PIRANHA (1978)

Director: Joe Dante

Writers: John Sayles, Richard Robinson

Producer: Jon Davison

Cast: Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Bartel, Belinda Balaski, Melody Thomas Scott, Shannon Collins, Barbara Steele, Dick Miller, Keenan Wynn, Bruce Gordon, Barry Brown, Shawn Nelson, Richard Deacon, Janie Squire, Roger Richman, John Sayles (uncredited), Guich Koock, Bill Smillie, Eric Henshaw, Jack Pauleson, Virginia Dunnam, Diamond Farnsworth, Robyn Ray, Robert Vinson, Mike Sullivan, Bruce Paul Barbour, Jack Cardwell (Brandy the dog)

Skip tracer Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is sent to Texas to find a young couple. Her search leads her to a remote area where she meets an unemployed, hard-drinking recluse named Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman). She convinces him to be her guide and together they explore the nearby, seemingly abandoned US Army facility where a pool and lab were kept to use for bioweapon research. Finding some clothing and hiking gear that belonged to the missing couple, Maggie drains the pool to see if their bodies are at the bottom. Unfortunately, this has released a school of voracious mutant piranha into the local river that head downstream towards a summer camp and the newly opened Lost River water park.

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Piranha is the best of all the nature-attacks flicks that followed in the bloody wake of Jaws (1975). Although it is another man-eating fish horror film, it is hardly just a rip-off. It deals with other themes and uses a sci-fi angle to create its menace. This makes the film fresh while still delivering more of the summertime, waterlogged terror its audience expected.

John Sayles’ and Richard Robinson’s script goes a long way to distinguish this film from its Jaws inspiration. It has a lot of humor that never goes so far as to diminish the horror or our involvement in the situations and the main characters. The story raises concerns about the direction that military research can still go in peacetime. As one character states: There will always be wars. There also will always be cover-ups and greed that can jeopardize public safety.

After co-directing Hollywood Boulevard (1976), which included horror elements, Joe Dante’s first solo directed film Piranha established him as someone who knows how to deliver multi-faceted exploitation that should satisfy any fright flick fan. The film has nice images, suspenseful build-ups to the bloody climaxes, race-against-time pacing, and good performances from its simply drawn characters.

Heading up the cast are Heather Menzies and Bradford Dillman. As our skip tracer heroine Maggie McKeown, Menzies is the impulsive and confident counterpoint to Dillman’s surly recluse Paul Grogan. Dillman often played unlikable characters, so it is fun to see him here eventually shift into hero mode. They make an appealing pair of protagonists because they are not presented as infallible icons ready to kick ass and save the day. They have their faults and quirks that make them interesting and that’s why we are rooting for them. Their initial friction with each other and then their teamwork provides humor that enlivens their ongoing efforts to stop the piranha threat.

Kevin McCarthy, as the hermit scientist Dr. Robert Hoak, provides another hysterical warning about a sci-fi menace as he did back in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). This time around, he is responsible for developing the menace that is unknowingly unleashed by our heroine Maggie McKeown. Hoak provides the necessary and interesting exposition about his research that helps to establish the film’s cynicism regarding government and the military.

That '60s Italian horror film icon Barbara Steele is a presence as unsettling as the piranha. Her character of government scientist Dr. Mengers had collaborated with Hoak on the development of the new piranha species. Unlike Hoak, she is not conflicted about the deadly consequences of the experiment getting out of control. Her assurances to the public are more about public relations than public safety.

Paul Bartel, as the priggish summer camp director Dumont, and Dick Miller, as Lost River Aquarena entrepreneur Buck Gardner, provide plenty of humor. They also contribute to the terror and tragedy as they refuse to believe the warnings of danger about the escaped piranha.

Two years before summer camps became the preferred stomping grounds for murdering maniacs, Piranha racks up a bloody body count that includes a lot of preteens among its victims. This lends an extra nasty edge to the flick that reminds us just how high the stakes are if this menace is not stopped.

Since the script, direction, and performances engage us in different ways with horror, humor, science fiction, and suspicion of authority, this movie has just enough complexity to make this escapist fun very satisfying. Piranha is a perennial summertime film favorite of mine, so in those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, I invite you to take a trip down Lost River. If you like blood with your bikinis, you can’t go wrong.

ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL (2006)

Director: Terry Zwigoff

Writer: Daniel Clowes (inspired by his comic book story)

Producers: Daniel Clowes, John Malkovich, Lianne Halfon, Russell Smith

Cast: Max Minghella, Sophia Myles, John Malkovich, Joel David Moore, Jim Broadbent, Ethan Suplee, Matt Keeslar, Nick Swardson, Steve Buscemi (uncredited), Anjelica Huston, Adam Scott, Jack Ong, Jeremy Guskin, Isaac Laskin, Scoot McNairy, Monika Ramnath, Jeanette Brox, Shelly Cole, Finneus Egan, Jean St. James, Cristen Coppen, Katherine Moennig, Michael Shamus Wiles, Ezra Buzzington, Lauren Lee Smith, Chris L. McKenna, Paul Collins, Travis Walck, Valyn Hall, Lauren Bowles, Marshall Bell, Dick Bakalyan, Kimi Reichenberg, Alex Ryan, Marc Vann, Brian Turk, Michael Lerner, Zachary Maurer, Erik M. Walker

Young Jerome Platz (Max Minghella) decides to attend the Strathmore Institute art school drawn by the photo of the life class model shown in the school’s brochure. Jerome’s artistic ambitions are constantly frustrated by many of his talentless classmates and his apathetic and cynical teachers. When Audrey (Sophia Myles), the nude model from the college brochure, poses for his drawing class, Jerome is immediately smitten. However, Jonah (Matt Keeslar), a hunky and seemingly untalented fellow student, begins dating Audrey sending Jerome’s spirits into a downward spiral. To make college life even grimmer, there has been a series of slayings on campus by the “Strathmore Strangler.”

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Once again director Terry Zwigoff joined quirky comedic forces with cartoonist Daniel Clowes to adapt another of Clowes’ comic book stories. The original “Art School Confidential” that had appeared in Clowes’ Eightball comic book was a short, autobiographical piece about Clowes’ college days in art school. The movie is a fictional dark comedy written by Clowes and informed by his art school experiences and artistic temperament. Clowes continues to dwell on the dolts, losers, and jerks that are as prevalent in the world of the aspiring artist as anywhere else in society. Affectation, ambition, and ego run rampant and often confound any artistic idealism.

It is a shame that Art School Confidential never achieved as positive a reception as the earlier Zwigoff directed adaptation of Clowes’ comic book serial Ghost World (2001). To be sure, this film is much darker in tone while still delivering plenty of quirky character comedy. It seems far more cynical in its attitude throughout and ends not on a note of “what’s next?” melancholy but with a rather bleak triumph that is perplexing and/or depressing. The whole point of the film seems to be that attention-getting spectacle is more important to the masses than artistic talent. Talent is only lauded if it is noticed, and how it gets noticed is often due to anything but artistry.

Max Minghella plays the central character of the sincere and talented artist Jerome Platz. He resents the lax standards of grading at his school and struggles to grasp just how to achieve any success in the art world when those around him have no talent and can’t appreciate his. The fact that he is away from home for the first time and trying to figure out how one is supposed to get along in the “real world” as an artist makes him quite sympathetic. I had never seen Minghella in a role before and was quite shocked to find out that he is an English actor. He delivers a great performance as the disillusioned American art student.

Sophia Myles is another Britisher in the cast as the American art class model Audrey. She is always convincing as the unaffected free spirit that in other films would probably be trying to hit us over the head with her individualism. Audrey does not make character proclamations or strive to confound anything or anyone. She does not distract from the crux of the story about Jerome seeking artistic validation and Audrey’s love. 

Bardo (Joel David Moore) is probably my favorite character. He is the slacker that quite honestly sums up his character’s rut of continually changing his major rather than ever graduate because he does not know just what the hell he wants to do with his life. Being a seasoned college student, he takes freshman Jerome under his wing to share his wry assessments of the various types that are their classmates.

On the other end of the ambition scale is Jerome’s roommate Vince (Ethan Suplee). He is the crude and driven film student that provides many laugh-out-loud moments. I admire Vince’s enthusiasm, even though his tireless filmmaking efforts always seem as if he is trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

Strathmore’s recent superstar alumnus Marvin Bushmiller (Adam Scott) is an arrogant asshole. We never learn just what his art was about and why he gained success. That is beside the point if all that matters is getting noticed and making money.

Some famed veteran actors are in attendance to further enrich the strange Strathmore Institute experience. John Malkovich and Anjelica Huston play two of the Strathmore faculty while Ghost World’s Steve Buscemi returns here as the ill-tempered proprietor of the nearby coffee house/art gallery.

While there are plenty of oddballs to be found on campus, the most depressing character is the off-campus Strathmore alumnus named Jimmy (Jim Broadbent). Once an idealistic and talented artist like Jerome, he has descended to a squalid life as a drunken, dour recluse. When Bardo introduces Jerome to Jimmy, it is done with the zeal of a carnival barker revealing a sideshow freak to shock and amuse. However, the nihilistic Jimmy becomes an oracle of bitter wisdom for Jerome as Jerome is just beginning to experience the artistic frustration that has long soured the much older failed artist.

As if that were not dark enough, there is also the serial killer roaming the campus and claiming victims. This is one of the things that give Art School Confidential an off-putting tone for many and, at first glance, may seem to be an extraneous bit of nastiness. It is actually used to provoke other characters to actions of artistic exploitation that again grapples with the conundrum of artistic integrity. That extra element really primes the theme of artistic frustration and attention-seeking excess that is the cruel canvas this story is rendered on.

Like the first Zwigoff/Clowes film Ghost World, Art School Confidential also deals with the frustration of young adulthood. In Ghost World friends Enid and Rebecca are coping with their transition after high school into the world of adults without having any certain plans or ambitions. The main difference in Art School Confidential is that Jerome knows what his goals are, but he is continually having his sense of artistic integrity challenged.

As in that earlier film, there are still plenty of hilarious characters here amidst the melancholy and despair. Most of them rouse laughter while still stressing how unfair this situation seems to Jerome. The talentless misfits seem to have as much of a chance for success as Jerome. His talent and dedication seem to be mostly unappreciated.

Despite the drama, comedy, and angst of the situations, the behaviors of all the characters always seem appropriate to the environment. No one ever seems to be striving for the “movie moment” that is supposed to make us notice them or manipulate us. That is why in roles large and small these actors all make memorable impressions. Their performances ring true even as they demonstrate how unhappy, naïve, petty, or offensive they are. All of these characters and their actions are there to serve the movie’s theme and convincingly populate the dismal campus of the Strathmore Institute.