Lee Majors! Karen Black! Margaux Hemingway! Marisa Berenson! James Franciscus! Powerhouses of the 1970s, movies and TV. Other than the Lee Majors TV show "The Fall Guy," the 1980s sort of left these peeps behind. Today we look at an action packed heist/disaster/monster movie from 1979 that was partially financed by Lee Majors and his then wife, Farrah Fawcett..."Killer Fish," directed by Antonio Margheriti. Shot in Brazil, it has as antagonists hundreds of thousands toothy menaces we know as piranha.
A heist...and it is beautiful. Robert (Majors) and Kate (Black) lead a team that will rob a vault of emeralds. A diversion? No, not a smoke bomb, or a fire alarm...nope. The buggers blow up a power plant! You gotta love it! Explosions galore. They crack a safe and get away with a fortune in jewels. The heist was financed by Kate's man, Paul (Franciscus). He has a heart condition and Kate tries to give him heart attacks by making passionate love to him. Robert? Kate really loves him, but he falls for the fashion model, Gabrielle (Hemingway). Okay, Ann (Berenson) owns a clothing line and her and her husband Tom (Gary Collins) are there to enjoying a work-honeymoon. Oh! Remember Dan Pastorini? He played under Bum Phillips with the old Houston Oilers...Earl Campbell was on that team. He's one of the gang members. He'll be eaten by piranhas.
See, after getting away with the jewels, as planned, the gang tosses the spoils into a lake by a dam. They don't know Paul has put thousands of piranha in the lake as an extra means of security. So when gang members try to steal the gems, they're eaten. How long after the robbery does it take for the gang to turn on itself? 60 seconds. Kate would like to take the gems and be off with Robert. Robert doesn't trust Kate and has a lot of pre-marital sex with Gabrielle. Now all go try to get the box of gems but a hurricane and tornado destroy the dam and the boat they're on starts sinking in piranha infested water. The boat slowly sinks and Paul figures on betraying everyone by absconding with the gems and leaving everyone else to be eaten by piranhas. First he has to get them. He seduces Kate to dive in and get them...that's all for the plot in this review.
Will Kate come back up with the gems, or will only her skeleton come up? Will Gabrielle and Kate get into a catfight over the Six-Million Dollar Man? After Dan Pastorini gets ingested, will terry Bradshaw be recruited into the gang. This one has a lot of action and even works as a disaster film. The cheesecake factor is top-notch and so is the beefcake factor. For a nice nostalgic look back at the 70s, see "Killer Fish."
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