Piranha (1978)

Mutant piranha escape from a secret research station and head downriver towards a summer camp and a small town’s lakeside tourist attraction. A gruff loner and a daffy private eye race against time to try to stop the creatures.Director: Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling, Matinee). Stars: Bradford Dillman (Bug), Heather Menzies (Sound of Music), Barbara Steele (Black Sunday) and Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers).

"Operation Razorteeth," a government project involving the breeding of mutant piranhas, gets way out of hand when the fish raid a lake at a summer camp for kids in this Roger Corman-produced, Joe Dante-directed classic. Heather Menzies stars as Maggie McKeown, an insurance investigator out to trace a missing teenage couple who have disappeared in the woods. With the help of a drunken recluse, Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman), they come across a supposedly deserted army base inhabited by Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy) who has been breeding the deadly fish in secret. In their hunt for the missing couple McKeown and Grogan drain the army pool, unleashing millions of mutant piranhas into the lake of a nearby children’s summer camp and a newly opened tourist resort. Smart exploitation with a ludicrous and clever script co-written by John Sayles, this drive-in answer to JAWS is full of film references and plenty of B-movie thrills (gore and nudity). PIRANHA is the kind of movie they don’t make anymore–and better yet–it holds up well.

1978, colour, 92 minutes