PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING (1981)
Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 94 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Tricia O'Neil, Steve Marachuk, Lance Henriksen, Ted Richert, Ricky G. Paull, Leslie Graves
While he sort of disowns the film now Piranha II was the first film from mega-blockbuster director James Cameron (Avatar), he directed this but just a few weeks into production Italian producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (director of Tentacles (1977)) fired him and took over the production. Reports vary about how much was shot by Cameron, some say he actually finished shooting the entire film but afterward the producer locked him out of the editing room, and legend even tells of the scorned director breaking into the edit room after hours to complete his own version of the film, but sadly there's nothing on this disc's extras to confirm or deny any of that. Anyway, I sort of like that we get to keep the mystery about the movie, true or not it wouldn't make the film and better or worse, depending on your level of tolerance for b-movie cheese. There must be a treasure trove of stories to be told about the making of this movie, maybe someday we'll get a tell-all documentary, but probably not, Cameron still draws a lot of water in Hollywood and no one wants to piss him off, ha ha.
As where Joe Dante's original film was a satirical send-up of Jaws this one makes an error in judgment by going in a bit too straight-faced, but it opens on a wonderfully corny scene of a young couple diving off the coast of Jamaica at night, swimming down to a sunken wreck for the sole purpose of fornicating underwater, and while I will say that the idea of that undersea-sex is sort of intriguing I couldn't help but think of what sort of awful aquatic parasite that sort of sexual activity might put you at risk of. Luckily for our scuba-sexers the wreck is a sunken military research vessel that experimented on hybrid piranha years earlier, and surprise surprise the killer fish still call the wreck home and make quick work of the lovers, sparing them an agonizing death in the future from whatever parasites might be in the water on that rusty wreck!
Conveniently the shipwreck is located just off shore right in front of a popular beach resort, which is where one of our main characters works, we have scuba-instructor/tour guide Anne Kimbrough (Tricia O'Neil, who was all-over 80's TV back in the day) who is giving a scuba tours near the wreck when one of her clients is killed by the piranha. They find his bite-riddled corpse but no one realizes what happened exactly, Piranha are not indigenous to the area so it's not the first thing that pops-up on the local sheriff's radar, played by a man who seems to have always been in need of paycheck, Mr. Lance Henrikesen (Aliens), who it turns out is Anne's estranged husband, together they have a son named Ricky (Ricky G. Paull, The Blob).
When Anne gets wise to the fact that there are flying piranha - your read that right, flying piranha - in the area she alerts the hotel manager who promptly fires her - you know, because you don't wanna mess with those tourism dollars during the peak season, we learned that from Mayor Larry Vaughn in Jaws (1975), as I recall that wasn't such good advice. At the resort we get a colorful cast of characters straight out of a typical 80's comedy, we have a horny older broad looking for love and and a horse-faced woman looking to land a doctor on her vacation, the type of characters you'd see in a something like Caddyshack or an 80's resort comedy, we even get a dim-witted cook and two often-nude women who trick him into supplying their boat with free eats, but Cameron's strong suit has never been comedy so these scenes are pretty corny overall, but no un-fun in a bad movie sort of way, that producer Ovidio G. Assonitis loaded it with Penthouse pets and copious nudity doesn't hurt the value of this one either.
The film's biggest fault is that there are long stretches where nothing much seems to happen, the fish-kills are few and far between after the opening death of the underwater fornicators, but what we do get is nicely executed with some decent bloody gore, the various kills early on are of better quality than the midnight fish fry massacre stuff that happens on resort beach towards the end of the film, but it's all fun, and the design of the winged-piranha is actually pretty cool looking, it's just sort of goofily conceived and executed, but not poorly made, but not good either, it's that sort of film, the kind that ends on a note that leaves you asking "is that it?".
Audio/Video: Piranha II: The Spawning (1981) swims/flies onto Blu-ray from Scream Factory with a new 2K scan sourced from the original uncut negative, with the Piranha II: Flying killers title card, marking the first-time the film has a proper widescreen release here in the U.S.. It looks a bit soft throughout thanks in part to a diffused lighting style, but this was a fairly common fuzzy-style associated with Italian productions of the era, that said colors look good and skin tones look natural. Fine detail is not extraordinary but we do get some good facial detail and textures throughout, this is quite an improvement from the fullscreen version I've owned on DVD for a few years now, and sold promptly when this was announced. While the film in a lot of ways doesn't feel like a James Cameron film it does have some strong underwater sequences that looks above average, even back then Cameron seems to have had his sights set on the deep ocean.
Audio comes by way of an English DTS-HD MA Mono track that does the job, some of the dialogue is dubbed so there's some boxiness to it, I hear a lot of familiar sounding dubbing from other Italian productions, but it's not too bad. The Stelvio Cipriani (Nightmare City) score benefits the most from the lossless mix, some nice staccato string arrangement give the film some good tension, optional English subtitles are provided.
Onto the extras we don't get a ton but what we do get is damn decent, beginning with interview with actor Ricky Paull Goldin, he speaks about seeing the first film which terrified him, and what a blast he had in the Jamaica shooting the film (and missing a month of school!) when he was sixteen, how young and naive he was, being really embarrassed by the scene he did with the nude actress who played his love interest, and how he could relate to the role of a teen with parents in turmoil with one another. The second interview is with special effects artist Brian Wade who had previously worked with James Cameron on Roger Corman's Galaxy of Terror and would go onto do F/X for Terminator. He speaks about how he ended up on the gig, sculpting the piranha from a Cameron sketch, and what t was like on-set, speaking fondly of Cameron and his technical skills. The last extras is a 2-min trailer for the film. I would like to imagine that Scream Factory has a lot more
The single-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork the a-side being the original VHS artwork, the reverse side is the theatrical U.S. poster, the disc itself sporting the a-side key art. This release was originally announced as a Collector's Edition, but maybe the powers that be (James Cameron maybe?) heard about it an intervened, so I would like to believe there's a slew of uncut tell-all interviews that expose the truth about this one sitting in a vault somewhere at Scream Factory waiting for some future release after Cameron passes-on someday far away in the future.
Special Features:
- NEW 2K scan from the original camera negative
- NEW interview with actor Ricky Paull Goldin (16 min) HD
- NEW interview with special effects artist Brian Wade (14 min) HD
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min)
- NEW 2K scan from the original camera negative
- NEW interview with actor Ricky Paull Goldin (16 min) HD
- NEW interview with special effects artist Brian Wade (14 min) HD
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min)
Piranha II: The Spawning (1981) is a fun slice of b-movie trash, it's not good sequel, it's fucking great, a super-fun bad movie that begins and ends with the idea of flying piranhas that can fly around like Gothic bats, that's just a brilliantly dumb coked-up idea. The disc from Scream Factory looks and sounds better the film ever has on home video, plus we get some cool interviews on top of that, and a sweet reversible artwork option, I love it, I cannot help myself, I love bad movies, and this is one of the good bad ones!
