Piranha II: The Spawning


Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 6:4	Budget Low

Intensity

Pirhana II gets Three Cups

Stupidity:Nudity Ratio

6:4

Budget

Low

You know, if there had been flying killer piranhas in Titanic, I would have gone to see it.

At a resort a couple goes scuba diving to have sex on a sunken ship. Needless to say they are naked and dead almost as soon as the credits stop rolling. We then met Ann, the scuba instructor, and Chris, her son, who go about their business for a while and introduce us to a few other characters. Some peripheral bits of story allow for some bits of cannon fodder to get introduced and then killed while we are being introduced to even more characters whose life expectancy isn't very good either. The main characters start to think that there is something dangerous out there in the ocean, but before they can act the piranhas attack the hotel guests during the annual grunion hunt. Once they have determined where the winged piranhas are hanging out, the good guys manage to blow them up.

Wow. James Cameron. After doing special effects directing for Roger Corman in the John Sayles written "Battle Beyond the Stars" he ended up directing this epic. After it was shot he was not allowed to do the editing and there is a story that he broke into the studio to do some cutting. However, this "director's cut" version has not been released. It is impossible to view this film and not giggle occasionally when you see something that really looks like a reference to his later movies. The sunken ship reminds us of "Titanic" and the fish coming out of the guy's chest reminds us of "Aliens". There are several great tracking shots in the movies and two or three scenes with really nice follow motion shots that you rarely see in movies with budgets like this one. Still a lot of the movie is clearly shot within budget restraints using more economical static shots and some Talking Head direction as well. Overall the movie is visually strong considering its pedigree.

No, this is not a scene from "Titanic". It is in a completely different part of the Atlantic and the star-crossed lovers approaching are both going to die.	No, this is not a scene from "Aliens". It is just one of the many gratuitous flare shots during which something suddenly pops into the scene.	Still not from "Aliens". Actually the "monster in the stomach" shock was from Ridley Scott's "Alien". I don't think the gag was repeated in "Aliens". Apparently among the traits gene spliced into the new piranhas is patience. The body was pulled up out of the ocean, transported to the Coroner's office and presumably refrigerated, all with this bad boy hiding in there.
Our introduction to Ann involves a slow panning across her body while she is sleeping.	The camera settles in for a close up on her face and what happens next after this mildly erotic build up?	Chris wakes her up by putting a fish in her face which then gets loose and they wrestle on the bed. This was a little creepy.

Piranha 2 - Not Titanic

No, this is not a scene from "Titanic". It is in a completely different part of the Atlantic and the star-crossed lovers approaching are both going to die.

Piranha 2 - Not Alien

No, this is not a scene from "Aliens". It is just one of the many gratuitous flare shots during which something suddenly pops into the scene.

Piranha 2 - still not aliens

Still not from "Aliens". Actually the "monster in the stomach" shock was from Ridley Scott's "Alien". I don't think the gag was repeated in "Aliens". Apparently among the traits gene spliced into the new piranhas is patience. The body was pulled up out of the ocean, transported to the Coroner's office and presumably refrigerated, all with this bad boy hiding in there.

Piranha 2 - Mom

Our introduction to Ann involves a slow panning across her body while she is sleeping.

Piranha 2 - Mom - Tricia O'Neil

The camera settles in for a close up on her face and what happens next after this mildly erotic build up?

Piranha 2 - Chris and Mom

Chris wakes her up by putting a fish in her face which then gets loose and they wrestle on the bed. This was a little creepy.

Probably the biggest problem with the movie is the monster. Piranhas with wings. Sure it sounds cool in theory, but once the cameras start rolling you really get into trouble. They are not very convincing in the water and once they start flying around and attacking people the effect is under whelming. We are talking about fish here. They can wiggle their tails and bite and that is about it. Even with good CGI you would be hard pressed to make a really scary fish. Besides these guys are only about 18 inches long. It is hard to believe that one or two of them could take down an adult. However, during the attacks all you see are people holding the fish against their throats and screaming. The scene with the fisherman and the flying piranhas is mind bogglingly bad. After passing up a chance to retreat to the safety of the hotel, the fisherman stays outside and waits for the fish to attack. He ducks a few times as the fish swoop by him and then several of them latch on to him and he dies in a most unconcerned manner. He doesn't try to hit any of the fish with the torch he is carrying, he doesn't run, he doesn't even scream as they are tearing his flesh apart. I guess the writer decided he needed something more than just a remake of the original, so he added the wings. From a marketing standpoint this make sense but the finished product? Far more amusing than frightening.

So the piranhas are kind of scary in a pack in the water. There are a lot of them and they are in their element.	Flying through the air? Not so scary.	Attacking Loretta? Again, not so scary. Especially not when you see her squeezing the thing to her neck and then jumping off the boat into the water.
Chris and his dad. Dad tracks Chris down to the boat that he is crewing on to discuss a couple of things and to establish that both mom and dad have a decent relationship with him. They don't wrestle in bed half naked though.	Leslie Graves. She plays the daughter of the man that hired Chris to sail his yacht for him. Hmm, two teenagers on a boat with only a drunken old man for a chaperon. What could go wrong?	Lance Henriksen. Odd that I have not reviewed a movie featuring this guy before. He would team up with Cameron again on "Aliens" though I think it is a safe bet that Cameron had nothing to do with "The Da Vinci Treasure".

Piranha 2 - Swimming

So the piranhas are kind of scary in a pack in the water. There are a lot of them and they are in their element.

Piranha 2 - Flying

Flying through the air? Not so scary.

Piranha 2 - Attacking

Attacking Loretta? Again, not so scary. Especially not when you see her squeezing the thing to her neck and then jumping off the boat into the water.

Piranha 2 - Chris and Dad

Chris and his dad. Dad tracks Chris down to the boat that he is crewing on to discuss a couple of things and to establish that both mom and dad have a decent relationship with him. They don't wrestle in bed half naked though.

Piranha 2 - Leslie Graves

Leslie Graves. She plays the daughter of the man that hired Chris to sail his yacht for him. Hmm, two teenagers on a boat with only a drunken old man for a chaperon. What could go wrong?

Piranha 2 - Lance Hendrickson

Lance Henriksen. Odd that I have not reviewed a movie featuring this guy before. He would team up with Cameron again on "Aliens" though I think it is a safe bet that Cameron had nothing to do with "The Da Vinci Treasure".

To fill the empty space between the fish attacks, we have the usual subplots. The two heroes are a divorced couple who have a son that they both try to protect. There is a horny old lady that tries to seduce the lifeguard. There are some couples that meet up. The three main characters do get most of the screen time. We start with Ann (Tricia O'Neill, "The Gumball Rally" and tons of TV shows) and her dealings with her son (which border on creepy), her ex-husband, a new love interest, and most of the backstory for the movie. Lance Henriksen ("Aliens", "The Divinci Treasure") plays Steve who runs around frantically ordering people to do this and that but no one seems to take him seriously. He is on hand at some of the key moments though. Chris (soap operas Guiding Light and All my Children) provides most of the back story on Ann and Steve but then gets lost at sea with Allison (Leslie Graves who would go on to a soap opera of her own, Capitol). Unfortunately the acting is uniformly bad. The three leads are no great shakes but the supporting crew is really awful. To be fair, most of them were playing caricatures rather than characters so the broad acting style is perhaps to be expected. Really how else would you play a dweeby dentist from New Jersey who falls for a not particularly attractive nor graceful gold digger?

Needless to say there is the "we can't close the beach" plot line. After finding a couple of bodies and getting some pretty detailed information from the government guy who is unofficially investigating the situation, Ann goes to the head of the resort. He, of course, refuses to take her seriously and cites the usually reasons, i.e., it is tourist season. Hmm, perhaps there would be someone else to talk with that might have more authority than the manager of a second rate Club Med? Like your ex-husband who is apparently a cop of some sort?Or the local equivalent of the Coast Guard?

One of the local fisherman who occasionally uses nets but frequently just throws sticks of dynamite in the water brings his son's corpse to the hotel lobby. Not sure why the hotel and not the morgue, probably because he needed to have a conversation with Ann about how the fish had killed the kid.	He and Ann decide to put together a bomb to take out the school of fish. Fortunately Ann knows exactly where the fish spend their time when not munching on people.	Ann watching the fisherman getting eaten by the flying fish. We don't need to spend too much time on the fact that flying fish don't actually fly, right? They glide. Without a swimming start they cannot get airborne. Once aloft they can only ride the air currents and updrafts for a short time. So really all you'd have to do is dodge these guys for a few seconds and then fire up the frying pan.
Ann explains to Tyler that this seems very similar to another incident where the government was doing a study on piranhas. Tyler looks all innocent.	Later he fills Ann in on how the government is experimenting on gene splicing fish to create a crossbreed capable of being used as a weapon. He'd like to help but merely having four bodies and a biologist as an eye witness is not enough evidence to get his bosses involved.	Grunion hunting. Next to dynamite fishing the laziest way to fish. You wait for the grunions to come up on to the beach and snatch the little guys up.

Piranha 2 - Death in the lobby

One of the local fisherman who occasionally uses nets but frequently just throws sticks of dynamite in the water brings his son's corpse to the hotel lobby. Not sure why the hotel and not the morgue, probably because he needed to have a conversation with Ann about how the fish had killed the kid.

Piranha 2 - Dynomite

He and Ann decide to put together a bomb to take out the school of fish. Fortunately Ann knows exactly where the fish spend their time when not munching on people.

Piranha 2 - Aftermath

Ann watching the fisherman getting eaten by the flying fish. We don't need to spend too much time on the fact that flying fish don't actually fly, right? They glide. Without a swimming start they cannot get airborne. Once aloft they can only ride the air currents and updrafts for a short time. So really all you'd have to do is dodge these guys for a few seconds and then fire up the frying pan.

Piranha 2 - Tricia O'neil

Ann explains to Tyler that this seems very similar to another incident where the government was doing a study on piranhas. Tyler looks all innocent.

Piranha 2 - more exposition

Later he fills Ann in on how the government is experimenting on gene splicing fish to create a crossbreed capable of being used as a weapon. He'd like to help but merely having four bodies and a biologist as an eye witness is not enough evidence to get his bosses involved.

Piranha 2 - fish food

Grunion hunting. Next to dynamite fishing the laziest way to fish. You wait for the grunions to come up on to the beach and snatch the little guys up.

After dinner but before having sex with the new love interest, Ann delivers a synopsis of the original "Piranha". Wait a minute. A woman who considers discussing the plots of B movies as foreplay!?! Damn, if only she weren't fictional. If Tyler (Steve Marachuk, "Hot Target") had any sense, he would realize that being the love interest in a horror movie that features a set of divorced leads puts you very high up on the dead meat scale. After he and Ann take another dive to look for the killer fish, he confesses to her that he sort of knows about the fish. This time instead of just being genetically altered piranhas, they are kludged together from several types of fish including grunions (so they can go up on land), piranhas (for munching on people) and flying fish (for the wings). But he can do nothing about it. He'd like to help, but he needs to get more information and report it to the "proper channels". Strike three. Dude, you are so going to die. Heroically perhaps, but I would make sure your will is up to date now. Chris on the other hand can do any number of stupid things and be fine. Why? He is the son of the two heroes. Children do not die in these types of movies. No matter how obnoxious, rude or just plain stupid they are, if they are under 18 they are safe. Now if this were a cop or a revenge movie, then count on one of the parents and the kid getting killed off in the first reel. Probably off screen but dead none the less.

Amongst the cannon fodder but with a subplot of her own is Carole Davis, ("Shrimp on the Barbie", "Mannequin"). She plays Jai, a girl who has run away with her daddy's yacht and sneaks into port to pilfer groceries. Hmm, poor little rich girl alone on a yacht with just her girlfriend and no one knows they are even out there? If Tyler is dead meat, Jai is standing under a big neon sign reading "Fish Food". Some times when you see an actress who is obviously only in the film to die, you wonder if she'll take her shirt off first. Not to worry here, Jai is introduced sunbathing topless on the boat.

Following in the footsteps of the original, a nameless couple decides to go skinny dipping right where the school of piranhas live. These two are trying to have sex underwater without using their air tanks. The fish get them before they drown.	A helicopter. The corollary to the small plane rule is that if there is a helicopter in the film, it is likely to blow up.	Told Ya.
Carole Davis as Jai. Apparently Jai and Loretta "borrowed" the sailboat from Jai's dad and are cruising around with no money.	Jai tries to charm her way out of getting caught stealing groceries by suggesting that the chef come out to the yacht for supper with a strong likelihood of sex with two girls. Unfortunately for the guy, when he gets to the boat the girls end up with the food and he ends up in the bay.	Look out! It is a school of piranhas and they have gas! Again the problem with using fish as a monster rears its ugly head. In an attempt to show proximity of the fish and the victims, some air was blown through tubes under the water's surface. While it did indicate there was something in the water, it did not indicate fish to me unless they were extremely flatulent fish.

Piranha 2 - have sex and die

Following in the footsteps of the original, a nameless couple decides to go skinny dipping right where the school of piranhas live. These two are trying to have sex underwater without using their air tanks. The fish get them before they drown.

Piranha 2 - a heliocoptor

A helicopter. The corollary to the small plane rule is that if there is a helicopter in the film, it is likely to blow up.

Piranha 2 - coptors crash

Told Ya.

Piranhas 2 - Carole Davis

Carole Davis as Jai. Apparently Jai and Loretta "borrowed" the sailboat from Jai's dad and are cruising around with no money.

Piranhas 2 - Carole Davis in the kitchen

Jai tries to charm her way out of getting caught stealing groceries by suggesting that the chef come out to the yacht for supper with a strong likelihood of sex with two girls. Unfortunately for the guy, when he gets to the boat the girls end up with the food and he ends up in the bay.

Piranhas 2 - special effects

Look out! It is a school of piranhas and they have gas!
Again the problem with using fish as a monster rears its ugly head. In an attempt to show proximity of the fish and the victims, some air was blown through tubes under the water's surface. While it did indicate there was something in the water, it did not indicate fish to me unless they were extremely flatulent fish.

Is it worth seeing. I think so. For some odd reason it has made a few "worst movie ever" lists but I don't know why. It is no worse than several hundred other similar movies. Really, go to my reviews page and pick out any other three cup movie. This one is about the same as any of those. Besides seeing Carole Davis topless, you also get Cameron's directing debut. Had the producer let Cameron have more control of the movie, I suspect this would have been a great B movie. There are good moments here and there in the film and even though there was nothing he could do about the film's monsters, had he been given a chance to do more extensive re-writing and editing who knows what this could have become. If Roger Corman had produced this film I am confident that this would have been up there with "Death Race 2000", "Battle Beyond the Stars", "Rock n Roll High School" and, of course, the original "Piranha".

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