Piranhaconda – review

Ross MacDonald dips his toe into the dangerous waters of  Syfy channel films, and finds something so awful it’s rather good.

Go on, piranhaconda lad.

PIRANHACONDA (2012)

DIRECTOR: Jim Wynorski

COUNTRY: USA

RUNNING TIME: 82 mins

WATCH IF YOU LIKE: the idea of genetically mutated fish, boobs, Sharktopus,

 (WARNING: this review contains spoilers. But, you know. Seriously.)

“OF course it’s safe, this is Hawaii, nothing bad ever happens in Hawaii!”

[Cut to the poor wretched fool who uttered these words being devoured.]

There’s obviously an audience for these kinds of films, which is why they keep being churned out. The number of reptiles and fish that can be genetically fused together by some big bad government agency is getting silly now – don’t they know that it’s NEVER going to work? (Mind you, from the Alien franchise, The Weyland-Yutani Corporation will still continue to farm Alien eggs and sacrifice insurmountable numbers of scientists and military personnel to try and train/farm the acid-blooded killing machines and that’s THE FUTURE, PEOPLE.)

Supposedly a sequel to Sharktopus (which I thoroughly recommend) Piranhaconda is about a rescue. Two plucky Piranhaconda’s are looking for their missing egg. Who’s stolen it? Why, it’s Mr Blonde! Yes, instead of tying men to chairs and threatening to burn them alive, Michael Madsen is now spending his days stealing eggs from super-mutant snake-fish-things. He ends up hitching a ride to Kauai, Hawaii and meets up with a film crew and they’re all captured by some bad dudes who get them to film a ransom video.

Piranhaconda is the best film I’ve seen about a giant fish/snake mutant

Are you still with me? Good. Anyway, the piranhaconda family pops up and starts chopping on everyone and chaos ensues. The main dude and two girls (who just wear hot pants and bikini tops all the time) soon work out that Madsen has the egg and that they need to return it to the ‘Condas, and escape their kidnappers and avoid getting eaten.

As you can probably tell, this isn’t going to win any awards. Madsen looks like he’d much rather be anywhere else – he could have filmed all his scenes sitting in his trailer. Rachel Hunter is the other big name but only lasts about 50 minutes before the eponymous mutated fish/snake puts her out of her misery. The head kidnapper guy is playing his role 100% serious, making him seem even more ridiculous and weirdly, slightly camp, whilst the lead guy is obviously having a whale (snake) of a time, as he gets to hang out with Boobs McGee for the entire 82 minutes and drive a quad bike.

There’s several cuts away from the main plot to focus on various groups of scantily clad ladies, (some hiking through the jungle, some part of the film crew who have wandered off) and they all have similar life expectancies; short – very, very short. They’re just red shirts waiting to die and they achieve that role with 100% success.

Near the end, one of the two main girls (the stupid one) is eaten inside a van, whilst Madsen’s character falls in the water trying to save the egg, only to also be devoured, the poor bastard.

The final girl and a man who resembles a young Kevin Sorbo manage to lure the last piranhaconda (one of them is killed halfway through by the kidnappers, using a rocket launcher!) to a waterfall and kill it with a bomb made by the pyrotechnic guy from the film set. They then hug and do the whole: “It’s over! We won! Let’s get each other naked!” thing.

This is short lived, as (unexpectedly) they’re soon turned to a fine red powder by ANOTHER massive snake/fish mutant, which made me roar with laughter.

The end. Roll credits, roll the Piranhaconda theme song.

Fitting into the familiar ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ category, I have to say that Piranhaconda is the best film I’ve seen about a giant fish/snake mutant.

———————–

IF you’ve decided you want to watch this movie, here is a fun drinking game I’ve made to accompany it:

DRINK!

• Every time you see cleavage
• Someone says something stupid/blindingly obvious
• Someone is dangerously un-genre savvy
• Someone fires a gun
• Michael Madsen struggles to deliver a line with enthusiasm
• Piranhaconda is on screen
• Piranhaconda kills someone
• Piranhaconda says a witty one-liner
• Piranhaconda jumps over a helicopter on water skis and says “AAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!”
• You hear the Piranhaconda theme song

SIDENOTE: the DVD cover – none of this happens. Rachel Hunter never wears a bikini, just an unattractive black boiler suit, and there’s one helicopter at the start, that’s neither of these helicopters. WHAT IS GOING ON?

FILM FACT: Kauai Hawaii, where Piranhaconda was filmed, is the same place they shot Jurassic Park!