1979, Movies

Killer Fish [L’invasion des piranhas] (1979, Antonio Margheriti)

This is an extremely lame film that attempts to combine the heist film with horror, I think, but which fails to do either even moderately well.

SPOILERS

This is one of those films with recognizable actors filmed in a foreign country for cheap. The plot, such as it is, is there is an emerald heist and the whole rest of the film is various people trying to double cross each other, the primary means of which is piranhas (seriously).

Even though only a few people are involved in the actual heist, a lot of people are actually involved. And the film is basically a bunch of people getting “eaten” by the piranhas and then everyone getting trapped by the piranhas and trying to double cross each other. That’s basically it.

It’s quite the boring movie and it really doesn’t make sense the number of people supposedly ware of the heist. And there’s no gore, just red colouring of water. So you don’t get to laugh at any funny or preposterous deaths, you don’t ever get scared and you aren’t compelled by the plot twists because, once they happen, they are both not clever and make no sense.

I can’t even muster much emotion for this review. It’s just a dull, dull movie with a really dumb conceit. (I mean, what kind of con job is it to throw your loot into a lake you filled with piranhas to slowly kill off your fellow thieves?)

The only reason I’m not giving it lower marks is because it is competently made and the American actors are all real actors apparently unaware they’re in such a bad movie. The cast is better than most movies of this quality and they really do appear to be trying. And the film is not obviously awful from a technical standpoint (except for that plane crash).

3/10

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