Killer Fish (1979) User Reviews

Everyone takes showers and gets eaten

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 22 November 2018]

When I was a kid, there was an urban legend that Lee Majors moved to a small town outside Youngstown, Ohio because the locals didn't care what a big star he was. Everyone had an encounter with him, but many found his wife Farah Fawcett to be off-putting. I don't know if these stories are true, but I want them to be. I do know that Lee and Farah did inspire the song "Midnight Train to Georgia," though.

Let me sum this one up in short sentences: Priceless emeralds. Hidden jewels. Hungry piranha. Model shoot. Late 1970's decor. Suspicion. Jealousy. More piranha.

Other than Lee Majors, this film is a cavalcade of my favorite stars. Well, maybe not favorite. But close. Karen Black is here! And there's Margaux Hemingway, who is as good at being a supermodel as she is bad as an actress. And here's James Franciscus as the main guy you're supposed to hate. And is that the doctor from Total Recall, Roy Brocksmith! Former NFL quarterback, NHRA drag racer and December 1980 Playgirl centerfold of the month Dan Pastorini come on down! Wow! It's Anthony Steffen from The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave! And finally, it's the man whose The Sixth Sense ruined the syndicated episodes of Night Gallery, Hour Magazine host Gary Collins, the bane of my childhood!

This whole mess is directed by Antonio Margheriti, who we all know and love as the creator of perhaps the finest movie ever made, Yor, Hunter from the Future.

This is more caper than Jaws rip-off. But hey, how many movies have Lee Majors sitting in a limo with a cane that has a crocodile's shrunken head on it, much less him swimming through piranha?

Sleeping with the Killer Fish...

[Coventry · 5/10 · 30 April 2006]

Next to Joe Dante's minor exploitation classic, this is already the second "Jaws"-rip off that revolves on piranhas, but the comparison stops right there with the mutual choice of killer fish as the sea monsters. Dante's film is of course better and more relevant, but "Killer Fish" is a typical Italian exploitation product and thus delivers too many grotesque story lines, some neat gore and an unusual cast. Heck, I'm not even sure this film fully qualifies as a "Jaws"-rip off since the main plot involves a diamond heist instead of a besieged tourist resort. Although... it has that, too! A well-organized bunch of thieves successfully complete their diamond robbery and lower the loot to the bottom of the lake for safety reasons. After 60 days – if the police give up their search – they will collect the diamonds again and split. In order to guard his precious jewels, criminal mastermind Paul Diller infested the lake with ravenous piranhas that can regularly nibble from the double-crossing team members. Meanwhile, one of the crooks falls for a model with a speech-defect and a tropical hurricane busts a large dam, allowing the piranhas to spread themselves all across the touristy waters. Antonio Margheriti's "Killer Fish" suffers from a slightly tedious and hesitant opening half hour, but it get more adventurous once the first victim is devoured under the water. The piranha effects as well as the underwater cinematography are a bit disappointing but this film has an irresistible 70's charm, complete with cool soundtrack and stereotypical characters. Lee Majors is excellent as the macho with more hair on his chest than brains in his skull and Karen Black is a great shrew. Not as good as I hoped, but a fun piece of Italian trash nonetheless.

Piranha don't actually eat people but they can make fun movies

[Stevieboy666 · 5/10 · 7 April 2023]

Lee Majors heads a crack team of thieves who carry out a daring robbery in Brazil, they hide the precious stones at the bottom of a lake but don't know that it is infested with flesh eating piranha. They decide to leave them there for 60 days but double-crossers within the gang decide to grab them for themselves, with predictable results. The first half plays out like a crime thriller but it becomes a horror movie when the remaining crooks join a camera crew onboard a boat, when a tropical storm strikes the boat starts to sink. As a kid in the 1970's I loved the TV series "The Six Million Dollar Man" and Majors was one of the first actors who's name I can remember, he plays it very cool here and for his fans this film is well worth a watch. Also amongst the cast are the wonderful Karen Black and 1970's supermodel Franciscus Margaux, who plays what else but a model! The robbery at the start and dam scene near the end both use miniature sets, these are pretty good. Sadly the piranha attacks mainly consist of victims in the water surrounded by blood, we do see the fish biting people later on but it's nothing impressive. However an underwater swimmer encounters partially eaten corpses which is very effective. Shot in Brazil the scenery is nice and the musical score is pretty cool but the 101 minutes running time is too long. There has never been a human death recorded as a piranha attack and indeed people swim and bathe in piranha infested waters, however in the nature strikes back genre they can offer fun opportunities. Killer Fish has a bigger budget than "Piranha" (1978) but the latter is by far the better film.

Fun

[wil3172 · 25 June 2001]

I had a lot of fun with this movie, which is not the same thing as having a lot of fun at it. There was something cozy about its simple plot and its even simpler faith in tried and true conventions. It could be accused of many things, including laughable dialogue, hysterical performances and insane camera angles, but it could not be accused of dishonesty.

Gone Fishing

[richardchatten · 5/10 · 20 January 2023]

The name of schlockmeister Anthony M. Dawson doesn't bode well, and the change of title from 'The Naked Sun' to 'Killer Fish' (not to mention the opening declaration that it's a presentation by Sir Lew Grade) confirms that it's just high concept nonsense.

But cross-eyed, big-haired Karen Black alone makes the film worth seeing. Heaven knows why she bothers with a jerk like James Franciscus who actually seeded the lake where the gang's ill-gotten gains are stashed and just stands there while Black does the man's work actually going down to retrieve the spoils looking seriously fit in a classic black wetsuit.

Not a "Piranha" rip-off, really. Just a fine Margheriti cocktail.

[Vomitron_G · 5/10 · 21 January 2010]

I really am convinced that Antonio Margheriti is a good director, period. "Killer Fish" is an average, but decent action/disaster/thriller with just a few horror elements. Some might say this is a "Piranha" rip-off, but it's not. Because only in the second half of the movie we get to see some piranha action. And even that isn't much. It's more their constant being there that's causing the threatening atmosphere. This is as much a crime movie as it is a disaster movie, as it is a killer-fish movie. And I simply loved the great miniature effects when the dam broke. But what struck me most, was some of the very well-written and catchy dialogue. One guy says to Karen Black: "There I was thinking you've got some German blood in you...". Karen Black denies this by responding "Uh-uh... I WIN my wars.". Or the bad guy saying "Sometimes an unloaded gun is more effective than a loaded one." (you have to see that quote in the context of the scene). And there's much more good stuff like that coming from all characters. Lee Majors is in it too, and something hit me when I saw him in this film... If George Clooney would have been big in the 70's, he would have been Lee Majors! Surprisingly this flick was a bit less silly than "Tentacoli" (which coincidentally I saw a week before, or so), so I say "Killerfish" is a good, average and watchable film. A typical Margheriti cocktail, actually.

One of the top worst movies ever.

[sissycindie · 1/10 · 30 January 2020]

The only way to really appreciate this clunker is to view it with gang at MST3K.

Spaghetti and Pilchards.

[hitchcockthelegend · 3/10 · 7 November 2013]

Killer Fish is directed by Antonio Margheriti and written by Michael Rogers. It stars Lee Majors, Karen Black, James Franciscus, Margaux Hemingway and Marisa Berenson. Music is by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis and cinematography by Alberto Spagnoli.

Majors leads a band of thieves in trying to regain some stolen gems that are at the bottom of Piranha infested waters.

It's pretty bad, in fact it's a rare case where I would suggest that the low internet rating for the film is about right. OK! You wouldn't think anyone seriously goes into this type of Spaghetti Horror expecting a terrifying masterpiece, but it's not unreasonable to think that you might get some modicum of suspense and half decent acting. Unfortunately Killer Fish has neither.

Filmed on location in Brazil, there's a half decent budget afforded the production, yet the actors stare off into the distance on some sort of sleep deprived auto-pilot, forced to say dialogue so poorly written you wonder if it was being made up as they went along? The fish of the title don't show up until half hour into the pic, briefly raising hope that excitement, peril and drama will now pulse through proceedings, but it's a false dawn.

The Six Million Dollar Man and the perpetually blank Hemingway fulfil their catwalk casting assignments, and some half decent model work is introduced and blown up, but at just over an hour and forty minutes in length, it's a real chore to get through. Oh well, at least it's not insultingly bad on purpose, it is honest in its very modest intentions. 3/10

Almost a "guilty pleasure"

[dinky-4 · 5/10 · 26 November 2002]

This movie mixes together two sets of characters at a Brazilian lake-resort: a gang of jewel-thieves fresh from a heist and a company of people involved in photographing a fashion layout. The tensions and turmoils which occur when these two groups come together are not without interest but they create too much clutter. To correct this, some of the characters, (such as those played by Marisa Berenson and Gary Collins), might have been eliminated. A few of the incidents in the first half of the movie might also have been shortened or cut entirely in order to concentrate on the movie's strength -- a long but suspenseful sequence in the last two reels in which a number of people are trapped on a boat which is sinking in the middle of a piranha-infested lake.

At least the clutter provides room for a large and rather bizarrely-diverse cast. Where else can one find, on one marquee, Lee Majors, Karen Black, Margaux Hemingway, Marisa Berenson, James Franciscus, Gary Collins, and Dan Pastorini?

Lee Majors has a brief and disappointingly modest shower scene and James Franciscus gets to take his shirt off for a weight-lifting shot but most of the movie's "beefcake" is provided by 27-year-old football-quarterback Dan Pastorini of the Houston Oilers. There's a scene on his hotel-room bed in which Karen Black examines his bare chest for injuries following a car crash. This scene serves as kind of a warm-up for his appearance, two years later, in a Playgirl Magazine photospread set inside a shower room. While most of these photos showed Pastorini in a wet, filled-to-capacity jockstrap, others featured him in poses which suggest that his position on a football team should not have been "quarterback" but rather "tight end."

The Brazilian backgrounds provide a bit of scenic interest, though not as much as one might wish, and there are some passably-good special effects when a dam breaks, creating a tidal wave of havoc.

I don't know why I liked this movie

[stills-6 · 6/10 · 10 June 2000]

Watching Margeaux Hemingway in this movie is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Her lisp and stone-faced moroseness makes Lee Majors' eyebrow look like Marlon Brando, but she is nonetheless compelling. The same goes for the rest of the cast. You just can't believe how sincere everyone is trying to be and it's fascinating to watch.

The last third of this movie is actually good fun, sort of like "Key Largo" without all of the intelligence to get in the way.

Mediocre thriller set in Brazil with adventures , action , flood and a lot of killer fish

[ma-cortes · 4/10 · 15 April 2021]

At the beginning some robbers carry out a heist at a factory , robbing a lot of valuable jewels . Later on , they hide the loot into a river, unknowing it is full of piranhas . Soon after , the Jewel thieves attempt to recover the loot of hot rocks at the piranha infested river . But the stealers find a lot of problems to retrieve them as if took a lot of foresight.

This thrilling film concerns typical plot about a robbery that goes wrong , as a scheme to steal and then to hide a fortune in emeralds at the bottom of a tank full of piranhas backfires as the criminals find it impossible to retrieve them . The film attempts to blend two genres : Disaster movie including a spectacular Dam bursting with flood sweeping a factory and the sea monster sub-genre with starving piranhas . In fact , this is one of several films made in the mid-70s and early 80s following the Catastrophe movies as Earthquake , Tower inferno , and after hits as Piranha, Piranha 2, Jaws , Tintorera, Devil Fish, Barracuda, Tentacles , among others . This Killer Fish boasts a good cast but really wasted giving average performances . Stars Lee Majors and Karen Black as two cunning and roguish thieves . Supported by a decent support cast as Margaux Hemingway , Marisa Berenson , Gary Collins, Frank Pesce , Roy Brocksmith , and James Franciscus . Furthermore, special appearance by Anthony Steffen , the known Spaghetti Western antihero , who died in Río de Janeiro , Brazil.

It contains a passable and acceptable cinematography by cameraman Alberto Spagnoli . As well as anticlimatic musical score by Guido and Mauricio de Angelis , adding some catching songs ."Deadly Tresure of Piranha" was middlingly directed by Anthony M. Dawson AKA Antonio Margheritti. He was a good craftsman who made all kinds of genres , such as Wartime : The Last Hunter , Tornado , The Commander , Code Name Wild Geese . Adventures : The Golden Arrow , Ark of the sun...temple of hall , Jungle Raiders, Treasure Island , Mister Invisible . Spaghetti Western : And god David to Cain, Dakota Joe, Vengeance , Joe the Implacable , The Stranger and the Gunfighter, Take a hard ride . Terror : Virgin of Nuremberg ,Web of Spider , Seven dead in the cat's eye , The long hair of death , Castle of blood , Horror Castle , Cannibal in the streets . Science Fiction : Yor the Hunter from the future , War of the planets , Wild Wild Planets . Peplum : Hercules prisoner of evil, Giants of Rome , The Slave merchants ,The Fall of Rome. Thriller : Operation Goldman, , Killers are challenged, The Squeeze , Death Rage. Rating : 4/10. Below average.

Fun B-grade crime caper romp

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 10 August 2020]

A motley assortment of folks all betray and double cross each other as they attempt to retrieve a fortune in stolen gems from piranha-infested waters in Brazil.

Director Antonio Margheriti keeps the enjoyable story moving along at a constant pace, makes nice use of the beautifully exotic tropical locations, delivers a fair amount of decent gore, and stages both an exciting heist sequence and a set piece involving a hurricane with skill and aplomb. The compact script by Michael Rogers offers a neat blend of crime, action, horror, and disaster genre elements.

This film further benefits from a tip-top cast: Lee Majors as the macho Lesky, Karen Black as the sassy Kate, Margaux Hemingway as foxy model Gabrielle, Marisa Berenson as the fussy Ann, James Franciscus as the shrewd and duplicitous Paul Diller, Gary Collins as dashing pilot Tom, Roy Brocksmith as flamboyant photographer Ollie, Frank Pesce as the excitable Warren, Dan Pastorini as hunky diver Hans, and Anthony Steffen as the long-suffering Max. Both the rousing disco theme song "The Winner Takes All" sung by Amii Stewart and the funky score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis hit the right-on groovy spot. Ideal late 70's drive-in fare.

A minor film - but a fun one

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 10 August 2016]

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.

Spaghetti Horror Version Of Piranha.

[meddlecore · 3/10 · 22 October 2017]

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.

Fishy fun in Brazil - 1970's style

[neil-blackshaw1 · 30 January 2005]

I love this movie!!! We are talking "double cheese" here 1970's style. I saw this film many years ago on TV - I was a huge fan of Lee Majors in the "Six million Dollar man" - and it was great to see him in action taking on Jewel thieves/sexy models and Nasty killer fish in this low budget gem. The Brazilian background is really cool along with the 1970's fashions. The theme song performed by disco Diva Amii Stewart is catchy and the overall acting is ridiculously fun !! You don't get to see the actual killer fish very much but this only adds to the overall tension of the picture. A funny scene where "Ollie" - the fat photographer who gets eaten by the Piranha fish is really hilarious and a classic B Movie sequence. I am now a proud owner of the film on DVD and it stands proudly in my collection of B movie killer fish movies

Another attempt to cash in on Jaws!

[CalDexter · 4/10 · 5 December 2006]

I remember seeing this on British TV around about 1983 or 1984. The reason i mention this is because i had seen Jaws on British TV in the summer of 1981 (it was its premiere) and i remember wishing that i had seen it on the big screen. Jaws is my favourite film of all time.

Now back to Killer Fish. I was about seven or eight years old when i first saw this. There are only three things i remember about it.

1. Lee Majors gets a lot of Piranha bite wounds (im a little bit foggy on that one mind).

2. A fat guy who looks like John Candy tries to make an escape by rubber dinghy and gets torn to pieces.

3. And finally, i have always remembered Majors and the rest of the cast being adrift in a sinking cabin cruiser out on a lake somewhere. I always mind the boat sinking more or less the same way that The Orca vessel sunk in Jaws.

Turns out its another rip-off. But back in the early eighties in Scotland, some families were still unable to afford a VHS so the TV was what you had to make do with....

....as was these type of B Flicks!

Fish story lacks bite

[kevinolzak · 4/10 · 30 December 2022]

1978's "Killer Fish" arrived for director Antonio Margheriti after his Gothic horror, Spaghetti Western, and science fiction periods, just before the trend for cannibal zombies emerged in the wake of George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead." His expertise for special effects came in handy for a number of explosions and tornado-inspired destruction (the miniatures do look quite fake, however), but the script offers no surprises for an international cast that popped up on location in Brazil as a package deal put together by star Lee Majors. Plotwise, it's an ordinary heist film where the perpetrators suffer the consequences of defiance, three cohorts becoming fish fodder trying to recover the stolen jools in a nearby lake. Criminal mastermind James Franciscus remains behind due to a bad ticker, plays endless games of backgammon, and plants his favorite species of quick spawning piranha to guard against thieves in the night until the waiting period of 60 days is up. The combination of R-rated gore, brief nudity, and satirical content was enough to make Joe Dante's "Piranha" one of the few "Jaws" ripoffs to come close in audience appreciation, but this decidedly lesser effort is utterly humorless, free of nudity in its sanitized PG presentation, and lacking in bite with a nondescript cast of vacuous pretty faces sinking just 200 yards from shore. Houston Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini went the way of Terry Bradshaw, Joe Kapp, and Joe Theismann in his brief attempt at a movie career (as one of the thugs who gets devoured for his trouble), only James Franciscus and Karen Black fully committed to their cliched roles, Lee Majors a stone faced lead making a half hearted attempt to save the gems (in the end, the culprits never get caught). As a supposed horror film it's a total flop, perhaps only worthy of late night viewing when insomniacs fear the worst.

Having finally seen it I am disappointed.

[poolandrews · 4/10 · 18 December 2011]

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.

Soooo Badddd

[aldineduke · 2/10 · 17 March 2019]

How do you kill a piranha? Make this movie! This movie is one of the top 6 Mystery Science 3000 masterpieces but that is the only recognition it should receive. This is like a college film student's B+ effort.

promising beginning

[sweper74 · 4/10 · 26 April 2006]

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.

No Honor Among Thieves

[Uriah43 · 6/10 · 9 September 2015]

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 piranhas 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 piranhas 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.

Badly written, poorly acted, turgid pacing, rotten special effects. In a word: garbage!

[soulexpress · 1/10 · 17 December 2018]

I saw this film in a mercifully edited form as an episode of MST3K, but still had to pause it every 10-15 minutes so I could walk around a bit and convince myself to watch the rest. I can't imagine seeing KILLER FISH (even the title is dull) in its original 101-minute form. I would have been, to quote a much earlier MST3K outing, "tohtcha!" (Torture)

Gabrielle searches for pleasure. Everyone else searches for treasure. But the Piranhas search for flesh!

[itsmrbigtoyou · 10/10 · 23 July 2009]

When jewel thieves stash their loot at the bottom of a lake in Brazil belonging to a man named Paul Diller (James Franciscus - "Concorde Affair"), he finds out about it and decides to stock the lake with Red-Bellied Piranha, those vicious razor-sharp toothed killers found in the Amazon River to stop anyone from recovering the jewels.

As it turns out, the stolen jewels - emeralds and diamonds - actually belong to him and if he can't have them, he quickly decides that no-one can! When one man tries to recover the jewels, he is devoured by the fish. Along the way, his Brother and a scuba diver too fall victim to the Piranha.

It is at this point that Kate Neville (Karen Black - "Airport 1975"), one of the group of thieves, discovers that Paul is the one responsible for the lake being filled with Piranha after herself and Lasky (Lee Majors - TV's "The Six Million Dollar Man") witness one of the attacks and she runs to Paul's château and see's that he has many tanks of the Red-Bellied Piranha.

She tells no-one else, but they find out soon enough when many others fall prey to the fish and it soon becomes a race against time as Kate and Paul must team together to recover the stolen jewels and avoid becoming fish food for the Piranha.

Meanwhile, some guests at the lake, who are doing a magazine photoshoot also become involved in the Piranha attacks. Beauty Model Gabrielle (Margaux Hemingway - "Lipstick") and her agent Ann (Marisa Berenson - TV's "Sins") and photographer Ollie (Roy Brocksmith - "Psycho") encounter the Piranha during the film's climax when they all attempt to make it to shore after a tornado hits their boat on the lake and shipwrecks them on the rocks while the Piranha swarm around the damaged boat.

The film reaches a thrilling and twisting sequence at this point when everyone fights for survival and tries to make it onto shore with a share of the jewels for themselves. Some win, some loose, but either way, it's an edge-of-your seat action-packed finale!

What Majors did between TV gigs.

[BA_Harrison · 7/10 · 9 December 2018]

Just a few minutes into Antonio Margheriti's Killer Fish, a helicopter is seen flying low over an exploding power station, the 'spectacular' scene achieved with a remote-controlled 'copter and miniature buildings. The man operating the chopper can be clearly seen standing behind one of the scale model structures, totally ruining the already unconvincing effect. It's this level of ineptitude that helps to make the movie so much fun for fans of trashy entertainment - it's packed full of unconvincing models (and I'm not talking about the wooden performance by Margaux Hemingway), silly piranha attacks, daft plot points, and one-dimensional characters. In short, if you like your films cheesy, this one will hit the spot.

Lee Majors stars as Lasky, one of a group of jewel thieves who hide their ill-gotten gains at the bottom of a lake while they wait for the heat to die down. Unbeknownst to the rest of the gang, criminal mastermind Paul Diller (James Franciscus) fills the lake with piranha fish, just in case any of his light-fingered friends decide to help themselves. There being no honour among thieves, a couple of the crooks soon become fish food, and Diller and his squeeze Kate (Karen Black) decide to retrieve the gems without telling Lasky. However, when a sudden hurricane hits the area, the pair find themselves trapped on a slowly sinking boat in the company of a suspicious Lasky (as well as members of a fashion photo shoot). Who will survive and who will get nibbled?

Margheriti keeps things moving at a brisk enough pace to ensure that boredom never sets in, despite a 100-minute run-time: the opening explosive heist is a blast, the hurricane keeps things breezy, and the film remains afloat even when a dam bursts (another craptabulous model effect), destroying what was left of the power station (sucks to work there!). The finalé is a lot of fun, with several people getting stripped to the bone by the ravenous fish (including the terribly annoying, obese, bisexual fashion photographer). I would have liked a bit more gore to spice up the film - all we get are a couple of skeletons and some blood in the water - but overall this is a satisfying slice of Italian exploitation cinema.

6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

If you watch

[jgkelley-48797 · 4/10 · 21 July 2021]

Please don't do it with those MST fools. I remember I used to get annoyed when Comedy Central was new & those clowns used to come one. I was always surprised that these got air time, and that there was a segment of the population who enjoyed them. Then I went outside & looked at fellow mankind & out of every 100 people I could see some and realize ok, that's prob some1 who would be into such childish Bs. Yet it's that child who used to do stuff in class that wasn't funny. But was just loud and annoying & disrupting. Why anyone would wanna watch a movie but not really watch the movie, just see picture & hear the dumbest lines put in for them is beyond me. But hey, guess some people have weird fetishes. Who am I to judge. I'm just not gonna understand it.

This movie isn't terrible. But certainly plenty of movies out there to see before I'd recommend getting round to watching this. I'll admit tho, with all these streaming sites I have, I still find myself rewatching older movies for the 2nd, 3rd sometimes 4th or even more for the true classics. Merely cuz I can't find anything knew that looks worth a damn. So if you're desperate, you can give this a try. It will become apparent pretty early on if it's something you could stick round til end for. If you hate lower budgeted movies of the 70's & 80's that are kinda thriller/mystery, or if you hate older movies in general, then Just stay away. I guess 1979 is kinda old now since it's close to when I was born.