Since we enjoyed the first one so much (?), we figured we might as well catch the sequel Piranha II (1982). Directed by James Cameron, it at least had the underwater photography going for it. The rest was mostly a regular vacation sex comedy. Oh yes, and flying piranhas.
Tricia O'Neil is the diving instructor at a Caribbean resort, where she lives with her teenaged son. Her ex-husband, Lance Henriksen, is police chief. She takes a dive group out to a wreck, and one member doesn't come back - she sees the horribly chewed body, but Henriksen whisks it away and won't let her see it.
Another member of the dive group, Steve Marachuk, is hitting on her pretty relentlessly. Deciding to make good use of him, she takes him to the morgue to photograph the body - quite a first date. They get shooed out by a nurse, who then gets chomped by a piranha, hidden in the body (?). It then flies off. They fly now? They fly now.
O'Neil figures out that there is something nasty in the water and tries to shut down the beach, but her warnings aren't heeded. In the meantime, her son is crewing on a small sailboat owned by a rich idiot and his sexy topless-sunbathing daughter.
In fact, we get a number of topless sunbathers. We also get some guys on the make, a desperate cougar, and enough hijinks to make you think you're watching Club Paradise. I kept expecting Rick Moranis and Eugene Levy to show up looking for ganja.
According to sources (Wikipedia), Roger Corman sold the idea for the sequel to an Italian producer, Olivio Assonitis. Assonitis demanded a non-English speaking crew, and locked Cameron out of the editing process. So Cameron isn't very proud of this. There is a directors cut that only came out on VHS and laserdisk, so who knows if it's any better.
Of course, this isn't exactly bad-bad. The comedy is pretty shopworn, the horror kind of sparse, but theree are some good chewed up prosthetics, and you can almost see the piranhas in this. We will definitely be seeing Piranha III, a 2000s-era restart of the franchise. But we're in no hurry
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