality would have been greatly enhanced.

It’s funny that in Jaws, the mayor tells Chief Brody that “You yell barracuda, everybody says ‘huh, what?” Barracuda is a cheap cash-in which has little to do with killer fish and more to do with shady federal agents. Barracuda – “huh, what” indeed.