Killer Fish

After stealing a fortune worth of jewels, a group of thieves hide their stolen loot in a box and throw it into a nearby lake. Proving the adage that "there is no honor among thieves" two of them decide to sneak out to the lake and retrieve it prior to the specified time. What they don't realize is that the mastermind behind the robbery named "Paul Diller" (James Franciscus) put some piranhas in this lake a year or two earlier to protect it from just such an attempt. His plan works as the person attempting to swim toward the box is rapidly consumed. Later, these same piranhas also kill two more thieves as well. But protecting the treasure isn't the only thing Paul has on his mind. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that I found it to be better than I initially thought it would be as it managed to combine elements of a crime caper with that of a horror film along the lines of "Piranha" as well. Of course, having two attractive actresses like Margaux Hemingway (as "Gabrielle") and Marisa Berenson ("Ann") certainly didn't hurt either. In any case, I liked this particular film and have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

I love Italian genre films from the 70s and 80s - horror, sci-fi, giallo, WIP, nunsploitation, whatever. This Italian-French-Brazilian co-production is an action/adventure/thriller/horror hybrid, made to ride the wave of Spielberg's Jaws a few years earlier. A bunch of professional thieves steal a quantity of emeralds from a tropical industrial complex. They hide the gems at the bottom of a reservoir, intending to retrieve them 60 days later once the heat has died down. Unbeknownst to them, their man on the inside has decided to stock the reservoir with piranha to prevent anybody finding the stones or retrieving them early. Sure enough, some of the gang decide to go back and help themselves without telling anyone else - you can guess their fate. A sudden storm breaches the reservoir dam and the deadly fish are carried to all the other local waterways - including tourist spots. As the human population starts getting bumped-off (i.e. Eaten), those remaining find themselves cut-off from help and fighting for survival.

Antonio Margheriti (here under the alias 'Anthony M Dawson') directed some pretty enjoyable, even good genre films over his career. Unfortunately, this isn't one of them. At 101 minutes it feels overlong, drawn-out, and uneven. The characters are pretty thin, the cliched dialogue lacks any real 'punch', and (talking of punches) the fight choreography is poor. As far as the cast goes, the leads are all American; Lee Majors, Karen Black, Margaux Hemingway, James Franciscus, and Gary Collins (sad to think Majors is the only one still with us). Also popping-up (in a relatively minor role - maybe he needed an easy paycheck) is Italian 'spaghetti western' favourite Anthony Steffen. Lee Majors is likeable as ever (shame he didn't do more on the big screen), whilst Karen Black is her usual drop-dead, lazy-eyed sexy-as-hell self; the rest pretty much just go through the motions. At least the scenery's nice (it was filmed in Brazil), and the fish make an effort. 4/10.

1978's "Killer Fish" arrived for director Antonio Margheriti after his Gothic horror, Spaghetti Western, and science fiction periods, just before the trend for cannibal zombies emerged in the wake of George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead." His expertise for special effects came in handy for a number of explosions and tornado-inspired destruction (the miniatures do look quite fake, however), but the script offers no surprises for an international cast that popped up on location in Brazil as a package deal put together by star Lee Majors. Plotwise, it's an ordinary heist film where the perpetrators suffer the consequences of defiance, three cohorts becoming fish fodder trying to recover the stolen jools in a nearby lake. Criminal mastermind James Franciscus remains behind due to a bad ticker, plays endless games of backgammon, and plants his favorite species of quick spawning piranha to guard against thieves in the night until the waiting period of 60 days is up. The combination of R-rated gore, brief nudity, and satirical content was enough to make Joe Dante's "Piranha" one of the few "Jaws" ripoffs to come close in audience appreciation, but this decidedly lesser effort is utterly humorless, free of nudity in its sanitized PG presentation, and lacking in bite with a nondescript cast of vacuous pretty faces sinking just 200 yards from shore. Houston Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini went the way of Terry Bradshaw, Joe Kapp, and Joe Theismann in his brief attempt at a movie career (as one of the thugs who gets devoured for his trouble), only James Franciscus and Karen Black fully committed to their cliched roles, Lee Majors a stone faced lead making a half hearted attempt to save the gems (in the end, the culprits never get caught). As a supposed horror film it's a total flop, perhaps only worthy of late night viewing when insomniacs fear the worst.

Lee Majors heads a crack team of thieves who carry out a daring robbery in Brazil, they hide the precious stones at the bottom of a lake but don't know that it is infested with flesh eating piranha. They decide to leave them there for 60 days but double-crossers within the gang decide to grab them for themselves, with predictable results. The first half plays out like a crime thriller but it becomes a horror movie when the remaining crooks join a camera crew onboard a boat, when a tropical storm strikes the boat starts to sink. As a kid in the 1970's I loved the TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man" and Majors was one of the first actors who's name I can remember, he plays it very cool here and for his fans this film is well worth a watch. Also amongst the cast are the wonderful Karen Black and 1970's supermodel Franciscus Margaux, who plays what else but a model! The robbery at the start and dam scene near the end both use miniature sets, these are pretty good. Sadly the piranha attacks mainly consist of victims in the water surrounded by blood, we do see the fish biting people later on but it's nothing impressive. However an underwater swimmer encounters partially eaten corpses which is very effective. Shot in Brazil the scenery is nice and the musical score is pretty cool but the 101 minutes running time is too long. There has never been a human death recorded as a piranha attack and indeed people swim and bathe in piranha infested waters, however in the nature strikes back genre they can offer fun opportunities. Killer Fish has a bigger budget than "Piranha" (1978) but the latter is by far the better film.

Watching Margeaux Hemingway in this movie is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Her lisp and stone-faced moroseness makes Lee Majors' eyebrow look like Marlon Brando, but she is nonetheless compelling. The same goes for the rest of the cast. You just can't believe how sincere everyone is trying to be and it's fascinating to watch.

The last third of this movie is actually good fun, sort of like "Key Largo" without all of the intelligence to get in the way.