Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Sadly these days whenever most people will hear the title of Piranha they'll probably automatically think of the obnoxious and tacky "Piranha 3D", a movie that while I did find it fun in a brainless kind of way, it didn't have an ounce of the good old-fashioned charm and character that this flick had going for it. I mean how could anyone ever forget about the original Piranha? It's a classic and one of the best killer animal movies ever made. It's one of the pictures that really captured my imagination in a fun scary way when I was a kid and I still love it now, it's such an easy charming movie to sit through, and if you absolutely have to label it as such, then it's certainly a B-movie that's done tremendously well. I don't personally think it's all that much of a Jaws ripoff. Some people talk as if that's all it is.. Jaws had one big fish, this has many tiny fish that pose a far greater threat, the thing that's most similar to Jaws that I see is just the underwater shots of the piranha closing in on victims from below. Jaws chillingly killed one child, this movie had the gall to make the first bloodbath of its story an attack on a whole bunch of kids at once, and that took some serious "intestinal fortitude" back in 1978 when kids in movies were considered a lot more sacrosanct than they are today. I love the way the good guys actually fail to reach the summer camp in time to save the children, because it goes against what you'd typically expect to happen, and that was different and interesting to me. I find that there's a great sense of menace to the movie as well as a good comic timing, with the scary moments being more shocking because I was just chuckling at something a minute before, and I can take it perfectly serious as a picture and still have fun with it at the same time. I love the music score which gives it a lot of added atmosphere, to me it sounds very similar to the iconic theme from Carrie and it gives me the creeps. They do a good job of just making the water seem spooky and dangerous. I remember being bothered as a kid by how you never really see the piranha all that much at all, but now I think that it works out much better in that more subtle and shadowy way, with the mutant fish as a mostly unseen threat lurking beneath the darkness of the water, and the noise of them feeding is actually a little scarier than they are! I loved that sound, I don't know what they did to make it but it goes together with the underwater photography and the quick shots of the piranha relentlessly ripping at people to sell the effect of them fantastically. Something else I quite enjoy is that it had good characters that are fun to watch, even just the bit parts. I love the overly strict ridiculous blowhard who happens to be the boss of the summer camp and has no sense of humour and takes his job way too seriously, he's such a funny buffoon and is such an ignorant jerk but he does kind of redeem himself in the end, which is something that happens a few times in this movie.. I like Kevin McCarthy's regretful scientist who originally created the genetically engineered piranha, he's manic and energetic and his death while he clumsily tries to rescue a boy is genuinely sad, and nobody ever believes Kevin McCarthy about impending doom until it's too dang late! Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies were great together, they were both very likable and had such a fun cute chemistry that really carries the whole movie. She's very spunky and resourceful and was not at all above her 'feminine wiles' to get them out of tight spots, and while she was no airhead she did kind of cause everything that went wrong in the story in one way or another! And Dillman's character at first is just a good-natured honourable drunk who tags along but he becomes more of the hero the audience expects him to be as it goes on. Most of the film is just their race against time to stop the piranha from reaching the sea, which they ultimately fail to do as Barbara Steele reveals as the movie ends in a hilariously wink-wink moment as she huskily says to the news media in her lovely British accent that "There's nothing left to fear..." But of course it's really to you...the viewer! Everything we've seen has just been mere prelude to a much bigger fishy nightmare to come, and now blood's *really* gonna run and the oceans of the world will run red forever!!! As stupidly over the too as it is, I still find the ending to be more strangely eerie than funny. So to me it's a movie that's both funny and scary whenever it's trying to be either, and it really shows how good the animal attack movies of their glorious 70s heydays could be. Still brilliant fun, it's an easy 10 out of 10 bizarre bipedal peeping fish lizard creatures for me! x

Maybe it's because I saw this one when I was young and I didn't bother with Jaws. I probably saw Jaws way too late because I really didn't care much for it but I really am glad it was the inspiration for this movie. What is scarier than one man-eating big fish, well a lot of flesh-eating little fish who can cause a lot more mayhem among people who like to have fun time in the water. Yes these fish are some really ugly pieces of nature being able to survive in cold and salt water which a normal piranha cannot live in. I actually liked the whole back story for why the fish were grown and turned into a mutated species by scientists. Fish as weapons in wars it could sure be effective as the victims did experience. I liked the combination of Heather Menzies as detective Maggie McKeown and Bradford Dillman as Paul Grogan who are eventually the ones saving the day. Kudos also to Shannon Collins as Paul's daughter Suzie. She played the role of fearful but eventually brave kid really well.

When flesh-eating piranhas are accidentally released into a summer resort's rivers, the guests become their next meal.With Kevin McCarthy, Dick Miller and others, how can you go wrong? Take a Corman film and put it in the hands of the talented Joe Dante, and you are guaranteed to have a good time.Is this a ripoff of "Jaws"? Yes and no. Surely that was what sparked this film's creation. But looking back now on all the shark movies that have been made, this almost seems far enough removed to be considered completely unrelated (never mind the "Jaws" video game in the beginning).Truly a must-see for all Corman or Dante fans.

Piranha is the best example I have seen of precisely how to do a rip off. It may sound like an oxymoron to call a rip off impressive, but this is what accurately describes Piranha. Today, we have the Asylum, a direct-to-DVD company which gives us so-called "mockbusters" that completely lack the heart and fun of a film like this. Instead, those are merely dull "just-going-through-the-motions-to-make-a-small-amount-of-money" displays of ineptitude.There are several things to strongly commend this movie for, like the fact that the lead characters are likable so that you care what happens to them (unlike in some horror films), the way it is very self-aware and has small tributes to Jaws, the campy sound effect of the school of fish, the excessive amounts of blood that is shown in a comic manner, and how it is genuinely comedic and yet not a pure spoof in the way that films like Scary Movie are. Basically, the film comes just close enough to Jaws to be an obvious attempt to cash in on its success, and yet also stays just far away enough from Jaws that one isn't bored by a repetition of the same story all over again.I also feel that this film did something well that I don't typically see in creature feature films. And that is that it maintained a good balance between the screen time that the piranha attacks had, and that the background story about the people and the origin of the problem had. I say "piranha attacks" because admittedly, the fish themselves are hardly shown close-up at all, but it didn't really feel as if I was missing anything by not seeing very much of their fins. Usually, the scenes involving the creature itself are short as well as far and few in between, while I am bored with all the meaningless dialog (a good example of this is "Demon of Paradise" where I was thinking "When do I get to see the monster?"). But in this movie I did not have that disappointment. As a matter of fact, the scenes where the human characters are talking actually interested me and had me curious what would happen next. It is very rare for me to enjoy these types of scenes.See this movie if you like B movies, by all means. However, if you aren't a fan of that type of cinema, Piranha probably won't convert you. We all have different tastes. I know people who simply don't enjoy a schlocky low budget B movie, even if it's great at being what it is. As for me though, I'll take this little exploitation film over Jaws, because it's just more fun.