Don't let the Anthony M. Dawson director's credit fool you, this flick is the work of film alchemist Antonio Margheriti, who already tickled all our fancies with The Wild, Wild Planet trilogy, Naked You Die, and Reb Brown's whole six-pack of WTF known to we mere mortals as Yor, Hunter from the Future. And somewhat inexplicably, this film was completely unknown to me before I clicked the appropriate link. And with a cast like that, with all the shit that trailer promised, I immediately went in search of a copy, leaving a trail of smoke and scorched links as I went.
Alas, the film has yet to be released on DVD, but a little more digging found that the entire film is available serialized on YouTube, courtesy of bvseediermedia2:
OK, fair warning, now having seen the film I can tell you that Killer Fish doesn't quite live up to that trailer. But really, How could it? The film owes much more to Gordon Douglas's Ocean's 11 -- make that Hy Averback's Maudlin's 11 -- than Joe Dante's Piranha ... Well, if Sinatra's crew knocked over a diamond mine by blowing half of it up, whose evil mastermind made sure no one double-crossed him by double-crossing everyone else by stocking a nearby reservoir with said killer fish, that eat the majority of his partners, who is eventually thwarted by a hoisting petard due to some divine intervention in the form of a hurricane/tornado, before culminating in a fist-fight between two 1970's Über-Studs. Yeah, it doesn't live up to the trailer but the sheer, mounting absurdity of this thing is something one definitely needs to see. And if the film did nothing else, it reignited my childhood notions of wanting to be Lee Majors when I grew up -- but I'd settle for James Franciscus.
2 comments:
Clearly ten year old Morty's taste wasn't quite fully developed yet-I need to see this! When I get home tonight, I need to watch all of Maudlin's 11-I really am not as up on my SCTV as I need to be.
Honestly, the thing comes off as one of those cash-in TV movies of the week, based on whatever big budget disaster movie was going at the time. But with each twist, you'll find yourself thinking "Really? Seriously? This was your plan?"
One of the best investments I ever made was buying those SHOUT factory SCTV sets awhile back. Maudlin's 11 isn't quite as good as their Ben-Hur parody, but good enough. And, damn, between that, the MST3k's and the new Corman discs, SHOUT frakkin' rules.
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