July 15^th, 1999

"DON'T GO IN THE WATER!"

With the release of Lake Placid today and the upcoming release of Deep Blue Sea it seems that aquatic creature features are back in style. Be it a giant croc, some flesh-devoring piranhas, a killer whale, sharks or even barracudas there's always something in the water to be afraid of (or as Blood Beach wanted you to believe there's always something on the shore to be frightened of as well - even if it is a giant clam).

Chosen for your pleasure are three "soggy" horror thrillers, just don't go into the water for an hour afterwards.

Jaws [1975] was a surprise hit the year it was released. After plenty of production problems and the fact Steven Spielberg was still an unknown director with the TV-film Duel and Sugarland Express to his name the hype for this wasn't much. Based on Peter Benchley's novel this tells the tale of smalltown Amity's sheriff Roy Schneider, geeky scientist Richard Dreyfuss and crockety sailor Robert Shaw going after a great white shark that's gotten a taste for human flesh. This little film that could came out of nowhere with it's awesome John Williams score, it's tightly wound script and some cool shark attacks to become the first movie in history to gross one-hundred-million. And if you haven't seen it already, shame on you.

Piranha [1978] began as New World Pictures answer to Jaws. It also helped launch the careers of Joe Dante (Gremlins fame) and indie-king-of-the-moment John Sayles. The simple story has some genetically enhanced piranhas accidently let loose from a military compound that do a little bit of reconstructive surgery on anyone who decides to go for a swim. Entertaining low-budget fun piles on plenty of grue but surprisingly never gets stupid and has enough witty moments to make it a completely silly, yet effective, film.

Alligator [1980] was another John Sayles script that turned-out to be a fun and goofy semi-parody that played on the 70's trend of giving children little alligator babies as pets. Well this alligator was flushed into the sewers and he grew rather large. Plus he enjoys to eat humans (bet you didn't see that one coming). Energetically directed by Lewis Teague (who went on to direct Cat's Eye, Navy Seals and others) this is the original "big alligator scares the crap out of people before making hamburger helper of them" movie.