Piranha 2: The Spawning (1981)

Piranha II: Flying Killers
Piranha paura
Spawning

Cast:

Tricia "I captained the Enterprise: NCC-1701-C" O'Neil is Anne Kimbrough
Steve Marachuk is Tyler Sherman
Lance "Near Dark's Head Vampire" Henriksen is Police Chief Steve Kimbrough
Ted Richert is Raoul, Hotel Manager
Leslie Graves is Allison Dumont

What the box says:

The people who have to come Club Elysium are in for the vacation of a lifetime! When a canister of "killer" Piranha eggs is lost by the U.S. Army's special assignment crew, the fish hatch into a mass of mutilators. They attack the unsuspectings visitors not only underwater, but just about anywhere. The gene-splicing experiment enables the carnivorous fish to fly and to survive out of water. An enraged diving instructor and a guilt-ridden bio-chemist devise a plan to oblitirate teh murderous munchers. Action-packed, entertainign excitement for everyone!

Plot:

At a sunken ship, let the SCUBA fu ensue. The woman decides she wants the guy to release his depth charge. The Piranhas attack.

Day, at Club Elysium, Chris, teen boy, wakes his mom, Anne Kimbrough. He wants to go back to Dad’s place. Oh, family tension between the parents.

Various pseudo-Love Boat characters attack our senses including a creepy woman hitting on a lifeguard.

Sheriff Steve (OK Lance Henriksen) catches a Gabby and his son dynamite fishing.

Chris meets “CAPTAIN DUMONT” who hired him as a deck hand. By the way, Dumont makes Higgins from Magnum PI seems like Chuck Norris. Anyways, Chris is more interested in Dumont’s daughter, Allison.

On the beach, gold-digger chick is saved from drowning by the uber-nerdy dentist.

Raoul, the hotel manager, is scheduling events. Apparently, people love when the grunion swim ashore to mate and then people run out to grab and cook them for a big fish fry.

On the sea, Sheriff Lance catches up with Dumont’s yacht and talks with his son, Chris.

Some trollop is stealing food and booze but is caught by chef, Mel. She persuades him to let her have the stuff by letting them “party” with her and her friend, Loretta.

Anne, dive instructor, briefs her class before diving around a recently sunk supply ship. Underwater, some guy sneaks into the ship and is promptly piranha eaten. Anne heads in and finds the body.

Sheriff Lance learns that one of Annie’s students died. He heads to the beach to question her. She is sure that it couldn’t have been any local marine creatures. Another student, Tyler Sherman, defends Anne. She wants to see the body to identify what killed the guy.

At the dock, Trollop and Loretta are waiting for Mel to bring the food. They get the stuff and sail away embarrassing Rainman Mel.

Allison is talking with Chris.

Elsewhere, the party girls discover the Piranhas flying aboard and attack.

Tyler is chasing Anne around and hitting on her. She takes him to the morgue. Anne inspects the corpse and takes some photos of the body when a nurse catches them and makes them leave. Later, a Piranha that has been hiding in the corpse flies out and kills the nurse.

Anne studies the photos and mentions the piranha experiment from the original movie: Piranha. Well enough science discussion let the lovin’ ensue.

Sheriff Lance finds the yacht with the 2 dead girls. He heads to the morgue finding the dead nurse and evidence that Anne was there too. Rushing to the resort, he finds Anne and Sherman in bed. Lance warns her to stay out of this mess and refuses to listen to her fish theory.

Anne talks with Raoul. Wanting to cancel the dive trips, he fires her.

Elsewhere, Tyler calls someone and is sure that found it. He wants Anne to help him.

Later, Anne dives back at the ship. Piranhas chase her. She’s saved by Tyler. First, he tries warning her off and reveals that 4 canisters of piranha eggs and only 3 were recovered. Tyler is a biochemist and spliced genes from the air-breathing grunions, flying fish, and the bloodthirstiness of the piranha. He needs more data and has to take this through the proper channels.

Sheriff Lance is show torn fishing nets and finds a partially devoured fish.

Anne tries convincing Raoul again to no avail. Lance shows part of a piranha wing. Raoul isn’t impressed.

Piranhas attack and kill Gabby’s son.

Lance learns that Tyler is considered a nut-job and disavowed by the Pentagon. He decides to go after Chris.

Gabby finds his dead son.

Lance flies off in the chopper to find Chris. He reaches Dumont’s boat and learns that Chris and Allison took the dingy out.

Chris and Allison are frolicking on a beach.

Gabby starts rigging several dynamite bombs with electrical timers when Tyler finds him.

Back at Club Elysium, the reggae band is getting funky. Raoul gives the speech about staying off the beach until the grunion are ashore.

Anne learns that Gabby’s son is dead. He plans to destroy the wreck.

Piranhas leave the water and take the beach and head after the drunken party-goers. Gabby charges the flying killer fish before being killed.

Chris and Allison are in the boat but lost.

Anne heads to Gabby’s dock and finds Tyler with the charges.

Chris and Allison spot some lights in the distance and head for them.

Anne decides to bomb the wreck but wants Lance to find Chris.

More dive fu, Tyler and Anne plumb the depths to plant the charges. Piranha vision ensues. Our human heroes barricade themselves in the wreck to keep the piranhas out.

Early morning, Chris and Allison flag Lance’s shopper. Lance abandons the chopper before it blows up and rescues the kids with a boat.

Back at the wreck, Anne and Tyler try another way to escape. The timers are getting closer to the detonation. As they make their final escape, the piranhas get Tyler. Anne gets away by grabbing onto Lance’s boat anchor. (That wasn’t any dumb pickup line.)

The explosion rocks the area. Lance, Chris, and Allison are distraught until Anne surfaces. Anne and Lance embrace, let the touching reunion ensue.

What I say:

Is it Roundtable time again after Christmas in July? Some Rogue Reviewers, B-Masters, and various other truly ninjaliscious reviewers have decided to do unite though in a non-Voltron manner and do a roundtable. So for my ten of fans, there will be plenty of other ninjexcellent reviewers for you to get your read on with (Grammar alert, sentences shouldn't end in prepositions. Or if you stumbled onto my site from another reviewer, I hope you found at least one lame joke to chuckle to for wasting your time reading my review before going on to one far funnier and entertaining...) With sun, surf, and monsters. That doesn't have a good ring to it...Beach, blood, babes, bikinis, beasts, breasticals...Got to love the Joe Bob Briggs style alliteration. Yes, it is B-MOVIE BEACH PARTY!

After Piranha, a few years later we get James Cameron directing the sequel which was financed in Italy. A James Cameron movie on sideorderofninjas? Hard to believe that his next movie was the Terminator which had Lance Henriksen getting capped by Arnie. Well, apparently, Cameron wasn't happy with this movie and was even kept from editing it to his preferences.

OK, the US Army lost some killer piranha eggs. Not just killer piranha eggs but specially genetically engineered piranhas that can survive out of water. But that isn't bad enough, they must be able to fly? YES, air-breathing flying piranhas. Flying piranhas are like vampire bats. They fly and automatically home in on bipedal oxygen breather's throats. Sure, they also had some fish for snacks that resemble the things in the latest Long John Silver commercials. People who think that air-breathing flying piranhas are a good idea. Just saying that aloud should get you to get a good idea of how completely insane that is. Fiction has things that reside out of reality but air-breathing flying piranhas are almost as good as kamikaze missile carrying penguins from Batman Returns. Give them a few hundred years, the Aliens would be a brilliant idea for biological weapons by the people in Bio-Weapons at the Weyland Yutani Corporation.

Lance Henriksen has been joked as the one man who could make potato chip commercials intense. He is probably best known for Bishop in the other James Cameron movie, Alien or being one of the 2 guys that has been onscreen with a Xenomorph, Predator, and a Terminator. (The other was Bill Paxton...) I have reviewed a few of Lance's movies before like Damien: Omen 2 which can't really count with his role just being barely above a cameo, Last Samurai, and Near Dark. Really, this was a period before Lance was as well known as he is now even most people would only recognize his as a supporting actor or maybe that guy from the X-Files spinoff Millennium.

Numerous sci-fi movies have the kids that hate either parent because of them spending all their time with the job or because they broke up with their spouse. In fact, the typical kid apparently has the complete justifaction to act so annoying and whiny that a Quaker would round house kick them into realm of excrutiating humilation for being whooped by a Quaker. Anyways, this may be one of the few movies that actually has a separated couple with a kid who doesn't despise either parent.

Tyler is the movie scientist investigating the dangers of his experiment. Well, he was a little late and needed "evidence" which led to deaths which led to him being piranha chow. Sci-Fi and horror movies have the typical moral that the Wages of Science is Death. Every mad scientist must get there just desserts in a sugar free, non-caloric death except if selling killer kool whip like in the The Stuff. Horror movies have the double standard of punishing people who break moral codes but revel in showing them breaking morality which leads to their deaths especially when you fool around with Lance Henriksen's wife in a movie.

Never has a group of people rushing onto a moonlit beach to grab fish that beach themselves for mating while the people for a fish fry ever sound so...entertaining. Wait, that's not the word. What word means "incredibly stupid beyond the realm of super drunk frat-boys"? Yes, a group of vactioners are lured to a resort that's big claim to fame is grabbing fish that beach themselves. I'm sure the early 1980s would explain better why anyone would want to do that. Probably, the vactioners are coming off from being coked out of their minds for years in disco and needed something extremely stupid until the hair metal of Warrant set them free and blasted drunken fish grabbing into the annals of dead trends.

Piranha 2 gets a thumbs up for not stealing from Jaws the infamous, "This was no boating accident" quote.

Quotable Dialogue
"I explain the spawning for their benefit."
"Loretta's hip..."
"Do you dive on the first date?"
"Boy, you are one fun chick."
"They developed a killer fish to screw up the rivers in Vietnam."
"I wonder what caused this paranoid delusiion."
"We want Fish!!We want fish!!"
"Words cannot describe the trouble we're in."
Morals of the Story
Teen boys wrestling with their mothers who look like a slightly less endowed Adrienne Barbeau is disconcerting.
Divers wear cowboy hats.
Beach sand needs to be raked.
It is easy to genetically engineer piranhas to fly and breathe air.
All small towns will allow anything to happen to not to risk hurting tourist dollars.
Military experiments aren't contained in shatterproof glass.