Poster of the Week… ‘Piranha’ (1978)

Title: Piranha (1978) Studio: New World Pictures Directed by: Joe Dante Written by: John Sayles Plot: When flesh-eating piranhas are accidentally released into a summer resort’s rivers, the guests become their next meal.. [IMDB] Taglines: There’s something in the water at Lost River Lake. Something you can’t see…something you can’t feel…until it’s too late! Then… you were shocked by the great white shark – Now… you are at the mercy of 1000 jaws!

Ah, the glory of the 70’s! Films like this make me proud to be a Movie Geek. No, seriously! Sure, it’s a cheesy nature vs. man horror flick, but it was actually fairly well done. ‘Piranha’ won the Saturn Award for Best Editing and Best Horror Film in 1979 from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, USA. What’s even more interesting to me though, is that it was written by legendary indie filmmaker John Sayles (Matewan, Eight Men Out). During a period of time, Sayles wrote screenplays such as this to sell to “lesser” filmmakers and even occasionally worked as a “script doctor”, hired on to save less than workable screenplays by other writers. ‘Piranha’ spawned a sequel in 1981 called ‘Piranha 2: The Spawning’ and has now procreated a new coming revival with the in development ‘Piranha 3-D’, which hopes to begin production this year. The new higher-tech edition to the franchise will be helmed by Alexandre Aja (Mirrors).

Trivia Tid Bit: Bradford Dillman was originally unhappy with his character’s 2D nature, and asked writer John Sayles why his character was so thin. Sayles responded that Roger Corman regularly did not use good actors in his film, so he deliberately didn’t elaborate on characters. But since Dillman was a “real” actor, he was more than happy to enhance his character’s depth. [IMDB]