Ahhh spaghetti horror with Lee Majors.A group of American terrorists blow up a Brazilian mining operation, in an attempt to heist a collection of jewels.They hide their take in a local lake...not realizing the waters are infested with piranha.Turns out, the man behind the whole operation, seeded the dam with piranha, to prevent anyone from betraying the group.Now, they're all dying.And only the most cunning will come away with the booty.I mean, this is obviously a complete ripoff of Joe Dante's Piranha from the year before...but it's also a bit different, and a little epic- at least in it's vision.Execution is another story.The acting is mediocre, at best. And the special effects are bad. So bad at some points, you can almost see the persons hand holding the things in a tank of water. Laughably bad, at least, and reliant upon models that look like fish tank props. Though, they do give the film some of it's charm. It's the story, which has a lot going on, that saves this from totally sucking. But it's still pretty bad. Worth a laugh if anything.3.5 out of 10.

Entertaining B-movie fun from Italian director Antonio Margheriti, here going for an international approach with a leading American cast and location filming in Brazil and Rio De Janeiro. Otherwise it's business as usual as Margheriti keeps things moving nicely along with his trademark miniature effects work as the B-grade cast go through the paces and look to be enjoying themselves. The special effects are pretty poor, it has to be said, and the film is episodic in nature with some parts much more entertaining than others. However it ends with a rousing finale in which the entire cast find themselves on the middle of the piranha-infested lake in a sinking ship and macho heroics and dastardly traitorous tricks rule the day. I always enjoy such plot contrivances as this and time spent waiting for the next expendable to get munched makes for an enjoyable viewing experience.Once again Margheriti practises with mixing up the genres. At heart this is an adventure film and as such is full of colourful exotic locales and attractive actors and actresses. However, other genre elements often come into play. There are romances and human drama between the principal characters. The opening of the film, complete with a full-scale planned robbery, is straight out of an old crime flick. Then halfway through, elements of the disaster movie surface with the arrival of a tornado (a really poorly animated one, it has to be said - it'll have you gasping and reaching for the rewind button) which rips through the scenery destroying everything in its path, setting things up for the taut finale on the sinking boat. And of course, considering director Margheriti's pedigree, there are the expected horror elements on view too.Lots of people get eaten by the piranha, it goes without saying, dying in pools of blood and gristle and screaming. We get to see partially-eaten skeletons resting on the ocean floor in genuinely macabre underwater explorations and the piranha themselves - the animation isn't half bad, it has to be said - as they rip great chunks out of their victims. The characterisation is rather poor, it has to be said, with all of the major players just one-dimensional stereotypes - Lee Majors as the rough hero, James Franciscus as the bad guy. The exception to this rule is Karen Black, who has fun playing a multi-layered criminal torn between her love for Majors and joining Franciscus in his plan to get the loot. Although she times overacts to an embarrassing extent, overall Black's presence can be regarded as a plus thanks to her interesting character.Majors of course was in hot demand at the time due to the success of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and he makes for a dependable square-jawed hero with plenty of eyebrow-raising. No revelations on the acting front but at least he has plenty of heroics to get his teeth into. The supporting cast of pretty ladies like Margaux Hemingway and Marisa Berenson is easy on the eye, whilst James Franciscus has the role of the great unscrupulous bad guy and plays the part with relish. Although made on an obvious low budget, some of Margheriti's miniature effects work hits the mark, especially in the sequence in which a dam breaks as the result of the tornado and the flood waters crash down into the valley, all good stuff. And the last twenty minutes of excitement is enough to make you forgive KILLER FISH for the flaws in the story that have come before and the occasional lapse in interest. A flawed and minor film, yes, but there's enough here to satisfy the appetite of the thrill-seeking genre fan.

Killer Fish is yet another Jaws inspired horror flick from the late 70's. Set in South America, it's about thieves who steal a box of diamonds and then throw it into a lake in order to hide them. The plan is to retrieve the booty once the heat dies down but unfortunately it turns out the lake is infested with piranhas making retrieval of the stolen goods a little tricky. Distrust and betrayal quickly set in amongst the thieves.This flick was directed by Antonio Margheriti who was a prolific but fairly middling Italian director responsible for the likes of Naked You Die (1968). This flick was obviously one of the many water-based horror flicks from the time but for the first two thirds of the movie it's more-or-less a crime film. The piranhas of the title take a while to get involved and it's only towards the end that we actually see them. But once a dam breaks and the killer fish are set loose around the surrounding area, the movie moves more squarely into horror territory. The cast isn't too bad all things considered. We have the cheesy Lee Majors in the ostensibly good guy role. The interesting Karen Black is one of the thieves torn between Majors and the brains behind the gang, James Franciscus. Black and Franciscus are better actors than Majors and have more interesting parts.It maybe could be argued that Killer Fish tries to do too much by being a hybrid crime/horror film. And maybe its focus can get a bit lost but it is a decent time-filler and is fairly well made and acted. It's pretty low-budgeted but there is some decent model work and effects in the opening power-plant assault mission as well as the dam bursting sequence. Of additional note, there is a rather hilarious scene where a fat photographer gets eaten by the piranhas – for some reason the group thinks it would be best to send out the only clinically obese member of the team on a pathetically flimsy raft first as a try out. Needless to say that idea ends in tears.

Killer Fish is set in Brazil & starts as a gang of thieves carry out an elaborate raid on a mining company & manage to steal millions in valuable diamonds, as the police search for them they dump the diamonds into a lake. Safely back at their hotel discussing their plans the thieves decide to wait 60 days before collecting the diamonds & splitting them, criminal mastermind Paul Diller (James Franciscus) remains calm but other's get impatient & feel that they may be double crossed. Two of the gang decide to fish the diamonds out of the lake for themselves but find that the lake is full of deadly Piranha & become fish food, all part of Paul's plan the other's eventually retrieve the diamonds but find themselves stuck when their boat sinks. Trying to hitch a ride back in a boat used for a nearby fashion shoot a fierce storm breaks a dam & the boat is damaged & left slowing sinking in the middle of the Piranha infested lake...Also know under the title Deadly Treasure of the Piranha this Italian, British, Brazillian & American co-production was directed by Antonio Margheriti under his usual Anthony M. Dawson alias on English language versions I have known about this film for some time & always thought it sounded quite fun but have never had to opportunity to watch it before but it was shown on cable telly over here in the UK last week so jumped at the chance to finally see it. Was the wait worth it? Yes & no, while I didn't hate it & it has it's moments I was a little disappointed by it. The script is more a crime thriller than a straight horror film, the Piranha are more of a subplot to the arguing thieves & fashion shoots than anything else. The whole film feels silly, virtually everything that happens is dumb or daft, the vicious storm that lasts for about thirty seconds, the idea that if your going to steal some precious diamonds do it as noisily as possible so as to attract as much attention as possible, Piranha that attack people ten seconds after they enter the water, silly character's who are so one dimensional it's scary, a boat with a hole in it that takes ages to sink until everyone is off it then it sinks in about five seconds & some really stiff dialogue from the international cast. At just under 100 minutes once the group get stuck on the lake in the sinking boat during the second half it picks up but the preceding half is dull & boring with only an explosive start to get you interested. Killer Fish is a bit of a mess really, the plot doesn't hold up at all & as a crime thriller it's fairly dull while as a horror film it fails to deliver the goods. Having said that Killer Fish has a few unintentional laughs, it moves along at a fair pace & it's a decent enough way to pass a couple of hours if your bored one lazy afternoon. Just don't expect anything amazing or particularly believable.Killer Fish looks a little cheap, while there are plenty of explosions & things get blown up the model work is often embarrassing, part of the problem is you can't miniaturise water so little droplets of water in reality look like the size of cannonballs compared to the models & just doesn't convince. I still don't understand why the gang of thieves need to deliberately blow so many things up at the start, why draw so much attention to yourselves? The Piranha attack scenes are badly edited, you know the sort of thing where we see some actor splashing around in the water then quick shots of a few Piranha, it's all rather choppy. There's not much gore here, there are a couple of skeletons, a few Piranha bites, a bit of blood & that's it.Filmed in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil the locations are nice enough & I suspect most of the cast took a role in this for the free holiday. Lee Majors from The Six Million Dollar Man (1974-1978) & The Fall Guy (1981-1986) looks bored while the late James Franciscus is OK as the main bad guy.Killer Fish sounds better than it actually is, but then can't that be said about so many films? It passes the time & is silly & sometimes funny & has a few explosions in it & a few Piranha attacks but overall I didn't think it was anything special thanks to the dumbness of it all & a very poor set of character's.