This month, I’ve been taking part in the Letterboxd Hooptober challenge. The goal is to watch 31 horror films in October, including films that meet specific criteria such as “directed by Wes Craven” or starring a black woman.
I’m posting my thoughts on each of the movies here, as and when I get time. If you want to follow along in real time, my Hooptober list is available here.
Piranha
A hideous death lurked unseen in the river…
When flesh-eating piranhas are accidently released into a summer resort’s rivers, the guests become their next meal.
There are seemingly endless Piranha movies, but this is the first. Directly by Joe Dante (who went on to direct Gremlins, Innerspace, and Matinee among others), it feels very much like Jaws with piranhas (or piranyas as one or two characters like to call them).
You’ve got an underwater threat, a senior official who refuses to close a resort, and swimmers getting eaten. Lots of them. Mostly women in bikinis (a detail that seems to continue in the later films). There is one twist in that these aren’t just any old piranyas. They’re military grade mutant piranyas.
Piranha is a $600,000 budget film from the seventies and it shows. The script is pretty mediocre with plenty of plot holes, and much like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre there are a few scenes that go on way too long, mostly attack sequences. But it’s not the worst film of its type, and the piranha attacking sound has ascended to in-joke status between my wife and me. If you’re in the mood for some old-school cheesy horror, you could do a lot worst than Piranha.
Piranha gives us another New World Pictures movie and our second filmed in Texas movie for Hooptober.
[Hooptober 11 – Piranha by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 25th October 2024]