Mega Piranha

The Asylum

Peacock Films

R4 DVD

Mega Piranha was the highest rated movie on the SYFY Cable TV channel in the US for 2010. Obviously it was not celebrated for its serious sci-fi content, suspense or even acting, no I think it was celebrated as the most audacious piece of B grade monster movie trash made in quite a while. This is extremely low budget schlock which centres on a truly insane plot. Scientists have engineered a mutant form of piranha which is getting exponentially larger by the hour and is chomping its way from South America to Florida! I kid you not, this is the plot which is even further enlivened by a stereotypical view of gung-ho Americans and South American military dictatorships.

Paul Logan is Jason Fitch, Navy Seal and all American hero. When an American diplomat and the foreign affairs minister for Venezuela go missing he is sent into investigate. The local military Junta are convinced that the killing was committed by terrorists or worse, elements of the CIA but there is another possibility. Fitch is met at the airport by Sarah Monroe (played by faded 80s pop sensation Tiffany of one hit wonder fame “Do you think we’re alone now”) who advises him that she is a scientist in a project by UNESCO and that an experiment to increase the meat content of fish has gone terribly wrong. Rather than increasing the protein content of edible fish, the project has created a monster piranha which is not only exponentially increasing in size but is a hermaphrodite and hence reproduces all by itself.

Sent to Venezuela by Bob Grady (played by Barry Williams/Greg Brady) he tries to negotiate with the local military. Only when a super large piranha is slammed on the desk do they believe what is happening. They try and use every possible weapon on hand to kill them but even bombing them doesn’t work. Of course by now they are as big as cows and are eating through boats and flying out of the water like Kamikaze. But these fish just keep growing, as the insanity of the movie increases, they become the size of small houses and thrown themselves into buildings ! The sight of badly rendering CGI mega fish the size of a house throwing themselves from the ocean into Florida townhouses is hilarious as is much of the film.

Since the threat becomes more and more serious, I mean these damn fish have eaten a battle ship, a helicopter and a nuclear submarine, they bring out the ultimate weapon, the good old American soldier, oozing masculinity from every pore and with a grunt and a growl ready to save the day. At last these pesky fish are made to bleed and they turn on each other in a feeding frenzy and the danger to civilization has passed.

This is a movie which needs to be celebrated for what it is, a B grade schlock monster film which does not try to be anything else. It is unapologetically silly with exaggerated characters, bad CGI and comic book heroes and rivals which make it a sensationally great laugh.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 4 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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