Piranha (1972)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Disappointment for a huge fan!

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

"Piranha" is an very underrated little masterpiece. It starts out very slow and moves faster and faster until it comes to a very dramatic end.Ahna Capri (from "Enter the Dragon") plays the Photographer Terry who comes with her brother Art (70ies regular Tom Simcox) to Venzuela to shoot photos. Jim Pendrake (played by B-movie star Peter Brown, unforgotten as bad guy in "Foxy Brown") is their leader through the jungle. In a bar they meet the mysterious hunter Caribe, played by the greatest B-movie actor of all times, William Smith. Smiths performance is outstanding, one of his best ever.Caribe does not only hunt animals, he hunts everything that moves and that includes people, too. He invites Terry, Art and Jim into his house. While the man are away he rapes Terry. Art wants to revenge his sister and is the first who dies.Jim and Terry try to escape but Caribe follows them, burns down a village but they could escape him (but only this time).At Caribe's house it comes to a very dramatic showdown, he kills Jim until the hunter himself gets shot by his victim."Piranha" plays with the idea of Manhunt which was a main theme in a classic movie that was made almost 40 years earlier: "The Most Dangerous Game" from 1932 from Meridian Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the makers of "King Kong" (1933).The beautiful landscape of Venezuela stands in confrontation to the heavy violence of his movie. It's a very rare and underrated movie!

"Two wildlife photographers are traveling through the Amazon River basin on their latest assignment. While trying to capture the wildlife of the area on film, our photographers cross paths with a game hunter, who is stalking the animals for another reason. Looking to eliminate the witnesses to his illegal activities, the hunter decides to…" according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis. Handsome guide Peter Brown (as Jim Pendrake) takes pretty blonde Ahna Capri (as Terry Greene) and her good-looking brother Tom Simcox (as Art Greene) into the Venezuelan jungle, to admire the view, and take wildlife pictures. After they hook up with hunky big-game hunter William Smith (as Caribe), psychological dramatics surface. A pivotal scene, with Mr. Brown reposing in the "vee" of a tree, and sharing a cigarette with Mr. Simcox, is nicely staged. The circular direction reappears in the later "fight" between Brown and Mr. Smith; and, it is effective. Simcox' early sex romp adds nothing to the story; it could have been cut, to take advantage of what seems like flirting between the Brown and Simcox characters. An attraction between Brown and Ms. Capri could have been played up, also. The music, including Jim Stein's "Love All Things That Love the Sun", is fine; but the film needs to be re-tracked, to cut out animals which do not appear on screen. And, there is far too much superfluous footage on display. "Piranha" is a case where less would have been more.

My mother mistook this Piranha movie for the 1978 Piranha movie and when I had noticed she made a mistake, a mistake I was extremely upset about, I decided to watch this one anyway, just to give it a shot. I can tell you I deeply regret watching it all the way through and even continuing to watch it once I began to hate it. This movie is terribly boring and basically horrifying, not in the Horror movie kind of way, to watch. I wish my mother wouldn't have been so stupid and forced such excrement on me. This movie is so horrendous and so intolerable in every piece of material that I couldn't bare to let anyone say this movie was halfway decent. For one thing, this movie should be called A Boring Talk About Wilderness instead of Piranha. They only show piranhas once, once. At the same time, the way this film sounds so poorly is just ridiculous; I got sleepy only 20 minutes into the thing for it's lack of any music with upbeat tempo, or sound volume with any real heights, or basically just it's lack of everything in general, including acting talent and credibility for any redeeming qualities. At the end my mouth was hung wide open and I stared gloomily at the blank TV screen. It is a very poorly directed and badly filmed piece of junk that I was afraid I had a brain dysfunction after watching. It's a good thing it's very obscure, I can see why, because I'm pretty sure it saves the trouble of many people accidentally mistaking it for some other kind of movie, a trouble that I wish would not have been brought upon me, but sadly, it was.

I got seriously ripped off with this purchase. The other posters pretty well cover the failings of this poor poor film. My DVD that I purchased actually had the 1978 Piranha poster art on the cover with the credits for that film on the front 'Directed by Joe Dante', etc. I was really disappointed to find the wrong film on the disc. I am actually a fan of lots of bad movies. There is always something funny or at least amusing on most of them somewhere. NOt this film! I am actually going to spend the three dollars in gas money to return this two dollar DVD just for the principle of the thing. Blatant false packaging here. Easily the worst movie of all time. No redeeming factors at all. BORING!!!Not even worth checking out just to see how bad it is. Seriously.