Killer Fish (1979)

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

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.

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.

i am 32. i first saw this on TV in the UK about 18 years ago and thought it was basically a mess. A few years later after smoking something, it was on TV again and i can honestly say i have never seen myself or my friends laugh as hard. It is without doubt one of the most stunning examples of why lee majors should be shot dead. The man is an imbecile if he thought that he could forget about this one. To be completely honest i kind of feel sorry for the guy, he's obviously not right in the head. To his credit though, i did manage to get a copy of it on ebay for about £40 such was my fascination with the whole thing, so maybe he knew what he was doing. I doubt it though.4 years later, I still feel the same