Lack of good storyline.

A lot of fun.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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.

After stealing a fortune worth of jewels a group of thieves hide their stolen loot in a box and throw it into a nearby lake. Proving the adage that "there is no honor among thieves" two of them decide to sneak out to the lake and retrieve it prior to the specified time. What they don't realize is that the mastermind behind the robbery named "Paul Diller" (James Franciscus) put some piranha in this lake a year or two earlier to protect it from just such an attempt. His plan works as the person attempting to swim toward the box is rapidly consumed. Later these same piranha also kill two more thieves as well. But protecting the treasure isn't the only thing Paul has on his mind. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that I found it to be better than I initially thought it would be as it managed to combine elements of a crime caper with that of a horror film along the lines of "Piranha" as well. Of course, having two attractive actresses like Margaux Hemingway (as "Gabrielle") and Marisa Berenson ("Ann") certainly didn't hurt either. In any case, I liked this particular film and have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

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.

I saw this movie yesterday. I liked the beginning. A couple of jewelery-thiefs carries out a plan to steal some jewels near a powerplant and a barrage. They succeed to steal them and also avoid getting caught when "escaping". They hide the bait in a preplanned secret place for them to recover later on. So far so good. In this part of the movie i thought that "yes! this could be a quite a good/exciting/thrilling movie to watch.." But when they gather together afterwards, a "new" twist in the plot appears or comes up to surface. One member of the company has already planned a deceiving backstabbing plan to get hold of the treasure alone. And how that is done and carried out in the movie is where I get a bit disappointed. I don't gonna say how, but the realism in that plan is far from reliable. It's quite dull how it is carried out and how the actors acts/behaves in that part of the movie. As the title of the movie claims, there is a human threat in the movie called as we all know "piranhas". Small and dangerous predators. But I don't like how they are described in the movie. Of course they can be dangerous to other mammals and us humans, but they don't attack that easily in real life as in the movie. For what I have learned blood and hunger triggers an attack. With that in mind you can wonder how in h-ll they can attack people so easily as in this movie and will they not ever stop being hungry for one single moment!!!?? They just keep attacking and attacking. I'm not gonna let out all details in this movie, I stop here. However this movie does not s-ck totally. it has some tense/exciting moments but you will probably get bored out quickly. At least i did. I Grade it 4/10.