The best joke is the opening image, Welles' Xanadu no-trespassing fence in a Corman production, but Joe Dante, in his maiden flight as director, has plenty of other gags, built around the Jaws boom of a few years back. A couple of backpackers pick a closed-off pool for some midnight skinny-dipping; a close-up of a scaly peeper waking up is inserted for barely a second before the eponymous killer fish come for their snack, the title dissolves into a scarlet cloud in the water. Heather Menzies is the investigating heroine, "two-thirds bloodhound" introduced controlling an arcade-game shark. Her search for the spelunkers, aided by Bradford Dillman (himself a gruff spoof of Charlton Heston), leads to an isolated lab where Kevin McCarthy, full of '50s monster-movie associations, conducts genetic experiments. A fond shout-out to Ray Harryhausen is amid the bric-a-brac, yet no time is to be wasted, for the pond has just been drained and the little guys are on their way towards the ocean, a summer camp full of children an obligatory stop. Keenan Wynn toasts the wonders of the river until his feet are munched off; "People eat fish, fish don't eat people," declares counselor Paul Bartel, but the mutant critters are part of "Operation Razor Teeth," a military project aiming for the next step above chemical warfare, to be used in 'Nam. Science distorted by unsavory government, with John Sayles' screenplay feeding off the final vestiges of Seventies political betrayal. (Final? "There will be other wars," Barbara Steele purrs.) The budget allows for at least one luxuriant overhead crane shot surveying the fairgrounds about to be invaded, culminating in Dick Miller's slippery cowboy intro, yet Dante's focus remains on the low-tech underwater POV, funny-gross mayhem, and the public's pained discovery, brimming with bites, of the lies of the system. With Belinda Balaski, Melody Thomas, Shannon Collins, and Bruce Gordon.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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