• Joe Dante’s debut is a fringe recommendation, low-budget, fun, with enough redeeming elements (mostly that engaging narrative) to warrant future revisits
  • If a critic doesn’t mention Jaws in the first paragraph of Piranha, they either haven’t seen Jaws, or haven’t seen Piranha
  • Roger Corman produced, John Sayles written— a crazy combination– blending a B-movie production and a witty enough screenplay
  • Jaws video game in the film, the opening- it’s all Jaws but if you think about Jaws and why it works- Jaw’s mechanical shark didn’t really do it—it is all about withholding, splashing, the unknown in the water,—and that is the perfect recipe for a B-movie that doesn’t have a budget. The few times here when we get an actual look at the piranha’s it’s a joke and takes you out of it—fortunately it doesn’t happen often
  • The casting of Barbara Steele (all that work with Mario Bava) and Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of Body Snatchers) just make too much sense—B-movie royalty
  • It’s unabashedly goofy and tongue-in-cheek but the anti-government and “there’s always another war” stuff in the screenplay is well done
  • Recommend- not in the top 10 of 1978