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.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)

 

(Director: Don Siegel. Screenwriter: Daniel Mainwaring and an uncredited Richard Collins, based on Jack Finney’s Collier’s magazine serial.)

Review

INVASION opens with Dr. Hill (an uncredited Whit Bissell, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, 1954), called by a fellow City Emergency Hospital practitioner (an uncredited Dr. Harvey Bassett, played by Richard Deacon, PIRANHA, 1978) to deal with a shouting, panicked Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy, PIRANHA, 1978). Bennell is from the nearby town of Santa Mira. (The fictional Santa Mira would later, not coincidentally, be the site of horror in Tommy Lee Wallace’s 1982 film HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH.)

Once Dr. Hill gets Bennell to sit down and talk with him, the present-day “Framing Sequence” ends, INVASION’s images segue (with Bennell’s voiceover) into the frantic doctor’s tale. It begins “last Thursday” when Bennell’s receptionist/nurse (Sally Withers, played by Jean Willes) called him back from an out-of-town medical convention. The reason: a flood of panicked appointment-seekers at his office. Some of Bennell’s patients are claiming that their loved ones, although they appear and act normal, are not their loved ones─their family members have become something else, something unsettling. . . with an underlying coldness in their manners.

At first, Bennell thinks it’s a psychiatric matter. He’s also pleasantly distracted by the presence of his recently returned lost love (Becky Driscoll). They’re about to sit down for dinner at their oddly empty favorite restaurant (Sky Terrace Playroom), when Bennell gets a message that married friends, Jack and Thedora “Teddy” Belicec, need his help right away. He and Becky rush over to the Belicecs’, and what they see there makes it evident that something disturbing and cold has Santa Mira in its grip (mind those cuckoo clocks!). . .

Filmed in three or four weeks, this tightly written and shot gem with its frenetic, paranoid 1950s chiaroscuro and a few small twists is a fleet hour-and-twenty-minute work, one that builds steadily in its first quarter and goes full-tilt-racer after that. (McCarthy, whose Bennell runs a lot, later said he was exhausted during filming, especially in his iconic highway scene.)

Don Siegel (DIRTY HARRY, 1971) works his usual practical, shot-economical charm in INVASION, aided by screenwriters Daniel Mainwaring (OUT OF THE PAST, 1947) and Richard Collins (CULT OF THE COBRA, 1955). Giving INVASION its terrifying visual feel, cinematographer Elsworth Fredericks (WORLD WITHOUT END, 1956) and editor Robert S. Eisen provide stark contrasts between comforting, daylit Santa Mira and its nighttime terrors, before mixing the elements of both to terrific effect─their work is heightened by Carmen Dragon’s melodramatic score, and the efforts of the rest of the behind-the-scenes crew.

The onscreen talent is also impressive.

Kevin McCarthy is good as the easy-going-now-ranting Dr. Miles J. Bennell. Dana Wynter is equally worthwhile as his lost love, Becky. Carolyn Jones (THE ADDAMS FAMILY, 1964-6), blond with short, curly hair, is believable as Theodora “Teddy” Belicec, as is King Donovan (who plays her husband, Jack).

Other notable players include: Virginia Christine (THE MUMMY’S CURSE, 1944) as Wilma Lentz, who thinks her uncle is not her uncle; Tom Fadden (EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, 1977) as Uncle Ira Lentz; Sam Peckinpah (later an iconic director) as Charlie, the gas man in Bennell’s basement; and an uncredited Robert Osterloh (GUN CRAZY, 1950) as “Ambulance Driver in Framing Sequences.”

This version of INVASION is one of my all-time favorite alien irruption movies─it’s short, sharp (even with its early-on white picket fence pleasantness) and all-around well-made, with no wasted scenes or lines. 

CRAWL (2019)

 

(Director: Alexandre Aja. Screenwriters: Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen.)

Review

As a Category 5 hurricane threatens to bear down on her Florida hometown, professional swimmer Haley goes to check on her father (Dave) at the behest of her long-distance sister (Beth, played by Morfydd Clark). Haley’s relationship with Dave is strained because of his recent divorce with her mother─Haley blames herself for their breakup, because of all the time Dave spent coaching her swimming.

When she finds him, he’s seriously injured and trapped in the basement of their old, unlived-in house. She devises a way to get the out of the flood zone as the storm worsens, and then an alligator strikes─setting off series of increasingly terrifying and potentially catastrophic events not only for her and her father but for those around them.

Rated R for bloody (but not excessive) violence, terror, and tension, this relatively short (hour and twenty-seven-minute) film is perfectly edited (credit: Elliot Greenberg), with great writing, acting, cinematography, set design and direction. Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen (among their credits John Carpenter's THE WARD, 2010) keep the inventive and situation-ratcheting terror element constant and theme-true, whilst underlining the story with relatable human concern and warmth. Lucy Eyre’s set design and Ketan Waikar and Dragan Kaplarevic’s art direction is convincing and detailed, as are the mostly CGI alligators and their briefly gory attacks; Maxime Alexandre’s cinematography is appropriately storm-dark, often claustrophobic, and water-hued as the locations for the nature-sourced attacks shift between characters and places. And director Alexandre Aja, whose work is often amazing (in a good way), horror-true and laced with humor, masterfully guides this top-notch terror flick with its various-angle camera shots and tableaux.

Not only that, CRAWL’s two leads are excellent in their roles. Kaya Scodelario (RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY, 2021) is great as Haley, whose parental-divorce transition is as tumultuous as the waters that threaten to drown her and her father. Barry Pepper, a consistently excellent character actor, nails it as Dave, Haley and Beth’s sad, loving but coach-hard father. Ross Anderson, in his brief role as Wayne (a roadworker who crushes on Beth), is immediately likeable with his boyish charm. Trigger, Dave’s wiry-haired, scrappy mutt, is a charmer, too.

CRAWL is not only one of the best horror films of 2019, it’s also one of the best overall films of that year. If you’re a fan of films like ALLIGATOR (1980, starring Robert Forster), PIRANHA 3D (another Aja-helmed movie) and works of that ilk, check out CRAWL.

AMITYVILLE 1992: IT’S ABOUT TIME (1992)

 

(a.k.a. AMITYVILLE: IT’S ABOUT TIME. Director: Tony Randel. Screenplay by Christopher DeFaria and Antonio Toro, based on John G. Jones’s 1988 advertised-as-fiction book, AMITYVILLE: THE EVIL ESCAPES.)

Storyline

An architect brings home an antique mantle clock he bought during his business travels, unaware that it’s an evil, time-and-space-warping machine.

Review

Burlwood, California. Jacob Sterling (Stephen Macht, GRAVEYARD SHIFT, 1990), an architect and intense person, returns to his suburban house from a business trip during which he picked up an antique clock. Unaware or dismissive of the history of the notorious house it came from, he’s excited to place on it on the mantle above their fireplace.

His teenage children, Lisa (Megan Ward, TRANCERS II, 1991) and Rusty (Damon Martin, GHOULIES II, 1987), are happy to see him, as is his ex-girlfriend and art student Andrea Livingston (Shawn Weatherly, SHADOWZONE, 1990), who watched the kids while Jacob was gone.

Jacob convinces Andrea─in spite of her new boyfriend─to spend the night with him. Rusty─spirited, good-hearted, and sensitive─senses something weird about the clock, but he’s not sure what it is. One of the neighbors’ dogs (Peaches) also knows something’s wrong, and barks outside the Sterlings’ backdoor late at night, running away when Rusty opens the door to let the dog in.

The next day, Peaches, normally a peaceable canine, attacks Jacob while he goes on his morning run. Jacob, seriously wounded, survives the attack. The wound extends Andrea’s stay with the Sterlings, delighting Jacob─he wants her back. Weird stuff happens, like brief time-and-space shifts for those living within the house, and Jacob’s go-getter personality becomes darker, verging on violent─he refuses to have his bandages changed, despite his festering wounds.

After a spate of mean-spirited neighborhood vandalism, dark personality changes, and bizarre deaths of those near the Sterlings, the situation comes to a head, and Jacob goes full-psycho, with his clock-dominated house as a reality-shifting accomplice.

The clever dovetail ending is relatively happy and good, a creative breath of fresh air in a genre that too often favors unnecessary darkness in its filmic wrap-ups. (Shock or the-evil-survived finishes need not bash viewers over the head with obviousness, and such endings should do more than further a franchise’s financial profitability or be used to hide the fact that the filmmakers are creatively spent, producer-pushed or lazy.)

TIME is a good, low-budget, and slick B-flick, its storyline a mix of WAXWORK (1988) and a metaphor for toxic relationships. TIME is better than the two previous AMITYVILLE outings (AMITYVILLE 3-D, 1983, and AMITYVILLE HORROR: THE EVIL ESCAPES, 1989), building on the loosely linked storyline of ESCAPES.

Randel’s direction and DeFaria and Toro’s screenplay keeps the relatively goreless TIME moving along at a mostly solid, entertaining pace (even if I did wonder why Andrea stuck around the Sterlings’ disturbing household), with an effective object backstory that adds depth to this film and (possibly) the AMITYVILLE franchise, with all its disparate works.

TIME’s cast, ranging from good to great, is effective as well, with Macht nailing Jacob’s increasingly menacing attitude, Weatherly capably embodying Andrea’s flaws, struggles and overall good nature as she tries to save the Sterlings, and Nina Talbot (PUPPET MASTER II, 1990) as Iris Wheeler, Rusty’s afterschool chess-playing partner and occult-savvy neighbor. Fans of screen legend Dick Miller (PIRANHA, 1978) might be delighted to see his brief turn here as Mr. Anderson, who helps put out a yard fire.

TIME, a mostly fun, low-budget time-space-horror flick, is worth your time if you keep your expectations realistic about its budget, its era (the slick-flick 1980s-1990s), and don’t mind a few eye-rolling tropes (e.g., Andrea and Jacob’s sex scene) during its run-time.

THE CRIMSON CULT (1968)

 

(a.k.a. CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR. Director: Vernon Sewell. Screenwriters: Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, based on Jerry Sohl’s story, loosely extrapolated from H.P. Lovecraft’s story “Dreams in the Witch House.”)

 

Review

Antiques dealer Robert Manning (Mark Eden) visits his family’s English ancestral home of Greymarsh when his brother, Peter (Denys Peek), disappears during a business trip. Peter’s last known location is Craxted Lodge.

Once Robert arrives, he is warmly greeted by Craxted’s owner (Morley), a descendant of Lavinia Morley (a green-skinned Barbara Steele) who was burned at the stake in 1652. Also in residence is Eve Morley (Virginia Wetherell, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, 1971), Morley’s niece, who becomes Robert’s romantic interest and fellow investigator. A cryptic local historian of the occult (Professor John Marsh) also visits Craxted; he is barely civil to Robert.

Robert’s questions get the run-around treatment, so he further investigates, at night having kaleidoscopic nightmares about a green- and red-lit room, and half-naked servants (men and women) who hold goats and writhe around Lavinia, sitting on her throne.

Eventually, all becomes clear with help from surprising quarters, ending in a visually fun (cheesy for some) end-shot.

CRIMSON, is a mostly bland, silly admixture of a straightlaced murder mystery and pseudo-psychedelic hippie-ish Lovecraftian nightmare, with its filler party scenes, a sex scene, and overlong, investigative-dream sequences. By the time Robert has figured out what happened to his brother and why, it’s a great, is this movie done yet? situation. CRIMSON’s behind-the-scenes crew made a good-looking movie, made darker with Peter Knight’s spare, effective music score.

Beyond the seething and sensual Barbara Steele (PIRANHA, 1978), a big part of what CRIMSON gets right is its top-billed leads: Christopher Lee (SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, 1970) as the polite Morley, who is hiding something; Boris Karloff (BLACK SABBATH, 1963), in one of his final roles, as Professor John Marsh, whose brusque manners hide something as well; Michael Gough (DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS, 1965) as Elder, the Morleys’ troubled butler; and Rupert Davies (DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, 1968) as “The Vicar.”

CRIMSON, with its not-quite-psychedelic trial scenes, solid behind-the-scenes work and worthwhile actors, is a “meh”movie, not terrible, not great─and worth seeing if you’re a completist fan of any of its leads, as long as you expect CRIMSON to be one of their lesser flicks.