Piranha (1978)

The military hires scientists to genetically engineer a new strain of carnivorous Piranha. They called this project "operation razor teeth". The Piranha were originally designed to destroy the water system in Vietnam but of course the operation gets botched and the killer fish are loose in a American river. A children's summer camp and a summer resort become the main targets for the blood thirsty fish.
This is the first of the Piranha films and the best out of all of them. It was directed by Joe Dante who would of course go on to do The Howling. James Cameron will go on to do the sequel in 1981 where the fish will mutate once again and fly. Then in 2010 we got the Piranha remake in 3D. All of the Piranha films are dumb-fun but this one is by far the best. It has Paul Bartel as a summer camp councilor who bullies around young girls but he wont be stalked by a dude in a hockey mask. Instead he will be ripped to shreds by the Piranha. We also have Dick Miller (the king of cameo) and hes always great to look at. Barbara Steele also shows up, not looking so great in 1978. The movie also throws in some gratuitous nudity for good measure and I find it completely brilliant that the Piranha eat the bikinis off of swimming babes for some bare boobage. We also got some nice gore here and there. I'm not sure who decided that the fish should make such an obnoxious sound when they attack but you might need some ear plugs. So stuff your ears with some cotton balls and enjoy a bloody outing with Piranha.

Piranha Part 2 : The Spawning (1981)

James Cameron delivers a pretty dull follow up to Joe Dante's Piranha and just in case if the first film wasn't dumb enough for you they decided to make the killer fish fly in this one. Lucky for me its not hard for a nature gone wrong film to please me. I pretty much like em all from Hitchcocks The Birds to Frogs (1972). I even like the really bad ones like William Girdler's Something Is Out There. Piranha 2 is pretty lame up until the second half. It opens up with a weird under water sex scene, where a couple cuts each others scuba gear off and then get down and dirty before being eaten by piranha. This is the only nudity that the film has to offer. The movie really goes down hill from here for a while with not much interesting going on except for maybe some bad dialogue  (watch for the dentist scene). It takes a while for people to start getting killed and then we see more of the ridiculous flying fish. There is some gore in the film and my favorite scene involves a piranha flying out of the guts of a body in a morgue and attacking a nurse. Another great scene involves Lance Henriksen jumping out of a flying helicopter for no apparent reason other then having a helicopter explosion in the movie. This ones really only worth a watch for nature gone wrong fans who don't mind brain-dead horror movies. I just find it interesting that the remake went with the end of this downer.

Piranha 3D (2010)

The only reason I went to see this thing is because I really dig 3D horror movies on the big screen with an audience. Even if the movie completely sucks I still usually have a good time while I'm there. I really wasn't expecting it to be any good because I always like the original better and this one isn't any different. The 70's original Joe Dante film is way better. I mean both films are pretty silly but this one just had some really stupid stuff going on, like these really bad action scenes where people are on jet skis killing piranha with shotguns. Or Ving Rhames taking on hundreds of cgi killer fish with a detached motorboat propeller. The one thing I will say about the 2010 remake is that there was plenty of blood and boobs. We got tons of big titted babes and a whole shit load of the red stuff and shredded skin. Some of the memorable scenes are a girl getting her hair caught in a propeller (causing her to lose her face), Another girl  loses half her body from the waist down and is flown around by a para sail, one dude rides over dozens of people in a motor boat (crushing skulls, and breaking bones), Eli Roth gets decapitated by a moving boat in a really splattery scene and then we have my favorite part where a man is pulled out of the water and hes missing almost all the skin on his legs and all he has to say is "They took my penis". That line really had me laughing. We even get to see a Piranha eat his 3D penis and spit it out. Another thing I thought was really cool was a 3D vomit scene. (that was kinda unique). The main complaint I have is all the cgi. In some scenes you really couldn't see what was happening due to the fast moving cg fish and the red blood spraying everywhere but the movie is worth catching before it leaves theaters. Once it hits video I wouldn't even waste my time.