One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Absolutely brilliant

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This straight sequel to Joe Dante's tongue-in-cheek take on JAWS fails in its attempt to be scary or frightening right from the outset, as the sight of poorly-animated flying rubber fish sadly don't cut it in terms of sleepless nights. Yep, the piranha are back (and you'll no doubt be pleased to here that they make the same noise as in the first one) but this time they can leap right out of the water and seemingly fly some distance across land to get their victims too. Sadly the fish are far from realistic, and in reality their appearance is funny instead of being frightening.PIRANHA II is widely acknowledged to be a bad film, but it's at the top end of the bad film scale as it manages to be pretty entertaining. Sure, most of the action is familiar already from JAWS and the countless sequels and imitations that followed, but there are a couple of things this Italian/American production has in its favour. It's also a lot more widely known than it rightfully ought to be due to the participation of James Cameron as the director (in fact he was fired before filming finished and only did a week or so's work). You wouldn't realise that Cameron is the director by watching, though, because the direction is mainly static and weak and the photography poor. The movie has a grainy look which makes it seem cheap and dirty.The acting, too, is nothing to write home about. Tricia O'Neil just doesn't appeal as the heroine, because she's bland and too old in my eyes. Similarly, Steve Marachuk - playing a biochemist - is incredibly wooden and exceedingly dull. The only real cast interest comes from the participation of the dependable Lance Henriksen who plays the cop investigating the cast. Henriksen - later re-teaming with Cameron for THE TERMINATOR - is as good as ever, chewing the scenery on occasion and all-round being a guy you wouldn't want to mess with. Love that scene where he jumps from a helicopter which crashes into the sea.Otherwise, the usual quota of boring teenagers pad out the cast, along with stupid appearances from a dentist that are supposed to be funny. Periodically some sex and nudity is included in an attempt to keep the audience awake, perhaps. Likewise, there are a couple of fun shock scenes to enjoy as well, the highlight being the moment a piranha jumps out of the chest cavity of a corpse in the morgue! The gory special effects come courtesy of Giannetto di Rossi, the guy who did the splattery work on ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS. I'm pleased to say that di Rossi's work here is almost up to the same scale although not as explicit, and the blood flows freely in some of the fish attacks.The ending sees a couple of people going down into the wreck of a ship where the piranhas are spawning and set off a dynamite charge. The film then ends suddenly. Personally I would have liked to see some epilogue scenes of dead fish being swept up on the shores but we are just to assume that the rather small explosion killed the entire shoal, I guess. In all, unimaginative stuff, but the gory effects work keep it watchable and not the worst of the JAWS rip-offs out there.

I thought the first movie was pretty bad, but at least it ripped off Jaws, shamelessly and in a fun way and it had action and a general fast pace.But the sequel, being a James Cameron movie, I expected it to be better than the original. When it fact it's worse. Much much worse.First of all the cheap look of this movie, makes The Terminator's low budget seem like an expensive movie. And the movie cost less than 145.000 dollars to make. But still, shooting on Jamaica, they could have taken advantage of the scenery and given us some nice land and sea shots. This movie has none of that. The weather is even pretty bad during the first part of the movie.Second of all, the actors are all hideously ugly. And the boy and his mom seem to have an incestuous disturbing relationship.The acting is embarrassing at best. Except from Lance Henriksen who is below average. But not much more than that Trisha O' Neil gives the best performance of the entire cast. She reminds me a little of Ripley in Aliens in looks and acting.Steve Marachuk is doing a decent job.But the feel of the movie is like watching some nasty 70'ies porn movie.And for James Cameron being the master of creature movies during the 80'ies: The Terminator and Aliens, the flying piranhas are embarrassingly badly done.Lots of gore. But almost no action what so ever. In the third act when all of the hotel guests are attacked by the flying piranhas, it would have been a great chance for some action, but even here the movie disappoints. That scene is over in a couple of minutes and is as badly done as every other scene with the piranhas. And don't even get me started on the toy-helicopter being blown up or the fake explosion of the underwater-wreck which is also a model combined with shaky camera and sound effects to create the illusion of the explosion.As for the story-part, I didn't even realized until the very end that the boy was Lance Henriksens son. And that's bad writing. Also not something I would expect from James Cameron.I' m amazed but also glad that he was allowed to direct The Terminator after directing this crap. Also amazing he could get a budget of 6 million dollars for The Terminator as he had not proved himself even remotely with Pirahnas 2.Avoid this crap at all cost.

If not good as the original but I do think better then remake sequel piranha DO When j first saw this sequel , I did like it at all compared to the first movie However over years this movie and grown on me a litte There are that I really enjoy and liked the bloody parts of the movie and didn't mind the flying fish.It dose take long for the movie getting going but the killing starts and I loved the part on beach Let's eat raw fish , that was great scene , silly but really fun to watch I know it was intended to be funny but it was still great fun to watch The acting was decent and fish effects ts were okay for the time5 out of 10

"Piranha 2: The Spawning" looks exactly like what it is: two different movies made by two different people, using the same story, actors, and crew. Unfortunately, the less talented of the two also happened to be the producer, and he got his way. The result is an occasionally interesting, intermittently gripping, and mostly ridiculous pot of glop.I'm just making assumptions here, but I'm going to guess that you can see James Cameron's involvement in the straight, dramatic portions of the movie, including the murky but eerily pretty underwater sequences. Definitely the casting of a strong, resourceful, reasonably complex woman in the lead is a Cameron trademark. Producer Ovidio d'Assontis, I reckon, is responsible for most of the more slapstick, broad, typically B-movie material, of which there is a lamentable mountain. The movie's mixture of horror and comedy does not work *at all*. It's not even good comedy--stupid one-liners coming out of the mouths of third-rate Central Casting rejects and would-be Penthouse models. Next minute, it's Tricia O'Neil, Steve Marachuk, and Lance Henriksen playing it dead serious. Like downshifting to second gear from fifth at 80 mph.O'Neil is a quite good actress and gorgeous in a world-weary, edge-of-fortysomething way to boot, and Lance as the gaunt, stressed-out police chief/heroine's husband is a true professional as always, but Steve's wisecracking scientist/playboy gets really annoying really fast...and he's supposed to be the co-hero. The rest of the cast is just downhill (or is that rapidly sinking?) from there, mostly a tiresome assortment of cardboard goofballs, although Gabby the dynamite fisherman is a likable representative of movie-Caribbeana and probably the most interesting character of the lot. The romance between the two teens is interesting when you consider that Leslie Graves was actually close to ten years older than her 15-year-old paramour, Ricky Paull.I almost forgot about the fish, the reason all these people were assembled in the first place.Do you blame me, though? You don't really see them much, to be honest, as much as you hear them, making that sort of wooga-wooga-wooga warbling noise as they swim in for the krill...er, kill. And when you do seen them, you don't for very long because your eyes get all scrunched up from you laughing. They really are ridiculous looking things, or at least the special effects shots in which they star are so badly done that you can't take them seriously. Granted, it's a cheap movie and I have seen worse ("Up From The Depths", anyone?), but I would think that if a visionary like James Cameron had had his way he would have approached the task a little differently. In fact, from what I read he had been originally hired as the Effects Supervisor when d'Assontis snatched him to replace the original director. If only he'd been left in his original post...but then the good parts of the movie wouldn't have happened at all, probably.What's the final verdict, then? It's an interesting, modest footnote to the early career of one of our towering cinematic giants, a typical Italian-flavored horror B-movie of the period. Largely dumb, but not a complete waste. Of definite interest to underwater fans.