113: Piranha
Joe Dante's small money debut upstaged Roger Corman's big disaster movie in 1978
Bring Me The Axe! Horror Podcast
Episode 113: Piranha
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Bring Me the Axe! is a comedy podcast celebrating the best (and worst) horror from a time when the video store ruled the night. Every other week, brothers Bryan and Dave White (and the occasional guest) heed the call of nostalgia and evaluate the classic 70s and 80s horror movies they loved in their childhood to determine whether the movies are still relevant today or should be allowed to fade into obscurity.
This week we’re back in Roger Corman territory with an early Joe Dante feature for New World Pictures, Piranha from 1978.
When a pair of teenage hikers go missing in the Texas wilds, a bounty hunter will have to team up with a reclusive alcoholic weirdo to find them. Their search takes them to a secret research facility where they accidentally release a large number of genetically modified piranhas into the local river system where they will wreak havoc on a summer camp and a lakeside resort full of people just begging to be nibbled on by voracious carnivorous fish. Along the way our hapless heroes will have to outwit the cops and a military coverup.
Piranha is an extraordinarily silly monster movie that is obviously doing everything it can to snatch some of that precious Jaws money the very same year that Universal released the much-anticipated Jaws 2. A lawsuit nearly stopped this movie in its tracks but were it not for Steven Spielberg himself, we might not have ever seen this highly enjoyable trainwreck of an exploitation movie.
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