Jerry O'Connell To Be Skeletonized By Piranhas

[Alex Riviello]

http://chud.com/articles/articles/19331/1/JERRY-O039CONNELL-TO-BE-SKELETONIZED-BY-PIRANHAS/Page1.html

[Rene (Mr.Eko)]

I wonder if he'll be doing the Bradford Dillman role?

Took out my New Concorde dvd and watched the original the other day. It still holds up as being a great all around flick. Still remember seeing it on TBS in the early 90's when they always showed "nature amok" movies on Saturday afternoon. Orca, Frogs, Ants, Tentacles, Piranha. Loved watching them.

[Alex Riviello]

Hah, same here. I think I saw the mangled version of Razorback on one of those shitty cable channels during the day. I've gotta see Orca once more to see if it holds up to how bad and fun I remember it being.

Has anyone ever seen the first remake? It's on Netflix Instant, might give it a shot although I'm not expecting anything.

[Rene (Mr.Eko)]

Ever since I found out that Piranha had already been remade, I've been wanting to check out the first remake. Although I've read that it does reuse footage from the original.

Orca is great. I bought the dvd 2 years ago, and it still holds up to being a fun flick. The Morricone score is fabulous. Love it. Once it starts taking Harris and co. out into the arctic, the movie starts it's descent into "downbeat 70's ending" territory. Yeah, this flick is great.

[DARKMITE8]

I'll defend Aja. He's brutal and he's got an artistic aesthetic that I dig. He takes risks. He's not just some point-and-shoot guy who wants to make movies (or show how many flicks he's rented over the years). His films may not be your cup of tea, but he's truly a film-maker. I haven't seen MIRRORS, but HILLS HAVE EYES and HIGH TENSION are wins in my book.

[Reasor]

Will O'Connell be beefing back up to his Stand By Me weight? It'd make for a longer, more visceral skeletonization scene.

[Iron Maiden]

Aja's fine enough. I heard Mirrors sucked, though (I'll see it eventually).

Richard Dreyfuss deserves better.

[Crazy Jim]

Ever since I found out that Piranha had already been remade, I've been wanting to check out the first remake. Although I've read that it does reuse footage from the original. Yes, pretty much all the underwater photography and special effects are very obviously stolen from the '78 original. The remake isn't very good. It's played pretty straight and when it does venture into comedy, it just doesn't do a good job at it at all. It changes the gender and ages of some of the characters but the script itself is about 90-95% recycled dialouge from the first movie. At times, it seems like the actors' motivation is to imitate the exact delivery from the first film which none of them seem to do without inflicting great pain on the audience. William Katt plays Grogan as some kind of hippy lawyer. The kind that Dillman's angry drunken hermit Grogan would have punched in the mouth. For star power, we have Alexandra "flat chick from Baywatch" Paul, an eleven-year-old Mila Kunis, and a grown-up Punky Brewster in the Belinda Balaski role. There's also a cameo from James Karen where he recites Barbara Steele's famous outro from the first flick. I'd still recommend avoiding. Outside of Raptor, it's probably Corman at his penny-pinching worst. It takes the original Piranha and removes the humor from Sayles' script, alters the three or four best characters, and keeps the dated special effects. Not exactly a winning formula for a remake.

[Pop Zeus]

Hills is quite good but Mirrors was quite not. High Tension was ok but the ending was cheap and silly and not entirely necessary. I'll take Inside over High Tension for brutal creepiness en français.

What does this have to do with Piranha 3? I have no idea. Are the earlier films worth renting? Didn't Cameron do the sequel?

[DARKMITE8]

What does this have to do with Piranha 3? I have no idea.
Aja is directing 3. His track record was under scrutiny.

[Mattioli]

Aja's a talented visualist, but a mediocre storyteller. High Tension destroys any goodwill that the first hour generates with a truly wretched twist ending (hell, it'd make M. Knight shake his head in disdain). Mirrors is a pretty great concept with some fantastic visuals that ultimately fails because it fails to establish concrete rules and/or play by the rules the film has established. In my opinion, Aja's Hills remake--being an unrelentingly brutal piece of filmmaking (as it should be)--is his one success to date. Still, I'll look forward to his Piranha update. I think his visual acumen will bring something special to the tale of a bloodthirsty school of fish chowing down on campers. :D

[Phil]

I enjoyed the Hills remake a lot. Aja brought more than a little craft, subtext, and genuine horror to a clunky, ham-handed original. I don't know if he's going to do that to Piranha, but I'm going to see the shit out of it.

[Alex Riviello]

I still don't understand the love for Hills. I really don't. It's a perfect contender for your "Nope, still not good." thread, Phil. Three views and I hate the movie even more. It does nothing right except the gore- which is masterful- but it's poor in almost every other regard. They did nothing with the story, they managed to make the cannibals even less interesting, the family unsympathetic and quite simply boring. Can't stand it, and the original's superior in almost every regard. And that one's not even that great of a film!

Fun fact- I got more hate mail for this article from nutty High Tension fans that anything I've written this year so far!

[Phil]

I only watched the Hills remake once so far. I found the original to be full of bad actors very obviously playacting. Just on remake points, I admired that the film stuck almost EXACTLY to the original script and just improved on the tone, look, scares, and level of dread. To quote "Sneakin' In The Movies", I believed this movie. That shit could really happen.

Devin's review (http://www.chud.com/articles/articles/6097/1/REVIEW-HILLS-HAVE-EYES-THE/Page1.html) does a pretty good job of making my points, so why waste his (or my) typin'?

I guess the bloom is off the rose on account of Mirrors, but the guy who made the Hills Have Eyes remake work for me is getting my money with a "nature's revenge" flick for certain.

[Alex Riviello]

I think the first time Devin and I met we argued a bit about the film.

It's just one of those things, we aren't going to convince each other, it just is. But I hate the film. Hate it.

You're right though, his visual style could at least make for an interesting looking "nature revenge" film, and lord knows we haven't had enough of those in a while. Barring various scifi channel abominations.

[Fat Elvis]

Disagree with Phil on his take on the original Hills, but totally agree 'bout the remake. At the very least, how can any horror fan not appreciate the movie's huge balls--the character representing Red State America gets burned alive!

A brutal yet intelligent flick.

MIRRORS crushed a lot of good will, but I'm onboard for PIRANHA.

(Also now intrigued to check out the William Katt version)

[Portalis]

i loved Piranha fricken netflix will not give it to me, says it's on the save list since it's not their but i call BS since i have seen it in the stores. oh well

Piranha 2 was good kinda a guilty pleasure for me. mixing the fish with flying fish made it more comical.

i saw in the stores one time a title called Piranha but it was a 2.99 low budget movie that was about some photographers being chased in the woods by some crazy man and with Piranha in the water? told myself not to get it.

this might be an interesting in 3-d if they get it right.

[Crazy Jim]

I'm also on the Piranha 2 guilty pleasure list. I've had something of a volatile love-hate relationship with the flick since I was about five. It's a fairly absurd premise involving flying piranha and the execution isn't exactly its saving grace but for some reason, there is something in me that still enjoys watching it to this day. At five years old, this was like the forbidden creature feature. For some reason in its edited form, the original Piranha would fly in my house but the second one was off limits. Whenever it was on TV, I'd try and find a way to sneak a viewing. Looking back, this is an extremely tame film but I guess when you're in kindergarten and Critters 2 keeps you from sleeping, it probably seems a lot worse.

[dannymears]

Am watching PIRANHA 2 right now.

It's exactly as preposterous as I remembered it when I was a child and it was playing on the television. This is not a bad thing (not great either, though). Also, this movie has no problem calling a mentally stunted person an "asshole."

Interested to see what Aja does with this material though, not because I think he's a godsend great director or anything (Hills filled a place, High Tension ruined itself), but because I think it's material that someone who handles gore as well as he does could have a lot of fun with.