Piranha
Terencio

"I'm not afraid... I'm a scientist" - my new motto

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Okay, so the dam has an attendant who is about to open the dam, and while he is doing that, he is listening to a 50s black and white style movie about the dam. Because he stumbles with the lever a few times, the Fishing Vest Guy has enough time to reach the dam guy and stop him from opening the dam. Shockingly, the movie is not over yet.

Ben Zanin
Ben Zanin
gnomon

NOT THE AIR HORN

NOT THE DAM SPILL GATES

NOT THE FUNNY CARTOON SOUNDTRACK LENDING AN AURA OF HILARITY TO A CLIMATE OF DOOM

Lazarou Monkey Terror πŸš€πŸ’™πŸŒˆ
Lazarou Monkey Terror πŸš€πŸ’™πŸŒˆ
Lazarou

These victims aren't shrieking enough like people being eaten by many ting fish

I love how the guy playing the old science dude is having a Shatner time of things.

The US army would destroy a biosphere, that I can believe. Brits did.

Ben Zanin
Ben Zanin
gnomon

Are those gibbering sounds part of the music track or are we supposed to believe it's the killer fish??

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Meanwhile, the main characters are rowing their raft down the river, and the weird guy explains that there are piranhas in the water, the titular . They were freed when they drained by the water.

We discover the old guy's pier, with a concerned dog by it, and we find that guy's feet have been eaten and they he crawled up the shore and bled to death. The Fishing Vest Guy sadly says "We'll I'll get a shovel; he wouldn't want to be buried in town." which is sad.

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Okay, so at this summer camp there's a lady counselor and a dude counselor, who are the good cop and bad cops of getting little girls to swim. The lady counselor explains that there are no mean fish in the water, just nice fish that eat plants and not people. Normally, this would be a correct thing to say, were this not a movie about killer fish.

The dude counselor instead says that the little girl is a coward for not swimming and she needs more intestinal fortitude.

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Because the weird guy didn't drive very far, our heroes reach the car crash site on foot and put a bandage on his head. He explains that the heroes have made a terrible mistake draining the pod, this has let the monsters out and now they will kill everyone.

I guess he was the guy sweeping the floors at the secret fish factory; I think he might have been more persuasive if he led with "don't let the monsters out" rather than "WAAAGH IM GONNA STRANGLE U"

Ben Zanin
Ben Zanin
gnomon

"I say we drain the pool, it's the quickest way to see if they're down there."

"You can't do that without someone's permission!"

Anyone remember the bit in The Monolith Monsters where they were worried about dynamiting the pass to cut off the spread of the killer rocks towards the town, because it was private property??

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Okay, we get another scene change so that we can introduce another character, a lady who's car broke down; she might be the lady I mistakenly thought was a science lady in the beginning. Anyway, she drives a noisy jeep and then it breaks down outside of Fishing Vest Guy's house as he cooks a fish. She explains that she is looking for some missing teenagers who may or may not have been eaten by evil bloodthirsty fish.

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

We now get a title sequence, which shows a tastefully bright red "PIRANA" word melting into a blood puddle and merging with the sea.

Also, note that this decided to show its audience nipples Before the title credit, which might be a sign that they thought that the audience would get super bored early on and so they needed a nipple to keep people in the theater.

Ben Zanin
Ben Zanin
gnomon

MONSTER CHOMP

Four minutes in and David has been devoured by bitey fish! Whoops, and sounds like Barbara is having a similarly rough time in that weird industrial concrete pool in the dead of night behind a barbed wire fence too. Getting off to a swift start here tonight!

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

dropping my thread for "Piranha", a movie where some fish bite people! Monsterdon is a thing each week where we watch an old monster movie and make fun of it. Mute the hash tag if that's not your jam, otherwise, you're gonna get spammed with a bajillion posts about fish biting people, some of them from me!

Paco Hope
Paco Hope
paco@infosec.exchange

Quick inventory of laws broken that I could remember:

trespassing on the army baseBeating the shit out of the old scientistwrecking the rental jeepburying the old guy and not reporting his deathstealing an army jeepbreaking out of jailstealing a police carstealing a random boat at the marinareleasing toxic pollution into the lake

And she's the HERO

#monsterdon

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Props to this movie for having Fishing Vest Guy do a heroic sacrifice instead of surviving (I don't think he made it?). Also his daughter had her own heroic arc. Also pollution saved the day, which is usually not a thing pollution does, in real life or movies? Also there was a lot of splashing and blood. This movie was odd.

Bluedepth

They have asked that wimpy nylon line to do EVERYTHING. It finally gave up, but not before the hand coming out of the water. *ding dong* bring out yer dead!

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Alright, so my obvious take is... could they tried like fishing to catch the bitey fish? Like get a net and catch them? Or maybe just put some meat on a fish hook and catch them from the shore?

Grenade fishing is also an option if we want to be more American about it.

Bluedepth

Phone in a briefcase. That's an analog phone. That call was someones Christmas bonus! LOL.

Bluedepth

I bet she could say anything and he'd turn it into a question. He is an inverse bechdel test. His failure means every woman in the cast is immediately super relevant and important.

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Not being into this army plot and not keen about getting gag orders, we decide to steal a car from the army and escape. We get a slighly horny, almost LGBT inclusive plot where the fishing vest guy asks the main girl tries to distract a guard to steal a truck, and the girl is like "but what if he's gay" and then the guys like "then i'll distract him". Then she asks if the impassive guard is gay, which he doesn't like I guess, then distracts him with boobs.

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

So are we gonna see the cool mutant land fish again in this movie? The little goblin guy who was watching them in the lab and funny godzilla looking fish? I liked those guys, they seemed nice. I hope they come back.

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

We get a new interlude where the army shows up, driving in on its army trucks and some jeeps. I would have added a random tank to this scene for no fucking reason. The relevant army characters are Colonel Big Hat, who asks the main characters grumpy questions, and Actual Science Lady, who explains that bitey fish normally like warm water, not cold water. They try to recruit the main characters to team army, but as newly minted peaceniks they are unhappy at this prospect.

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Our Accursed Float Trip is cut short, when the bitey fish discover that they can eat rope and start eating the ropes holding our shitty raft together, causing it to dissolve into logs. We distract the fish with the body of the weird science dude, then make it to the shore, having acquired one bonus child. Then Fishing Vest Guy runs off to tell the dam guy not to open the dam because then everyone will die. He literally runs. I like that aspect.

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Further wandering, we find the boy who is trapped on a canoe after the bitey fish ate his dad. Feeling bad at his life's work and/or concerned for the kid, the weird science guy decides to swim to the canoe and rescue the kid, so naturally he is eaten by the fish and turned partly into a blood puddle.

Eventually they get their huck fin raft to the canoe to take the kid aboard and give the weird science guy a more poignant death scene. .

Bluedepth

Children splashing in a lazy river has a lot of similarities to a free sample lane at a Costco. Same sort of frenzied feeding pattern. Drops of blood everywhere. A costco employee touching her nearly nibbled off fingers... THE PUBLIC ARE A MENACE!

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Meanwhile at the camp, the girl counselor is trying to help the daughter get out of swimming by making up excuses. Then we cut to a random boat where the bitey fish eat a dad fishing while his kid watches.

Then we get more backstory where the weird guy explains these evil mutant fish were created by the army to destroy the river systems of North Vietnam. We then get some plot... there's a dam that this river goes to that opens periodically, by a resort. uh-oh.

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

We go back to the nice guy with a straw hat, who is chilling by the river with the dog, our favorite character. He splashes a little bit in the water and then the evil fish eat him. The dog barks at them a few times. RIP.

[empty]
[empty]
allanb

The only recognizable actor in this film can't even keep the dog's attention with his act

Floaty Birb
Floaty Birb
floatybirb

Okay so we decided that we need to get the weird guy to a hospital because he hurt his head, so we're gonna use a tiny wood raft to float him to the hospital. Meanwhile, we switch to Fishing Vest Guy's daughter, who is a child at summer camp splashing her feet into the water. She's scared of swimming in the river water, because there might be monsters in the water.

Bluedepth

So they trespassed on a fish farm full of carnivorous fishes. I do not see anything amiss here. Stupidity was answered directly by evolution and consequences.

Bluedepth

Welcome one and all to Piranha from 1978! We're all set, the time has come. So far, the music vibes are atmospheric, and the fog is a nice touch.

Lazarou Monkey Terror πŸš€πŸ’™πŸŒˆ
Lazarou Monkey Terror πŸš€πŸ’™πŸŒˆ
Lazarou

I can't believe there was a novelisation of this movie and it took the time to mention that the two main characters had sex at some point.
A human mind was forced to create that. They didn't have the Plagiarism Machine back then.