Dec
2
“Piranha II: The Spawning” Review
Filed Under Movies
Having revisited James Cameron’s most successful film to date last week (read my review of “Titanic” here), I thought I’d check out his first directorial effort, “Piranha II: The Spawning.” Cameron’s credited as the film’s director, although from what I understand, he was fired by the executive producer before production wrapped. That said, it feels nothing at all like a Jim Cameron film, apart from the fact that Lance Henriksen’s in it. The opening title sequence gives the actor my favorite billing in the history of movies: “And Lance Henriksen as Steve.” Going into the film, I had many unanswered questions, chief among them was who would play Steve. Fortunately, that bit of confusion was resolved almost immediately.
As you may have guessed, the movie is a sequel to Joe Dante’s “Piranha,” a serviceable 1978 “Jaws” knockoff that was produced by Roger Corman. Corman doesn’t seem to have had any involvement with this picture. But the film is more or less a direct continuation, referencing events from the first film that I’d completely forgotten about. In movie one, the piranha are genetically-engineered eating machines that were originally going to be deployed in Vietnam to gobble up the NVA, perhaps the most unintentionally hilarious example of bio-weaponry that never made it into a Bond film. Unfortunately, those plans fell through after we bugged the hell out of Southeast Asia. At any rate, the toothy fish ultimately attack a sleepy resort community.
Movie two shifts the action to another resort, where a winged species of piranha makes a meal out of screaming tourists.
Henriksen, essaying the role of Steve, is basically playing a variation on the Roy Scheider role in “Jaws.” He’s a police chief investigating the bizarre mutilations of resort guests. His ex-wife Anne, an amateur ichthyologist, does some poking around and thinks piranha are to blame, but not just any piranha; these piranha can fly! Their son, meanwhile, gets a job as a deckhand on a schooner, so that he will have to be rescued later on in the film. In fact, that’s probably the best scene in the whole flick. Dig this. Steve pilots a helicopter out over the open ocean, looking for his son. He finds the boy (and his new girlfriend) in a dinghy that’s floating near a fishing trawler. For whatever reason, Steve leaps out of his helicopter, which transforms into a model of a helicopter that crashes into the water and explodes magnificently. Then Steve hijacks the trawler and saves his son and his son’s girlfriend. It’s such a bizarre action sequence. His kid’s not even in any immediate danger. That’s just how Steve gets shit done.
“Piranha II: The Spawning” doesn’t really live up to it’s b-movie potential. But had it not been for this film, we may never have gotten “The Terminator.” The story goes that Cameron was in bed with a high fever while working on “Piranha II” and had a dream of a metal skeleton walking through a curtain of fire. So in a way, “Piranha II” is the most important film in Cameron’s career. It may have been a false start for him professionally, but the miserable experience gave him the necessary inspiration to make the movie that really put him on the map. That one’s got Lance Henriksen in it, too.
-Brad Lohan
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