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Piranha – 1978 Dante
- 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
Drake2020-04-10T20:19:58+00:00
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Why are you archiving crap like Piranha and not archiving valuble films like Gardens of Stone(1987)?
@Hashan– believe it or not, much stronger reviews on rotten tomatoes for Piranha– 72% positive… 47% for Garden of Stone
Believe it or not Piranha only has a 41 audience score on RT and Gardens of Stone has 55.Apparently 4 of the last 5 reviews are highly positive for Gardens of Stone.
haha audience score
No but 4 of the last 5 reviews are highly positive.worth a look I think.
@Hashan- I want to see Gardens of Stone. added it to my queue yesterday
@Drake is Gardens of Stone good enough to be in the archives?
@Harry- It was not when I first saw it- which was decades ago. I have not been back to revisit it since – I should.
@Drake-Have you seen the new Batman(2022) film? And also is Batman Returns(1992) in the archives? As much as I liked Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman and Colin Farell as Penguin in the new film I thought there were inferior to the the potrayals by Danny DeVito and Pfeiffer in Batman Returns. Otherwise the new film was very well made.
@Malith- I have seen The Batman (2022) from Matt Reeves- very impressed. I do not currently have the 1992 Tim Burton film in the archives but have not seen it recently
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