Two missing teens bring a naive private investigator (Heather Menzies) and her local alcoholic guide (Bradford Dillman) to a seemingly abandoned military facility hidden away in the gorgeous mountainside. We know already that the horny couple jumped in the pool located on site and got themselves devoured by something in the water but our likable idiot heroes have no idea, so they go and drain the pool to see if anything’s decaying at the bottom. The sole occupant of the test site, Dr. Hoak (Kevin McCarthy rocking a mustache), flips his lid and reveals the pool was home to some genetically altered piranha Uncle Sam was planning to unleash on the Vietnamese. Now, these super-ferocious fish are in the river and this river leads directly to a summer camp (watched over by an excellent Paul Bartel) where the guide’s daughter is attending and the Lost River Lake Resort (run by the even more excellent Dick Miller). Oops! Our heroes attempt to warn the resort owner and camp director about the oncoming razor-toothed nightmare and the military arrives under the deceitful eye of her majesty Barbara Steele as the lead scientist of the shady experiments. When the army proves more concerned with covering their asses than protecting the populace and the duo don’t want to go along with their “everything is fine” message, they get themselves imprisoned at the makeshift military camp. They escape with some boob-flashing distraction antics and try to save as many lives as they can but a bunch of folks are gonna get gobbled no matter. Joe Dante’s playful Jaws homage/ripoff (done so well that supposedly Spielberg convinced Universal to drop their lawsuit) is a delight for any fan of the drive-in flicks that has so many folks looking fondly on the decade. Mixing animal-attack horrors and genuine comedy to perfection and aided by a strong cast of familiar faces taking everything with the proper level of seriousness but not raising their noses too high. Pacing suffers under repetition and the problem with being Jaws-like is the unavoidable comparisons to Jaws which is never good because it’s fuckin’ Jaws. Still, it’s got enough of its own thing going on and some fine small roles for reliable players. Keenan Wynn gets his feet eaten in a memorable gore gag, Bradford Dillman looks like a Hamish Linklater prototype and Roger Corman gets a gem in his long-running catalogue of film productions.
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