"Piranha" is an very underrated little masterpiece. It starts out very slow and moves faster and faster until it comes to a very dramatic end.
Ahna Capri (from "Enter the Dragon") plays the Photographer Terry who comes with her brother Art (70ies regular Tom Simcox) to Venzuela to shoot photos. Jim Pendrake (played by B-movie star Peter Brown, unforgotten as bad guy in "Foxy Brown") is their leader through the jungle. In a bar they meet the mysterious hunter Caribe, played by the greatest B-movie actor of all times, William Smith. Smiths performance is outstanding, one of his best ever.
Caribe does not only hunt animals, he hunts everything that moves and that includes people, too. He invites Terry, Art and Jim into his house. While the man are away he rapes Terry. Art wants to revenge his sister and is the first who dies.
Jim and Terry try to escape but Caribe follows them, burns down a village but they could escape him (but only this time).
At Caribe's house it comes to a very dramatic showdown, he kills Jim until the hunter himself gets shot by his victim.
"Piranha" plays with the idea of Manhunt which was a main theme in a classic movie that was made almost 40 years earlier: "The Most Dangerous Game" from 1932 from Meridian Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the makers of "King Kong" (1933).
The beautiful landscape of Venezuela stands in confrontation to the heavy violence of his movie. It's a very rare and underrated movie!
Ahna Capri (from "Enter the Dragon") plays the Photographer Terry who comes with her brother Art (70ies regular Tom Simcox) to Venzuela to shoot photos. Jim Pendrake (played by B-movie star Peter Brown, unforgotten as bad guy in "Foxy Brown") is their leader through the jungle. In a bar they meet the mysterious hunter Caribe, played by the greatest B-movie actor of all times, William Smith. Smiths performance is outstanding, one of his best ever.
Caribe does not only hunt animals, he hunts everything that moves and that includes people, too. He invites Terry, Art and Jim into his house. While the man are away he rapes Terry. Art wants to revenge his sister and is the first who dies.
Jim and Terry try to escape but Caribe follows them, burns down a village but they could escape him (but only this time).
At Caribe's house it comes to a very dramatic showdown, he kills Jim until the hunter himself gets shot by his victim.
"Piranha" plays with the idea of Manhunt which was a main theme in a classic movie that was made almost 40 years earlier: "The Most Dangerous Game" from 1932 from Meridian Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the makers of "King Kong" (1933).
The beautiful landscape of Venezuela stands in confrontation to the heavy violence of his movie. It's a very rare and underrated movie!