Piranha (1978)

Joe Dante is in many ways a director out of his time, since the creature features he has been making for nearly thirty years now are like something more likely to be encountered in the terrible 1950s, even if the budgets have been growing larger.  This little horror flick produced by Roger Corman is something of a "Jaws" rip-off, but done with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, and unlike the teen horror movies of the 1980s, not just bad folk or raunchy kids end up dead.  The film is interesting in so many ways.  For a start the female lead is Heather Menzies, not a name that rings many bells and not an actress who had much of a noteworthy career -- until you realise that she was one of the von Trapp sprogs in "The Sound of Music".  Playing a detective trying to trace two lost hikers, she discovers the abandoned government research station where they have been devoured by flesh-eating fish and promptly empties the pool, thereby releasing the killer-fish into the waterways of the great Northwest.  Of course she blames Kevin McCarthy for this as he was the scientist who bred the little devils in the first place, but together with sometime-drunk Bradford Dillman she sets out to save the world -- but not before the fish have a bloody nibble at a summer camp where Dillman's daughter is staying and at a newly opened swimming resort.  The owner of said resort is another genre favourite, Dick Miller, who has been forewarned about the piranhas but who refuses to take action.  At one stage his frazzled sidekick tries to tell him that there is a problem.  Miller says, "What about the damned piranhas?" and his toady replies that "the piranhas are eating the guests".  (Great line).  Add to the mix other cult actors like Paul Bartel and Barbara Steele and you have a film buff's idea of heaven, especially when you add the fact that the script was penned by John Sayles (who also appears in a brief cameo).  And like all good horror films the smug scientist at the end assures the world that the problem has been contained -- but we know better...