Cruel Jaws, DeepStar Six, Piranha, and Piranha II: The Spawning

Cruel Jaws – 1995, Italy/US, 95m. Director: Bruno Mattei. Streaming: Tubi

DeepStar Six – 1989, US, 99m. Director: Sean S. Cunningham. Streaming: N/A

Piranha – 1978, US, 93m. Director: Joe Dante. Streaming: AMC/Prime, Kanopy, Shudder, Tubi

Piranha II: The Spawning – 1982, Italy/US, 94m. Director: James Cameron. Streaming: N/A

CRUEL JAWS (1995) This shot-in-Florida Italian turd is so jaw-dropping in its ineptness it’s easy to see how it’s been virtually ignored for years. (Why the filmmakers put time into making a Jaws riff in the mid ’90s is baffling, considering the sub-genre had died out with the Reagan administration.) A literal Frankenstein’s monster of bits and pieces taken from other shark flicks (with a majority of the plot and footage stolen from another Italian production, The Last Shark) the movie concerns yet another beach town terrorized by yet another Great White. Is this really the best they could come up with? Oh, never mind. The characters are all worthless, the dialogue and situations absurd, and the pacing nonexistent. The makers of Cruel Jaws were so lazy they didn’t bother to put any effort into the shark attack sequences, instead relying on the stolen footage from Last Shark and Jaws 1-3, creating a literal (and inexplicable) time-warp of characters suddenly appearing in early ’80s fashions! Utter garbage from one of junk cinema’s most prolific hacks, Bruno Mattei. The director has apparently made a career out of plagiarism—Mattei’s mega-lame Dawn of the Dead clone, Hell of the Living Dead, lifts the plot (and Goblin soundtrack) from the Romero film. Definitely a movie that pulls its punches. F

DEEPSTAR SIX (1989) When word of James Cameron’s upcoming underwater epic, The Abyss, spread through Hollywood, it let loose hungry producers who were ready to jump aboard what they thought would be the next big sub-genre trend. It wasn’t. Cameron’s film received good notices from critics but wasn’t the box-office heavyweight many predicted. This was bad news for the other deep-sea adventure movies that year, especially the ones that opened first. Such is the case with DeepStar Six, a watery creature feature that by no means is good—but it’s not bad, either. Quite the contrary: this is a decent little flick with good acting, solid production values, and an effective (if little-seen) monster. An underwater military compound experimenting with a deep-sea missile silo is invaded by a monstrous crustacean, which proceeds to make mincemeat out of the compound’s various scientists, engineers, and grease monkeys. There’s a few gory moments—one poor diver gets bitten in half—and some suspense towards the end. This is all handled well by Sean S. Cunningham, although the director rips off his own Friday the 13th when the creature makes a surprise last minute appearance topside. It could have been much worse. It could have been Lords of the Deep. B

PIRANHA (1978) Intrepid skiptracer Maggie (Heather Menzies), along with mountain hermit, Paul (Bradford Dillman), stumble upon scientist, Dr. Hoak’s (Kevin McCarthy), hideaway lab while searching for missing teens and accidentally release a school of genetically-altered piranha into the nearby river. The blood-hungry fish were part of a disbanded government weapons experiment for Vietnam, which Dr. Hoak was secretly continuing after the war ended. The super-intelligent piranha eventually reach Lost River Lake, where a nearby summer camp and holiday resort make for an abundance of fleshy treats for the toothy terrors. After several patrons are turned into fish food, the army is called in—only to cover up the deaths and save face. A Jaws rip-off that’s actually good, Piranha doesn’t split hairs and presents its story in a tongue-in-cheek manner, which pays off wonderfully with a balanced mix of laughs and suspense. Actor/filmmaker Paul Bartel steals it as a drill sergeant-like camp counselor who sacrifices his flesh to save some kids from a piranha attack. Funny bit: when told about the situation, greedy resort owner Dick Miller asks, “What about the piranhas?” To which his assistant replies: “They’re eating the guests.” B+

PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING (1982) This might be James Cameron’s directorial debut, but Piranha II is an Italian production through and through. The guests at a chic Caribbean resort are high on the menu for a school of mutated piranha, which have taken up residence inside a sunken naval ship just off shore. Diving instructor and marine biologist Anne (Tricia O’Neil) thinks there’s something fishy going on when one of her students turns up with his face chewed off, but her arrogant ex-husband, Steve (Lance Henriksen), who just happens to be the town’s chief of police, is more concerned with Anne’s relationship with a flirtatious tourist (Steve Marachuk). More chewed-up bodies start appearing, but on land—that’s because the piranha have spawned wings and have turned into flying killers (inspiring the title of the European release, Piranha II: Flying Killers). Even more of a Jaws wannabe than the first Piranha, The Spawning lifts entire subplots from the Spielberg film, including the nay-saying hotel owner who refuses to close the beach for financial reasons. The script (co-written by Eurotrash producer, Ovidio G. Assonitis) is littered with cardboard characters and hackneyed situations; several tourists are eaten to death while attending a grunion beach party (oh, boy!). Lucio Fulci regular Giannetto De Rossi supplied the make-up FX and they’re mostly effective and bloody, but it’s not enough to distract from the overall lack of energy, so frequent in Joe Dante’s original. Ho-hum. C

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