Review: Piranha (1978)

Stars: Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies-Urich

Budget: $600,000

Directed By: Joe Dante

An original film I did not know existed until years after seeing what I thought was the original. I had initially seen the 1995 version of piranha on the sci-fi channel when I was younger thinking that was the original.

It was only years later that I found out this older version existed and that piranha 2 was the sequel to this one. Which you can tell just by the aged look of them, but i was young and it was on Bravo late one night lol.

So anyway lets get on with the actual movie, effects wise there's some decent practical effects for its time period. The what seems as constant use of the same jaws like following of the fish can get a bit jarring from time to time though.

So two teenagers typical of the time period stumble across a military base that's disused. Coming across a massive swimming pool of sorts they, as you do, decide to go for a dip, surely that water would be stinky and stagnant by now. They are of course eaten by the unseen thing that live in the pool.
A little while later a woman tasked with looking for the teens comes to the town named lost river lake to look for the teens. Maggie doesn't find much help other than from Paul Grogan, drunkard to take her looking for the kids.
They come upon the compound too which they learn was some kind of military fish hatchery, deciding to drain the main pool she goes looking for the switch. Inside they find many strange experiments in jars before coming across the drainage controls. A guy tries to stop her warning her, Paul knocks him out though then stupidly Maggie drains the pool unknowingly releasing the piranha into a local river.
They find some stripped skeletons in the bottom of the pool but the knocked out guy comes to and tries to steal Paul's jeep, which he fails to thanks to his groggy state. Paul takes Maggie and the guy back to his house for the night.

Down the river however we see a guy trying to fish, hes sat at the end of a jetty danging his legs over with his pet dog. His legs get stripped of flesh and he tries to escape. Later Paul, Maggie and (as we find out later) Dr Robert Hoak take a raft downstream. They find Paul's friend Jake and his dog, the latter who has bled out thanks to his wounds. The Dr explains he was working on Vietnam weapons and that the facility was working on weaponised Piranha capable of living in salt water and Maggie has now released them into the wild.
They quickly come to the realisation that if the local dam is opened it will allow the piranha to escape into the wider world which would be quite a bad thing for the ecosystem and people. Not only that before then is the children's lost river water park where Paul's daughter is at.
Further down the river they find a poor boy who's father has fallen into the river and been eaten, he's trapped on a capsized canoe. Hoak attempts to rescue the boy but in doing so gets mortally wounded by the fish in the process. In his dying breath he tries to tell them how to kill the piranha but dies before he can, however incensed by Hoak's blood in the water the piranha start attacking the raft loosening the rafts bindings. They make it to the shore just as the raft completely falls apart.

They stop the dam from being opened and decide to call the military for help, this ends up being a bad idea as the military wants to keep this hush, hush and deal with it quietly. They send in Dr Mengers, who we learn later was once involved with Hoak in a relationship. She tries to deny the existence of the fish and detains them in an effort to stop them blabbering.
They also realise that a small inlet allows the fish to travel to a nearby newly opened camping ground where Paul's daughter is actually at. They get away and attempt to make their way to the camp ground but Mengers reports them to the police to detain them if they are seen.
Even though Paul manages to contact the camp counselor, he doesn't believe him due him being known as an alcoholic. They are then caught and arrested but manage to escape a little later stealing the cops squad car.

Paul's daughter who actually afraid of the water watches in terror as the piranhas start to attack the camp, killing many kids and adults in the process. Despite her fear she manages to get a dinghy out and attempts to rescue some her friends. One of them however falls back in and gets devoured by the fish, despite arriving late Paul is happy to see that his daughter is fine.
they try to contact the water park but Mengers has beaten them there and advises the park owner not to answer the phone. Using the cop car they make their way there, on the way Paul remembers that there's an old industrial plant that has gallons of waste in tanks that he hopes may poison the fish and kill them before they reach open water (remembering these piranha can live in salt water).
While they decide to head towards the plant the piranha attack the water park and kill many many people, including Mengers superior.

When Paul and Maggie reach the facility they see that the control room to flush out the tanks has been submerged in water. He ties some rope to his waist then telling Maggie to pull him back up at the count of 100 he dives down to the controls.
The wheel is however very rusty and takes a lot of effort to move, not only that as he starts to move it the piranha show up. I wont spoil anymore as this is actually quite an intense ending, possibly one of Roger Coormans best films ever, in my views. It's a fun watch and definitely worth your time especially if you like tense jaws like action.
THN awards Piranha 1978 a strong 3 out of 5 stars and recommendation to watch.

Review: eXistenZ (1999)

Stars: Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Budget: $31 million (CAD)

Directed By: David Cronenberg

A late entry into the video games are evil and will turn you into a weird killer franchise. It's also a play on body horror as well such as Videodrome.
Videodrome also being a play on how bad video nasty films were getting bad back then too. I'll probably review it at some point.

An early film for Jude Law too, riding on from Gataca thinking this would be a big hit, it was quite a flop in the cinemas at the time though just like Gataca.
They both have like a lot of films gathered a reasonable cult following now on home video. Possibly due to the odd nature of the film just entertaining for what it is.

Also staring strong female actress Jennifer Jason Leigh in her late thirties (though she looks no where near that in here and still looks great these days). She'd been acting for many years prior also staring in 1986 original version of the hitcher with Rutger Hauer. This is not an easy film to review by far, with all the oddness and changes it goes through can be a little hard to put into words. But i'm going to try!

In what seems to be a futuristic world where biotechnology has overtaken normal technology a new 'games console' is being released to the market. A test group are trying it out, Allegra Geller (introduced by non other than a young face Christopher Eccleston) a bit of a recluse and the console maker is there to show it off. These new consoles plug directly into your spine via a weird umbilical cord thing and bio-port. The bio-port you get implanted into yourself to be able to play these games.
Some people aren't totally into these new bio-consoles or bio-ports and see them as some kind of a travesty, to the point where some people want to assassinate Allegra. These are called realists and one tries to kill her while she is showing of eXistenZ, little e big X, as it's described in film.
Pikul (Law) manages to save her and they go on the run together, unfortunately her bio-console was damaged in the attack. It holds the only copy of the game on its drives and to be able to test out if it's still okay Allegra needs to port with someone.

She discovers Pikul has no port and they go see an illegal port installer (Willem Dafoe) called Gas, Pikul professing he's not an extremist but just never believed in 'violating' himself like that agrees to have one installed. Unknown to them both the port installed is a faulty one and hurts the console even further. Gas attempts to kill Geller but Pikul once again saves her life.
This time they go to a ski lodge to see Geller's ex mentor (played by Ian Holm) who helps her repair the console and install a fresh port good into Pikul.

This is where the film starts to get even weirder an may lose some people now. They manage to get into the game where things get odd, some dead people are in there as different characters and others are simple npc's. what makes it weirder is in the game they further enter the game by jacking mini bio-consoles into their bio-ports. So much so you don't know whats game and what isn't, just for sanity sake it's all game now lol.
So going 'further' into the game they get mundane jobs 'undercover' in a pod making factory seems they are made (in this reality) from bits of other mutated animals. They are met by a person who says that they are their undercover agent in the factory. Pikul is told to order the special in the restaurant, it's an assortment of disgusting looking items. As he eats it however the bones seem to makes up the signature bone 'gun' from earlier and the movie poster. He mock threatens Allegra but then for some reason blows away the Chinese waiter. They find out after this that the original guy they spoke to was a double agent and the waiter was their real contact.

Finding a diseased pod back at the factory Allegra seemingly overtaken by the game tries to infect all the other pods with it. It makes her ill though and Pikul attempts to save her by cutting her cord, this unfortunately leads to her bleed out. The double agent returns and douses the diseased pod with a flamethrower which bursts into diseased spores.
Awaking back at the ski lodge they realise the main pod has been infected, Allegra believes it was trying to tell them subconsciously it was in trouble. It seems Vinokur (Holm) was also a double agent working for cortical systematic's. This is where it gets really annoying now, everyone turns on everyone as some kind of double agent of some kind, I wont spoil the main ending but it's a twist that worked back in the day but i think won't fool many these days.

So eXistnZ, it's worth watching, its a bit of a mind fuck for the last two thirds to half of the film which may or may not either lose you, piss you off or entertain you. THN fell into the entertain segment back in the day when we first watched it, we now fall into a more of a 'Meh' so with that we do give it only a 2 out of 5 but with a recommendation to watch if you can, i'd like to see your thoughts on it.