PIRANHA (1978)

 

(Director: Joe Dante. Screenwriters: Richard Robinson and John Sayles.)

 

Review

Plot: At the height of summer, a pushy, impulsive skiptracer, Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies-Urich, billed as Heather Menzies, SSSSSSS, 1973), tracking two missing adolescents in the Lost Lake River area, breaks into an experimental military lab with help from a reluctant, local drunk, Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman, DEMON, DEMON, 1975). While inside the facility, she drains the deadly pool where the teenagers died, unwittingly unleashing genetically engineered, hyperaggressive fish into local waters. Then the military shows up, worsening a bloody, out-of-control situation.

To say any more about the plot of this darkly funny, sometimes gory, campy cult classic (in the best, truest sense) is to ruin it. It’s a gutsy work, nobody—not even children—get spared in it (something that might upset sensitive parental types), an economically shot, fast-moving, lots-o’-nudity, truly-a-B-movie with a love of old horror and camp (not surprising, considering its director, Joe Dante, and its producer, Roger Corman).  Its fish-attack scenes, often shot in extreme closeups (amidst water-cloudy gore) are effective and gripping, something that can be said about all aspects of this grindhouse gem, one worth watching and rewatching, unless you’re planning to go swimming in the immediate future. Followed by PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING (1982).

 

PIRANHA’s other standout players and crew include:

Richard Deacon (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, 1956), as Earl Lyon, Maggie McKeown’s skiptracer boss, who assigns her the missing teenagers case;

Keenan Wynn (KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER, 1974-75, and THE DEVIL’S RAIN, 1975) as Jack, Paul Grogan’s easy-going friend, who loves fishing with his dog;

 

Kevin McCarthy (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, 1956) as Dr. Robert Hoak, frenzied, onetime head of a long-dead Vietnam War-era project (“Operation: Razorteeth”) that spawned the genetically engineered piranha;

 

Barbara Steele (THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, 1961) as Dr. Mengers, scientific lead and media spokesperson of the military team trying to contain piranha/their media release, and kill the fish;

 

Bruce Gordon (CURSE OF THE UNDEAD, 1959) as Colonel Waxman, Dr. Menger’s like-minded commander of the military team;

 

Dick Miller (GREMLINS, 1984) as Buck Gardner, a local real estate agent, also interested in hiding the truth about the piranha;

 

Paul Bartel (DEATH RACE 2000, 1975) as Mr. Dumont, head lifeguard—pompous, tough-love aggressive;

 

and

 

Belinda Balaski (THE HOWLING, 1981) as Betsy, the lifeguard who tries to comfort Suzie, a girl who’s afraid of the water.

 

Deep(er) filmic dive

PIRANHA is John Sayles’s script-penning debut. He also played a “Sentry” in the film.

 

According to IMDb, “The piranha [attacks] were done by attaching rubber fish to sticks.”

 

Also from IMDb: “The extras were all paid $5 a day and given a box lunch.”

 

Also from IMDb, Universal studios was going to sue New World Pictures for making fun of Steven Spielberg’s JAWS (1975)—acknowledged by PIRANHA filmmakers early on, when someone is seen playing a JAWS video arcade game. The suit didn’t happen because Spielberg saw PIRANHA, really liked it, and declared it “the best of the JAWS rip-offs”.

 

PIRANHA director Joe Dante later worked with Steven Spielberg on THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983).

 

Actor Richard Dreyfuss, one of the leads in JAWS (1975), had an early-in-the-flick cameo in Alexandre Aja’s 2010 remake of PIRANHA 3D.

 

In Anthony Petkovich’s article “If It’s a Good Picture, It Isn’t a Miracle: An Interview with Joe Dante” (Shock Cinema magazine, issue 61, February 2022, p. 38), Joe Dante said that Kevin McCarthy was a Method actor (more so than co-star Bradford Dillman). Because of this, Dillman was “scared” when McCarthy’s character (Dr. Robert Hoak) attacked Paul Grogan (Dillman’s character) when they first meet in the film.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN (1984)

 

(Director: Fritz Kiersch. Screenwriter: George Goldsmith, his work loosely based on Stephen King’s short story, republished in his NIGHT SHIFT anthology, 1978.)

 

Review

Gatlin, Nebraska, the early 1980s. One Sunday morning, during a “corn drought,” most of the kids kill the adults in town. This brief-segment event is narrated by a young boy (Job, shown later) after the fact.

October third, three years later. A doctor, Burt Stanton (Peter Horton, FADE TO BLACK, 1980), and Vicky Baxter (Linda Hamilton, THE TERMINATOR, 1984) a couple, drive to Seattle, Washington. They’re in day-bright Nebraska, near Gatlin, when a throat-slashed boy (Joseph, played by Jonas Marlowe) stumbles in front of Burt’s car—Burt can’t stop in time, he hits Joseph.

Burt and Vicky check the dead teenager, unaware that Joseph was fleeing the adult-murdering, corn god worshipping cult. Seeing Joseph’s non-vehicular (and fatal) wound, Burt places his corpse in the car trunk, intending to report the crime to the local authorities. The couple also doesn’t know they’re being observed, something revealed via killer-point-of-view (POV) shots—used throughout CHILDREN—while trying-to-be-creepy choral music plays.

A series of cultic designs detour Vicky and Burt onto Gatlin’s eerie, seemingly deserted main street. The rest of CHILDREN is a series of frenetic cycles of life-and-death pursuits and confrontations between the Seattle-bound “outlanders” and faith-rabid Nebraskan youth—much of it fueled by menacing cultist Malachai Boardman (Courtney Gains), a kill-happy, scythe-wielding adolescent looking for the next “Blue Man” sacrifice in the cornfield where He Who Walks Behind the Rows overtly manifests Himself.

Loosely based on Stephen King’s tale of the same name* and shot in multiple locations in Iowa, CHILDREN is more upbeat and streamlined than its source tale, making it an almost generic terror flick, e.g., its loose-thread, scriptural reference to the Blue Man (whose real-world source should’ve been revealed in the film), as well as its altered, less-grim ending.

Not only that, CHILDREN, mostly suspenseless, is overlong—unfortunate, because CHILDREN’s source-story set-up is perfect for a tightly penned, B-movie-fun episode of TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1989-96), CREEPSHOW (2019-present) or shows of that ilk, where there’s enough time for King’s key source-tale backstory and the visual economy of an hourlong program.

Some genre-familiar viewers might take issue with its soundtrack, composed by Jonathan Elias (LEPRECHAUN 2, 1994)—though it sounds like he tried to imbue CHILDREN’s aural aspects with innocence and eeriness, overuse of its jump-scare motifs and constant OMEN-esque (1976) choral-lite lifts makes the film’s score come off as heavy-handed and distracting at times, perhaps further reflecting CHILDREN’s monetary constraints.

CHILDREN sports cheesy (even for back then) effects and minimal blood spatters (when more was realistically called for), something—like the rest of its qualities—are attributable to its budget being halved shortly before its cameras rolled. More-ambitious effects and set-pieces were planned, but when King (supposedly) demanded more money to put his name on the title, those scenes were abandoned prior to filming. I would’ve liked to see what FX artists Wayne Beauchamp (EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, 1977, uncredited) and Eric Rumsey (PRAY FOR DEATH, 1985) could’ve done with more money.

One of the elements that has aged well with this film is its cinematography, provided by João Fernandes (THE PROWLER, 1981). His visual tones maintain the day-heat and nightfall of CHILDREN’s milieu; also, its set design (Cricket Rowland, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., 1985) and art direction (Craig Stearns, THE BLOB, 1988) are particularly effective.

Other notable, effective cast members include:

Robby Kiger (THE MONSTER SQUAD, 1987) as Job, opening-segment narrator and one of the two kids who help the “outlanders”;

Annie Marie McEvoy (INVITATION TO HELL, 1984) as Sarah, who, blasphemously, draws her future-event visions, and also helps Burt and Vicky;

John Franklin (THE ADDAMS FAMILY, 1991) as Isaac Chroner, Gatlin’s iconic and eerie-faced cult leader;

John Philbin (THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, 1985) as Amos Deigan, eager sacrifice for He Who Walks Behind the Rows;

and

character actor R.G. Armstrong (RACE WITH THE DEVIL, 1975) as Diehl, a gas station owner who directs Vicky and Burt to the safety of Hemmingford (“nineteen miles away”)—the same location that attracts, via dreams, many of the protagonists in King’s 1978 novel THE STAND.

Mitch Carter (THE FIRST POWER, 1990) lends his voice talent to CHILDREN as the over-the-top “Radio Preacher” Vicky and Burt mock, then dread.

Given its limitations, CHILDREN has fun B-flick parts, if you don’t expect much, don’t mind generic Eighties cheese, characters who won’t kill to save their own lives, and aren’t a book-to-film purist. I wouldn’t actively seek CHILDREN out, but it’s far from the worst King adaptation to grace the silver screen.

Nine sequels, starting with CHILDREN OF THE CORN II: THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE (1993), followed. A remake, also titled CHILDREN OF THE CORN, aired on stateside television on September 26, 2009, directed by Donald P. Borchers.

 

[*republished in King’s 1978 anthology NIGHT SHIFT]