PIRANHA (1995) ***

Long before Alexander Aja’s wild and wooly Piranha remake, we got this remake of Joe Dante’s classic from director Scott (Midnight Tease) Levy.  It was part of Roger Corman Presents, a Showtime series that consisted mostly of remakes of Corman’s old titles, with a few originals tossed in there to pad out the season.  The remakes that tried to revamp the classic Corman movies were met with varying degrees of success.  For every ho-hum entry like the Humanoids from the Deep remake, there was a fun one like Wasp Woman to balance things out.  This is one of the good ones.

The cast for this thing is pretty phenomenal.  We have William Katt, Alexandra Paul, Mila Kunis (making her screen debut), Monte Markham, Soleil Moon Frye, James Karen, Lorissa McComas, Leland Orser, and Don Pedro Colley just to name a few.  Even if all of this feels overly familiar (ever the thriftster, Corman even recycled the fish attack scenes from the original movie), the cast alone keeps you watching.

Scream Queen McComas plays the skinny-dipping first victim who who makes an Attack of the Crab Monsters reference before being eaten.  Paul is the private investigator sent to look for her.  She teams up with tracker Katt and together, they stumble upon the Army test site where the piranhas were being experimented on.  They accidentally unleash the deadly fish into the river, which just so happens to lead to a summer camp where Katt’s daughter (Kunis) is attending.  

As far as the Piranha franchises goes, this is somewhere in the middle of the pack.  It’s missing the out and out fun of Dante and Aja’s pictures and lacks the goofy charm of James Cameron’s Piranha 2 and John Gulager’s Piranha 3DD.  It’s still a fairly enjoyable time waster.  It moves at an acceptable pace and the piranha attacks occur at a steady clip.  The highlights include a gnarly scene where a fisherman gets his feet bitten off, a golden retriever being turned into Dog Chow, and a skinny-dipper losing an arm.  

Levy’s direction is a little workmanlike, which prevents it from really cutting loose.  While it all might suffer in comparison to the other Piranhas, it does contain a scene in which Punky Brewster gets eaten by killer fish.  You can’t say that about any of the other films in the series, that’s for sure.  Because of that, this Piranha is OK by me. 

Jim Wynorski was credited as a “Piranha Wrangler”.  

AKA:  Piranha 3.  AKA:  Piranha ’95.