Swimming with the Man-Eaters: The Making of Piranha 2: The Spawning

Piranha 2: The Spawning (1982) has been called by its director, “the best flying piranha movie ever made.” Since no other films about flying piranhas have been produced (to this writer’s knowledge anyway), it’s a statement that’s hard to dispute. There are at least two different edits known to exist of the movie, and it has also gone by a variety of names worldwide (Piranha II: Flying Killers, Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, The Spawning, Piranha Paura). Unfortunately, regardless of the name, all versions of the film are indisputably awful.

(continued on next page, see link below author box)

I. OVERVIEW

Without a doubt, the plot of Piranha 2: The Spawning is ridiculous, even by B-movie standards. A man-eating school of piranha terrorizes the inhabitants of an unnamed Caribbean island resort. Not only are these piranhas extraordinarily vicious, they’re also amphibious and can fly! Naturally, these ferocious flying fiends are intent upon killing any islander foolhardy enough to cross paths with them. The main thrust of the plot finds the fish feeding upon the island’s unsuspecting vacationers while a local scuba instructor, Anne Kimbrough (Tricia O’Neil), and her estranged husband, Steve (Lance Henriksen), attempt to end the evil school’s feedings, once and for all.

The special effects in the film are downright pathetic, even by the standards of the time. The scenes where the piranha are “flying” play as unintentionally hysterical. In many shots, the strings holding the fish aloft are plainly obvious, and in others it’s clear that the piranha are simply being lobbed at some unfortunate actor by someone off-screen. Piranha 2‘s flying killers are perhaps the least convincing thing shown on a movie screen since Ed Wood swung flaming paper plates from strings to simulate burning UFOs in his infamous Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).

Sadly, these shots of the film’s flying fish are few and far between. The rest of the movie is so bad that it’s not even remotely funny, it’s just boring. In fact, Piranha 2: The Spawning would be completely lost in the back alleys of cinematic oblivion if it wasn’t for one key fact. It was the first film that James Cameron directed.

(continued on next page, see link below author box)

II. PRODUCTION

Although Piranha 2: The Spawning is supposedly the sequel to the 1978 film Piranha, there’s little that connects the two films other than the fact that both feature man-eating fish. The first film, released to capitalize on the popularity of Jaws (1975), was a surprising success. Directed by Joe Dante from a script by John Sayles, Piranha was a rollicking mix of fun and gore that turned a nice profit at the box office.

Roger Corman was the producer behind Piranha. Although the B-movie King was happy with the film’s success, plans for a sequel were stalled until 1981, when Corman cut a deal with Warner Bros. and an Italian producer named Ovidio G. Assonitis to make Piranha 2: The Spawning. Assonitis was known throughout the industry as a very “hands on” producer who didn’t hesitate from bullying his directors or simply taking productions out of their hands. For Piranha 2, Assonitis sought a cheap, young director who could be easily controlled. One of the first places that he and his associates looked to recruit such a person was from Roger Corman’s production company, New World.

Corman’s various studios had been successfully churning out B-movies for decades. During that time, his companies had developed a reputation of serving as proving grounds for up-and-coming talent—Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Peter Bogdanovich all directed their first films under the Corman umbrella. It was an excellent atmosphere for hard working and creative individuals to develop their skills and to receive rapid promotions. With this in mind, Assonitis and his associates looked over the talent pool currently at New World and a certain young filmmaker by the name of James Cameron came immediately to their attention.

Insanely hard working and arguably equipped with more ambition than common sense, Cameron had risen meteorically within Corman’s system. In fact, at the tender age of twenty-five, he had risen so far and so fast that he was finding little left to accomplish at New World. Even though the project was laughable and he knew that Assonitis had a reputation for being difficult to work with, Cameron still saw Piranha 2 as a great opportunity so he prepared to set off to begin filming in Jamaica, with absolutely no inkling of the ordeal he was about to put himself through.

Cameron thought that the entire concept of flying piranha was ridiculous. Still, he was determined to do the best he could with what he was given. Although not credited with it, Cameron worked hard at rewriting H.A. Milton’s original script, attempting to interject some semblance of characterization and drama into it. The ambitious young filmmaker was convinced that he could make something out of Piranha 2 if he just worked hard enough. When he initially flew down to Jamaica, he was full of ideas, enthusiasm, and determination.

Once he got there however, what he saw nearly made him immediately turn around and head home. Although he had been led to believe that pre-production had yet to begin, he found it well underway upon his arrival. Worst of all, the props and effects that his crew were producing were indisputably pathetic. It looked as if almost no effort had been put into crafting the piranha creatures at all, and there was little if any funding for several other key departments. The wardrobe department, for example, was non-existent and the actors were expected to provide their character’s costumes from their personal wardrobes.

The biggest stumbling block of all for Cameron however was the production crew itself. The crew was non-union and completely Italian. If they spoke or understood English, they didn’t reveal this to Cameron. To make matters worse, Cameron was informed that filming was scheduled to commence within three weeks, much earlier than he had initially been told.

Cameron, by his own reports, was on the verge of abandoning the project all together before allowing himself to be talked into staying. Over the next three weeks he worked at a feverish pace attempting to completely re-do the work of the special effects department while simultaneously rewriting the script and preparing for principle photography to commence. Cameron stayed up all night on several occasions creating and painting the film’s piranha creatures himself. Eventually, he settled into a groove where he worked around the clock, stopping only to grab three or four hours sleep each night.

If Cameron had been hoping that the actual shooting of the film would go smoother than pre-production, he was in for a bitter disappointment. The language barrier immediately complicated the communication between the fledgling director and the crew. Furthermore, the crew’s loyalties were apparently with the producer, and they made it clear that they had little, if any, respect for the young American director. Crew members were chronically slow in responding to Cameron’s commands, and seemed incapable of understanding even his most elementary hand motions. Cameron, never one to shirk from a challenge, added a crash course in Italian to his multiple other duties and shocked the crew from their lethargy one day when he finally exploded at them, screaming in Italian: “Get the mother***ing camera over here now!”

The trouble Cameron received from his crew however, was nothing compared to the problems he had with the film’s dictatorial producer, Ovidio Assonitis. Cameron and Assonitis were in perpetual conflict throughout production. The director and producer clashed over everything, no matter how large or small the issue at hand was. Assonitis frequently had no problems changing the script to suit whatever whim held sway over him at any given moment. He would often insist on radical dialogue additions to scenes, doing so literally as Cameron was preparing to film the scene in question. Although he almost always lost, Cameron never backed down from an argument with his employer.

A few days into shooting, Assonitis informed Cameron that he was appointing himself second unit director and that he was taking part of the crew over to the other side of the island to film some support footage. Cameron later learned that the only thing Assonitis was filming were topless girls on the beach. The fledgling director had to question the logic of this, as no one went topless in the beach footage that he was shooting. Cameron had no idea how this B-unit footage from Assonitis would be meshed with the A-unit footage, and honestly didn’t care. At long last the meddlesome producer was out of his hair and Cameron was free to direct the movie as he saw fit. Never, at any time, did Cameron surrender to the notion that he was making a terrible film.

One positive that came out of the production was Cameron’s introduction to an actor named Lance Henriksen. Henriksen, who had previously played a small role in Dog Day Afternoon (1975), was playing policeman Steve Kimbrough in Piranha 2. The actor, like the rest of the cast, was deeply discouraged by the shoddiness of the production, but found inspiration in the energetic, young director. At first he thought Cameron to be a little crazy but quickly came to respect the director’s intensity and determination, as well as his almost obsessive work ethic.

One particular incident cemented Henriksen’s opinion of Cameron; upon discussing Piranha 2‘s wardrobe (or lack thereof), the two men both agreed that nothing in Henriksen’s personal wardrobe resembled the sheriff’s uniform that his character should be wearing. They spotted a waiter at the restaurant they were eating who had on an outfit that they thought would look more convincing. Without hesitation, Cameron approached the man and literally bought the clothes off the man’s back.

Henriksen found himself inspired by the novice director’s enthusiasm, and, by his own admission, gave more to the production than he would have otherwise. Such dedication often bordered on foolhardiness. One scene, called for Henriksen’s character to ditch a helicopter into the ocean to save his son, who’s trapped with a girl on a boat. The scene is one of the least logical in the entire film. It called for Henriksen’s character to jump out of a helicopter and fall 40 feet into the churning ocean below. As was par for the course on Piranha 2, the production couldn’t afford a stuntman. Cameron, convinced that the jump would be one of the high points of the film, talked Henriksen into taking the plunge himself. Infected by the director’s enthusiasm, the actor agreed. The shot went off fine, but the fall was a great deal more frightening and painful than Henriksen had originally anticipated, and the actor ended up breaking his hand.

Although things weren’t exactly going well, Cameron felt that the film was progressing satisfactorily and that he was doing a pretty good job, all things considered. Then, twelve days into principle photography, Assonitis summoned Cameron to his office where he promptly fired him. Although Assonitis gave little if any reason for Cameron’s abrupt dismissal, it has been reported that he told Cameron that the footage he was shooting looked terrible and would be impossible to edit cohesively. Cameron, however, had never been given the opportunity to see any of the previously shot footage, including the dallies, and couldn’t determine whether he was at fault or not. Consequently, Assonitis immediately took over directing the film himself.

Shaken and discouraged, Cameron returned to the United States in March of 1981, thoroughly embittered by his experience making Piranha 2. To make matters worse, rumors began to filter back to him that painted an even uglier picture of the production and its producer. Cameron learned that Assonitis had never wanted him as the director in the first place. Eventually it came to light that part of the financing for Piranha 2 had come from a distribution agreement Assonitis had made with Warner Brothers. One of the provisions of the deal stipulated that the film had to have an American director to get distribution in the United States and Assonitis had hired Cameron simply to honor that portion of the agreement, and had intended on firing him and directing the movie himself from the beginning.

With his trademark confidence visibly shaken, Cameron contemplated his next move. He knew that Piranha 2, which admittedly had been bad under his own control, would now turn out completely abysmal under the guidance of Assonitis. Initially, the young filmmaker considered letting the matter go completely, until the second bombshell exploded. He learned that despite his firing, he was to remain credited as the sole director of Piranha 2. Cameron realized that not only had he been duped into working as a puppet for Assonitis, but that he was also going to have to publicly shoulder the responsibility for the terrible movie that had resulted from the entire debacle. Cameron made the decision to talk to Assonitis face to face about the matter and flew to Italy to do so.

Arriving in Rome, Cameron quickly located Assonitis and informed him of his concerns, Uncharacteristically, Assonitis listened to what the young filmmaker had to say. Perhaps thinking that Cameron might still be of use to him, Assonitis even showed Cameron some of the Piranha 2 footage. While it certainly wasn’t awe-inspiring cinema, even Cameron had to admit that most of it seemed acceptable by B-movie standards. The two men co-existed for a time, their conflict seemingly settled. There was still one small matter however. On his trips with the producer to the editing room, Cameron had noticed cans and cans of film stacked prominently near the back of the room. When Cameron would ask what was in the cans, he was always brushed off or misdirected by Assonitis or his associates.

Giving in to his curiosity, Cameron broke into the editing suite to see for himself what exactly was in the film cans. Viewing their contents, Cameron quickly saw that the footage was from Piranha 2. To his horror, he realized that he was looking at the cut that Assonitis and his team had been putting together unbeknownst to Cameron. What Cameron saw on those reels upset him tremendously. He felt that there was a film that could be made from the footage, but the one that Assonitis was cutting together was complete garbage. The next day, an enraged Cameron stormed into Assonitis’s office. He was furious at the producer for botching the project and then for trying to place the ultimate blame on him. Assonitis actually came to fear Cameron as the argument quickly progressed to a screaming match. Reportedly, he brandished a letter opener like a knife in order to keep the belligerent American at bay. In the end, although both men shouted threats of legal action against one another, nothing came of the incident.

Cameron, feeling that his professional career was now in jeopardy, undertook a desperate course of action. Using his handy credit card, the young filmmaker repeatedly broke into Assonitis’s editing suite and surreptitiously re-cut Piranha 2 himself. If the movie was going to credit him as director, then Cameron was determined to do everything he could to fix it, even if that meant saving the picture from its own producer.

Since the labels on the film cans were written in Italian, Cameron had no idea what most of them meant. He hunted for the one with “fin” written on it, because he knew that was Italian for “end.” Starting there, he worked in reverse and edited the movie from the climax to the beginning.

During this time, the mental and physical strain of constant activity began to take its toll on Cameron. By all accounts, it was a very bad period in his life. He was estranged from his first wife and his professional career appeared to be in free fall. Furthermore, he was stranded in a foreign land and had nearly run out of money just getting there. Cameron lived from day to day in a hotel and was so broke that he couldn’t afford food, and was forced to survive off what he could find on discarded room service trays.

His poor lifestyle left him at the mercy of various illnesses, including one devastating bout with the flu. The illness proved terribly debilitating and produced horrific, feverish nightmares. At one point Cameron actually thought he was going to die. During one particularly graphic nightmare, he dreamt of a robot made in the form of a metallic skeleton. It rose phoenix-like from a roaring blaze and dragged itself along the floor, gripping two knives that it used to pull itself forward. Cameron was so affected by the dream that upon waking he immediately wrote down everything he could remember about the terrifying vision.

Amid these difficulties, Assonitis eventually discovered Cameron’s tampering in the editing room and the director was threatened with legal action and permanently banned from the facilities. His work was sloppily undone by Assonitis’s underlings. This re-re-editing process was so haphazard that many of Cameron’s changes remained in the final cut despite Assonitis’s actions.

Cameron used the last of his resources to return to the United States, feeling thoroughly defeated and drained by his entire experience with Piranha 2. Later, after talking with Warner Bros. about what had happened, he was eventually allowed to re-cut the American release of the movie, but even this provided him with little, if any satisfaction.

Although Cameron has cited the entire Piranha 2 experience as being one of the worst professional experiences of his career, in the end it proved to be the catalyst for two of his most defining works. From his fevered dreams in Rome he had developed an unshakable vision of an unstoppable, monstrously efficient robotic killer. It was from this nightmare that Cameron would find his inspiration for his breakthrough film, The Terminator (1984).

(continued on next page, see link below author box)

III. CRITICAL APPRECIATION

Ultimately, Piranha 2: The Spawning is a terrible film, and in many ways, it’s unfair to call it Cameron’s first film as a director. Although Cameron was onboard for pre-production and twelve days of principle photography, Ovidio Assonitis was, by all accounts, the person most strongly in charge of the direction of the film. To this day, it remains unclear exactly what footage was shot by Cameron and what was shot by Assonitis. Keeping this in mind however, it’s still important to note that Cameron worked extensively on re-writing H.A. Milton’s original script, and that there are certain elements in Piranha 2 that are present throughout the body of Cameron’s work.

The first common thread is the film’s strong female protagonist Anne Kimbrough (Tricia O’Neil). Even in the mediocre world of the exploitation film, Cameron still managed to have a strong woman as his main protagonist. The character of Anne Kimbrough shows many of the traits present in later Cameron-created characters like Sarah Conner, Ellen Ripley, Lindsey Brigman, Helen Trasker, and Rose DeWitt Bukater. Like these other strong females, Kimbrough is smarter and braver than most of the men around her, and is sexy in a non-demeaning way. Like all other female Cameron protagonists, above all else, Kimbrough is fiercely independent and self-reliant. She has no problem going against the will of her employers, the law, or her husband when she feels the need to do so. Like Ripley, Sarah Conner, and Lindsey Brigman, she understands the need to act, and doesn’t wait for others to catch up and agree with her.

In nearly all his movies, Cameron has a prominent scene where the strong female protagonist is mercilessly prodded and interrogated by men who clearly do not believe her. It happens in The Terminator when incredulous police officers question Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) about the man who’s out to kill her. The same scene is echoed in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), except this time it’s an annoying psychiatrist grilling a substantially more jaded Conner. In Aliens (1986), Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is relentlessly prodded by corporate men who do not accept her explanation of why she destroyed the company’s ship. True Lies (1994) shows Helen Tasker (Jamie Lee Curtis) being harshly questioned by kidnappers who doubt her fidelity to her husband. A similar scene plays out in Piranha 2 when Anne is belittled in a question and answer session with her boss and her estranged husband. The whole thing plays out exactly as similar scenes in later Cameron films do. No one believes Anne about the flying piranhas, just as no one believes Sarah Conner about the Terminators, and no one believes Ripley about the Aliens.

(continued on next page, see link below author box)

IV. POSTSCRIPT

Released in 1982, Piranha 2: The Spawning quickly disappeared from theaters and was a commercial and a critical failure. Through cable and video, it eventually made back its production costs and, in the end, turned a miniscule profit. It was even nominated for the International Fantasy Film Award for Best Picture in 1983, but did not win.

Although there are some vaguely interesting underwater shots in the film, for the most part not even a glimmer of James Cameron’s talent comes through in Piranha 2: The Spawning. In fact, according to most reports, the entire Piranha 2 experience seriously shook Cameron’s confidence. He found out the hard way just how rough the Hollywood game could be played and how easy it was to be taken advantage of. As a direct result of his experiences on Piranha 2, Cameron became permanently mistrustful of others having creative control over his films.