Nerdly » ‘Piranha Women’ Review

24th Jan2023

‘Piranha Women’ Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Sof Puchley, Bobby Rice, Houston Rhines, Jon Briddell, Carrie Overgaard, Shary Nassimi, Richard Gabai, Michael Gaglio, Jonathan Nation, Nathaniel Moore | Written and Directed by Fred Olen Ray

When Richard becomes suspicious of his girlfriend’s new experimental cancer treatment, he grows even more concerned when she suddenly vanishes. In his frantic search for her, he discovers a secret society of beautiful women, all medically altered by the mysterious Doctor Sinclair. They are something less than human. They are piranha women…

If you know your genre cinema, especially the era of VHS and independent horror, there are a few names that were, and still are synonymous with fantastic low-budget, high-concept horror movies… The type of films the mainstream called B-movies. People like Charles Band, Jim Wynorski, David DeCoteau and Fred Olen Ray. And guess how many of the aforementioned have worked together? If you said all of them you would, until now, be wrong. You see whilst David DeCoteau helmed a number of films for Charles Band’s Full Moon and a couple of years back Jim Wynorski signed up for a couple of Band’s more recent movies. But Fred Olen Ray had never worked for Full Moon despite the obvious synergy.

Jump forward to now and Ray and Band have teamed up for Piranha Women, a schlocky slice of low-budget horror that feels, honestly, more like a Fred Olen Ray film than it does a Full Moon movie, seemingly tapping into Ray’s love of low-budget, somewhat cheesy and oftentimes sleazy movies. You only have to look at the output of his Retromedia distribution label to see that!

Piranha Women starts as it means to continue with one of the titular characters chomping down on a guy’s penis in a hot tub… and that’s even before we’ve got into the crux of the film! But that’s only one of many “out there” instances of this particular group of piranha women’s actions – just wait till you see one of the women not only sporting a mouthful of piranha teeth but extra mouths AND teeth on her breasts too! It’s ridiculous but in the best way possible. It’s the antithesis of the kind of cinema Blumhouse and A24 are putting out and, honestly, I’m here for it.

Like a number of recent Full Moon films, Piranha Women keeps its running time short, sub 60 minutes in fact, which means that the film moves at some pace – in fact the briefness feels very much akin to the films that inspired it – the 50s creature features, with their mad scientists and all. Though here the genre is very much viewed through Fred Olen Ray’s particular lens, and it’s all the better for it!

It’s been quite some time since we’ve had a Fred Olen Ray horror film (Ray’s been spending a lot of his recent career helming cheesy TV movies for Lifetime et al.) and after watching Piranha Women it’s clear that the genre – and I – have been missing his style of B-movie making. So I really hope the teased continuation of Doctor Sinclair’s experiments at the of the movie gives us a sequel. And soon!