‘The bastards fly…’
You might think that the fact that this film was directed by James Cameron (yes, that one) would be the most remarkable thing about Piranha II: The Spawning. Well, remarkable as that is, it comes secondary to the fact that in Piranha II: The Spawning, the eponymous piranha can fucking fly…
As one might expect, there isn’t much here in terms of plot. A bunch of military-enhanced piranha fish have spawned (past tense – we don’t actually see the spawning promised in the title) and they can fly obviously and they start attacking a bunch of mostly topless women and feckless men. Cameron favourite Lance Henriksen plays the main character, and as always, he brings his weird energy to the role, but the rest of the cast range from forgettable to largely incompetent.
While this project was taken away from Cameron (he staged a break-in at the editing room at one point to try and wrestle back control of the project), there are still some of his flourishes intact. The underwater scenes (something Cameron would later explore in depth in his later work) are actually pretty good and to his credit, the many, many scenes that involve naked women are shot with almost a despairing sigh rather than anything approaching voyeurism. One of the issues here is that while the first Piranha movie (shout out to Joe Dante) was a parody of Jaws, this sequel is just a straight-up rip-off. Unsurprisingly, Piranha II: The Spawning compares unfavourably to one of the greatest summer blockbusters ever made and indeed it even compares unfavourably with the film that preceded it.
This is a bad film. Of that there can be no doubt. To say this is a film about flying piranhas, there are nowhere near enough flying piranhas here. I want swarms of the damn things. When they do appear here, it is quite clear that they are just plastic piranhas on the end of a stick. And while that sounds like it should be fun, after the first attack it just becomes tedious. James Cameron has all but disowned this film now. It’s easy to see why.
