Free With Ads - Piranha (1978)

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

For our final film of Animal Attack August, we chose the 1978 Joe Dante film Piranha which asked the question "what if instead of one big Jaws there were lots of little Jaws?" Tune in next week when our movie will be... The Guyver.  ----- Subscribe to Emily's new YouTube Channel The Anti-Craft, coming soon! Matt Lieb will be in Seattle Sept 4-5 at Laughs Comedy Club! Matt Lieb will also be in Portland, Oregon Sept 7-8 at Helium Comedy Club! On August 30th, Jordan Morris will be at Cape and Cowl Con in Alameda, CA. On Sept 3- Sept 7, come to Atlanta for DragonCon. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinfreewithads

This is Free With Ads, the podcast that asked the question, why pay something called Philo $25 a month to watch Jaws when you could go online for free and watch a Jaws ripoff that's really kind of cute? Because instead of one big guy, it's a bunch of wittle guys with eity-beity faces and they go num-n-nom-nom-n-nom-n-n-nam-nam-nam. There it is. I'm Emily Fleming. Today's movie is Piranha, the 70s Somethings in the Water movie, that hates two things, the military industrial complex and skinny tipping. With us, as always, is the super producer, the he freak Matt Lieb, hitting us with those late summer drops. What about the goddamn piranhas?

They're eating the guests, sir. The bronze reading the guests, guys. They're eating the guests, sir. Hey, we're doing a movie about animals eating people. That must mean that it's the last week of animal. attack August yeah animal attack

August and then one more now I'm adding this that's the sound that noise that piranhas make I guess oh my god famously the noise piranhas make thank God you included that and not

Daisy the oh Amy you're talking about Amy Amy that's the name of it ugly piranha bad ugly parana go away Um, yes, this movie, when the piranhas attacks that, that weird noise plays, which I guess sounds like someone like blowing into a desk fan. That what it sounds like when you get eaten by little fish?

You know what? It sounds like a fuck ton of flies. What it sounds like is annoying and it's really funny to think that your death would be annoying. You're like, they're eating you little by little. And you're like, fucking kill me. This is the most annoying sound I've ever heard. It does take them a long time to eat.

eat certain people. Oh yeah, yeah. They're there they're underwater for a while at some point it becomes the victim's fault in my opinion. Oh yeah, it takes like five business days for people to fly like five feet to the shore. Yeah, and in a lot of cases they die just just right next to the to the shore. Yeah, it would take you two more seconds to climb out but this is Darwinism. Maybe you get hypnotized by the buzzing noise. I guess. Really annoying, no one. I mean, the survival instincts of a wet sock like this whole whole yeah um well hey before we talk more about piranha which is as of this recording streaming free with ads we're going to talk about something else we saw for free on the internet this week uh now this is an article that i saw on cnbc.com my home page where i go to

great homepage yeah great homepage if you want to like learn about stocks i guess stocks and news stocks and news um according to cnbc.com Guys, MySpace is coming back. Yay. I'm going to have to learn to code. And I'm old. I'm an old age. Learn to code again?

I don't want to. If you want to add your favorite Arctic monkey song onto MySpace, you're going to have to learn to code. So everybody can know what Arctic monkeys song you like. I just want to support women in STEM. I don't want to be a women in STEM. I know. That's how I feel.

Got a STEM. You got a STEM. I just want to be a girl. I am excited about this because I cannot look at Instagram anymore. It is, so now I've just been playing with my sake of game gear, which I just got Dracula from the 90s. Holding it up to the Zoom.

Yeah, no one would see it. The video game based on Bram Stoker's Dracula, where you play as. The one with Gary Oldman in it. Yeah. It's a lot like a Super Mario game, but it's just,

it's in a spookier castle with some chandeliers. I think, I think playing a vintage Sega game gear is healthier than scrolling on Instagram. 100%. Well, it is proving to be such because I'm like, I need to hold some kind of lightbox. You seem very serene. Yeah, you do seem way better. Yeah, and you could adjust the lighting on it and the volume and you could plug your headphones.

And it only takes 12 batteries. That's right. I just remember because this is my Sega game gear from when I was in the sixth grade. Wow. And my dad got rechargeable batteries because of this thing. Smart. And so we had this like charger for batteries in our house at all time. That's awesome.

So wait, MySpace was gone for a while, I assume. I think it was still up and running, but you couldn't really use it, I guess. From what I gathered from this article, when,

you know, it got, it got eaten by the Facebooks and the Twitters and the vines and the peat, Pete, the peach one, anyway, whatever. There was a peach one for a minute. Mastodon, anyway. Before its lunch got eaten by all of those

social media networks. They pivoted. They C-Syso, yes. No one was going on Micepace anymore because they were busy watching Take My Wife on C-Sos. And all of Saturday Night Live. And all of Saturday night live.

From the samurai deli guy, to the mango. To mango. All our favorite guys. We don't want to browse MySpace. We're too busy. C-Soe in anyway. I was on C-S-O, man.

This is fucking bullshit. I hate that all my credits. I think all three of us. Yeah, we all have. We're on C-Syso. I briefly, I got some money to punch up a C-Syso script. Hell, yeah. And before that script could be shot, C-S-So went under.

So I never, I don't, I got some C-S-O money. I got, I think, 100 C-C-S-O bucks. Yeah. And you can spend them on C-C-C-C-C-1. Saturday night live sketches. I almost got on CISO. I think I'm on like one thing, but we did this show in New York called Sticker Treat,

where comedians would... I know, sticker treat. For Halloween, we'd do a three-minute stand-up set as another comedian. And I did The Honeymooners with my buddy Ed Larson and John Moreno from last podcast. Yeah. And it was so good, but right before our sketch, a fire alarm went off. And they were filming it for C-Soe. and they had to evacuate everyone in the building.

And so the cameras did not film any of the rest of the show. And it was right at our sketch. I was like, God, damn it. You could have been on C-Syso. I know, I know. At least we were all on Quibi, probably. Well, now we're all on Pluto and Tubi. That's right.

Yeah. So we've made it. Where the people are. Where the people are. We're the people's people. Does anybody have a, does have MySpace memories? That was my first social media. network.

Me too. Me too. And that an AOL instant messenger was social. That was really a chat room. I don't know if we count chat rooms. No, not a social media, but it was social and it was media.

But no, MySpace was like it was like MySpace in Live Journal before Facebook came out. And yeah, my MySpace was, you know, I did the, what was it, top eight? It was like your top eight best friends. I like,

I set those up and then I promptly forgot that I had a MySpace. I didn't know what to do with it. So I just was like, what's the point of this? It wasn't until Facebook that I was like, oh, this is somewhat useful because I'm in college and I can just friend people I'm in class with and be like, hey, did you go to class? Because I didn't, you know? Well, I had like, I liked. Can I look at your notes? Yeah, can I look at your notes?

Sorry, I set up this Facebook account so I could cheat. I had a MySpace and it was the fun thing about it was figuring out how to like make little doodad sparkle and stuff on your page and be like, ooh, I changed the color of the background. Like you could code this thing and make it as unique as possible and make a little photo album. There was a photo album. I had cool photos of stuff on there from high school and things. But yeah, I wouldn't know how to start. We're going to have to watch YouTube tutorials about how to start up our fucking Myspace things again. What about you, Jordan?

Yeah, that was my first social media network. And I was like in, they did the thing where like when you signed on, there was just a random top eight you could look at of random users. And I was in that once and just got flooded with randos. Really? And I think that was the start of like the unhealthy dopamine hit from social media. And I'm like, I was just chasing that day when I was in everybody's top eight. Hell yeah. So we've ever felt good sense.

Oh God, what was I wearing in the photo? Bredora. Maybe. Might have been. This was right after college. So, yeah, maybe a statement hat of some sort, a jaunty cap or a beanie with a propeller. A white and black check tie. Maybe, maybe.

Could have been, honestly. Might have been. Emily, I was mentioned, so when Myspace shut down because of all the CSOs of the world, they pivoted to being just a music site for a while. and the guy's in this interview. So Tom is out. Tom from MySpace is out of the company. He cashed out.

There's these two just other rando dudes running at. And they said, so they're talking about like relaunching it as music and that failing. They say, we still own MySpace. We're stewards of the MySpace brand at this point. And we're going to relaunch MySpace. We're just waiting for the right time to do it. And if that one doesn't work, we'll do it again. One way or another, MySpace will work.

Right. We don't know much. down the line. We don't know why. All they have in their lives is they own, they own that little MySpace logo. It's like, yeah, they own the fucking domain and the logo at some point just be like,

hey, I don't know, cut your losses. Sell it to a weirdo. Sure. It does kind of wait. Get your teaching license. Teach English to inner city kids. Exactly. Like what are we really doing here?

But, you know. It feels like one more data farm. Like one more thing to be like, well, we got everything out of these. these apps, let's go ahead and get another one going. But I'm still going to do it. Oh, yeah. Oh, if we can make this show big on MySpace?

Honestly, Barry on Brand. Day one. I know. I'm finally going to be first. I'm finally going to be first on a social network. Look for the free with ads page on the future MySpace, whatever that may look like. And if it doesn't work, we'll try it again. We will try it again.

Hey guys, let's talk about Piranha 1978. Nobody had seen this before? Nope. Sure hadn't. I had seen the, in like the 2010s when like 3D gimmick movies kind of came back, they did a reboot of this.

So they had Piranha 3D and then afterwards they did piranha 3. Wait for it, double D. Oh, yeah. A lot more tits. I just see two piranhas on a lady's chest that are just like, Nom-nom boobies.

Sure. Is it piranha double-d because there's titties? Is that why? It has gratuitous tits. Okay, sick. All right. Okay. We had tits at the opening of this.

We did. We sure did. And it kind of points to a more tit-filled movie than we actually get. Yeah. Very true. Unfortunately. Well, yeah, let's talk about these tits and how they enter into the plot of the film. Yummy, yummy.

They kind of kick off the story if you think about it. They tit off the story. That's right. Check off jugs. Yeah. Whatever. Whatever. It was great.

It was great. It's a podcast. I love it. So we got two hot young hikers hiking around in the woods somewhere. The movie really never tells you where it takes place. It's the South or New Jersey, I guess. Oh, yeah. The accents in this movie are all over the place.

All fucking over the place. Yeah, there's a British lady. It's like fine. Whatever. I don't care anymore. There's a. Southern drunkard. Like, it's like, all right.

There's a guy dressed as a cowboy who has a mafia accent. None of it makes sense. And I kind of, I appreciate it in that sense. Yeah, it's this movie's, this movie's like low-budgetness is very like funny and charming, I think. Yeah. We're directed by Joe Dante who would go to Gremlins and the Burbs and like, anyway, a bunch of other cool stuff. Looney Tunes back in action.

Oh, no shit. Great Joe Dante movie. Okay. we have these two hot hikers. They go over a fence with a sign that says military test site. It's a very clearly labeled fence. Oh, God. Because that's a great idea.

And there's like the pool of water in the middle of this military test site. And the female hiker, she loves it. This feels great. Oh, we got to go in. We got to go in. And of course, they take off their clothes. They're both looking good. She pushes him in in jeans, which is fucked up.

Very dangerous. Very dangerous. Yeah. One of the cell phone was in there. Yeah. His 1978 cell phone. Oh, that's a good point. Wait, why is it dangerous?

You could sink. If you have heavy clothes on, you could become exhausted and like, I mean, Jordan, you're the swimmer. So I bet this movie with the most frustrating viewing for you because of the swimming is garbage. Yeah, the swimming is very bad. I worry that no one in the cast actually knew how to swim. and perhaps

perhaps dozens of extras died during this. I don't know. Not from piranhas. No, no, no. Yeah,

I know. It would be funny that this guy just sank because of his genes. I said nothing to do with his death. So yeah,

so he's not without my calvins. Yeah. Not without my wranglers. Low cut. So they're, you know, they're flirting around,

swimming in the water. And then he's like, hey, you bit me. And she's like, I didn't bite you. and then he goes underwater. We hear the telltale squeaky,

squeaky fan noises of the piranhas. There you go. Oh, I hate it so fucking much. Oh, no, something annoying's biting me. Yeah. I feel like that, that noise is... Tighten your car's fan belt. We got to take her in.

Oh, damn it, my transmission. There sucks. There's a fish in the percolider. No, but I feel like that noise is 30% of this movie. It is. Oh, sure. Yeah. Way too much of it.

So this, well, yeah, actually, I have a sound direct observation that I'll all share when we get to that point. Okay. So yeah. So these teens die, these sexy teens meet a, meet a sexy end by Piranha. We go to our main character, Maggie. She is someone who finds missing people, kind of unclear. on what Maggie's actual job title is, whatever, she's a finder.

And when we meet her, she is playing a Jaws arcade game. Look fun. The balls to remind people of the better movie you're ripping off. Yeah. And it's not even like, oh, well, it's been 15 years since Jaws. No, it was like, when did Jaws come out? It's just three years. Jaws' 1975.

Like in production for this movie, it was two years since Jaws. Jaws. They're like, you know, it'll be sick. Doing the Jaws video game. Just in case people need to be reminded there's a movie they should go see instead of this. Very cool. Also, the effects in that video game are better than any of the practical effects in this

fucking movie. Yeah, that Atari ass game that she's playing in a rental car office, I guess. I know. Rental car offices had arcades. I'm so confused. Like, just touching back on the skinny dipping thing, have you guys ever been skinny dipping? Is that something you guys have done?

You know what? I don't think I ever, I mean, maybe, God, I feel like such a loser, but I don't think I ever have. I'm shocked that y'all aren't like, hell yeah. I do feel like a guy who is skinny. I don't want to get chlorine in my pee hole. I mean, it gets in there anyway, Jordan. That's true. It does.

Yeah, I don't know if I actually have ever jumped into a body of water completely naked. Okay. Maybe a bathtub. I'm going to challenge, yes, I'm going to challenge you. You guys have to go skinny dipping eventually. Like it's very fun. I'm too old now, Emily. But yeah, my friends and I used to sneak into pools in the summertime.

Okay. And like skinny dip. Yeah, I'll just go find some teens, Emily. Well, no. You just. I guess you could like rent an Airbnb that had a pool. I guess and like have a little, you know, adult's weekend. I guess I have skinny dipped in, uh, in hot springs.

But at that point, it's like you're not really, there's not, there's nothing. It's like you're just old. There's nothing cheeky about that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we would go to climb fences at apartment pools. Of course, military test sites. Yeah, well, I'm sure.

But it's really fun. You should definitely do it. And then we go to Waffle House. Oh, smash cut to me being arrested. Emily did it, so I thought it would be fine. I forgot I was flabby. Can we swing by Waffle House? If I was fit, would I still be in cuffs?

Probably not. I really do think it's insane. We don't have a Waffle. awful house in Los Angeles. It would be so kitchy. Everyone would love it. I know, yeah. They should,

I mean, it would be insane. Yeah. It was a good place to get into a fist fight in the parking lot. Yes. So yeah,

so we have, so we have Maggie, she's going to find these teens and we have, I'm going to look at the very not super memorable main character's name. Paul, I believe Paul.

He's our main dude. Looks like Charlton Heston. He does a little bit. He is a, you know, off-the-grid mountain guy. Now, this is a case of a movie trying to cast a tough guy, but this guy is so well quaffed and his jeans so perfectly ironed.

He has ironed, like, creased, pleated jeans. This guy looks, and he has, like, curly hair and a big beard. He looks like he should, like, play, like, keyboards for Christopher Cross. Yes. It's 1978. This guy is totally in a yacht rock band. He does not look like an awful. the grid survivalist.

And in his cabin, he has a collection of ceramic monkeys. He looks like great taste of antiques. He looks like the understudy for the brawny lumberjack. Like it's like didn't quite get the role.

But when brawny guy gets sick, he gets to, you know, try it out. Yeah, he's like the regional understudy for the guy in Oklahoma. Yeah. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah, no, he, although he was cooking a fish and a skillet and it made my mouth water. It looked really fucking. good. I was like, I bet I could just put a whole ass fish in a skillet.

He salted it after. He pulled it out of the skillet and then salted it. I'm like, okay, this is going to be a very fishy fish. He is a pretty tall guy, though, so I'm going to say I think he's the tallest guy. Yeah. Tallest guy. So he gets a visit from a very well-dressed, old drunk from town who brings him his groceries, he brings him like a bottle of Jack, a bottle of Jim Beam, and a bottle of tequila. Hell yeah. From a little like red wagon and he has like a dog with him. It's very cute.

That dog is a cattle dog and it's so cute. That's the same kind of dog that's in that new movie with Anne Hathaway and you and McGregor and everything that just came out. Oh yeah. Whatever house down the lane or whatever the fuck. Yeah, yeah. And it's like a CGI cattle dog in that thing and I'm like, pussies. You could have had.

We got to get a real one. Oh, they're so cute. I love them. I love this dog. Very good dog. This old man is very cute too. He's like very, everyone is dressed very cool in this movie.

The old man has like a cool party shirt and a neat like Panama hat. Looks great. Seventies were just cooler. I think the style was just better. Yeah, I know. Yeah, even in this like low budget ass movie, like everyone looks awesome. So yeah. So he, you know, so this guy's off the grid.

And then Maggie kind of like is like looking on this mountain for where the hikers disappeared. She just, like, walks into this guy's house. She's a real, she's a pretty funny character. I don't know how much of it is, like, scripting and how much of this actor is just kind of a funny weirdo, but she just, like, barges in everywhere. She's kind of, like, scattered, but, like, good at her job. I don't know. So she just walks in and starts, like, touching his stuff.

She's like, have you seen the kids? And then his immediate, his immediate response is, did my ex-wife send you? This guy talks about his fucking ex-wife. He just crowbars it into every conversation. Such a red flag. Work on yourself. That's right. He's not ready to be in a new relationship,

specifically not with the Maggie who's always looking for people. Yeah, he's also got a daughter that you didn't realize he had until like the last 25% of the movie. He almost gets eaten by piranhas. Right. Yeah. So there's one of those things where she's like, you have to help me find the kids. And then he's like, I'm not going to do that. And just a hard cut to the.

them in the Jeep? What happened? It's so disorienting. They didn't even add like an extra line or like, you better. And then smash cut to him in the car. It was just like, he's like, no. And then smash cut, he's there. And you're like, well, I guess they cut out the part where he agrees to be in the rest

of this movie. She's a very scrappy, persistent, likeable character. I guess, yeah, we're supposed to assume that, you know, she's just nagged him to death. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they go up to the military research facility, military test site and start looking for the kids. And they see evidence that someone is there, but they don't seem to give a fuck or look for that person. They just keep looking for the kids.

And in the, they go into a spooky science lab that is filled with mutants and jars and a little stop motion fish guy who rules. I think this is our new sting. He's not the tallest guy. He's the smallest guy. Oh, here we go. That's right. You love it. You love it so much, Matt.

I added the helium. I added the helium to it. Matt, it's so good. Yeah, you know. So this little stop motion fish guy fucking rules and is not in the, he, no one notices him. He's not a part of the movie. He's just watching part of the movie. I do not understand this at all.

It sucks so bad that he's not the star of the movie. movie. It's, yeah, it's Chekhov's walking fish and you're like, oh, well, certainly this guy is going to be a problem. Like, you figure, oh, the solution. Or the solution. At some point, I just kind of figured that the piranha become land piranha. I was like, okay, that's good. It kind of, you know, increases the range. Tremors two. Right. Exactly. But this fucking, no, it just does not show up ever again. And we're just left wondering. I know. Yeah, I was, so this guy, Joe Dante also, you said, he directed gremlins he did grimlins and gremlins too

this is like the gizmo of this movie and then you never see him again and it's such a fucking misopportunity this is this movie is like you know it's like very by the numbers like everything's kind of cliche like you got the like skinny dipping thing

at the beginning but you see these little like glimpses of the weird guy who's directing it the stop motion that line that Matt played at the top has this kind of campy humor that's not like in a ton of the movie but kind of pokes up a little bit so you can tell that like there's a clever guy who will become a great filmmaker making this movie but it's like not a great movie no um yeah but anyway uh so very interesting and the little stop motion guy is a good

evidence that yeah just to like maybe in the sequel they bring that up i don't know because there is a sequel and the sequel is directed by wait for it james cameron it's james cameron's first movie is the... Crazy. This, Joe Dante and James Cameron both made piranha movies before going on to become, like, great filmmakers.

That's crazy. Wow. Yeah, I'm very curious to watch the second one. So maybe next... One day, we'll watch the second one. So, this little fish guy comes out. He doesn't come into the movie at all again. It's a real bummer.

I hope he's okay. I hope he's fine. It's fine. He's an entertainment lawyer in Glendale. He's an entertainment lawyer in Glendale. Anyway, so this old man is there who starts to fight them. They just start yanking on levers and like pulling things. That's, you know, Maggie's kind of a funny character.

She starts pushing buttons. She really is like confidently like just pulling on levers. She sure is. Yeah. In ways that are just like, well, fuck it. This movie's got to be a movie somehow. And then she just pulls on the lever that accidentally releases all the mutant piranhas into the water supply.

Okay, cool, fine. For a government, like, testing facility that's so dangerous, there is zero security. Like, there's nobody there. It's just this old guy. There's one old man and a stop motion fish boy. Exactly. I know, and the Army knows about it, too.

It's like the Army is, like, ready with an anti-pirana plan later in the movie, but, yeah, but they can't fucking put a rent-a-cop outside this thing. The craziest thing is that they had a, tube that went from, you know, swimming pool full of piranha to the river. Water supply. Just don't have that.

Don't build that. Just make it a above ground pool. You don't need an extra tube. That's crazy. We saw that worked in Deep Blue Sea. Yeah. That's true. Didn't really fucking work out.

That's true. It's not a good idea. And this movie, you know, Deep Blue Sea, I think owes a lot to this movie. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Except for it's like in Deep Blue Sea, they were trying to, you know. Solve Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's at this one, they're using them as a weapon during Vietnam.

The Vietnam. Yeah. Cool. Listen, Vietnam loomed large. Yeah, dude. It was on everybody's mind. So, yeah, so this guy is the like one lone guy who's guarding these mutant piranhas. He's like a scientist.

He helped breed them. We'll learn more about it later. We get the first glimpse of the camp storyline in this. there's a summer camp storyline. So, you know, it's a Jaws rip-off, but it's also a Friday the 13th rip-off. There's like a little girl and then her camp counselor. And there's a very mean guy who works at the camp.

And the little girl is scared to go in the water. Yeah, who has a gun. And the little girl is scared to go in the water. She's scared of monsters in the water. Yeah. I was that little girl. I actually looked like that little girl too. Oh, yeah?

And I would like, I hated it. Did you guys go to summer? camp at all? I did one like session at a Christian summer camp where they just talked about hell all the time.

Oh God. And I could not sleep. I just didn't sleep. I feel like I didn't sleep for a week because I was just like thinking about hell. It was awful. They didn't give you smores and like take you to a river or anything? No,

just describe hell. What the fuck? I went to a Methodist. And how you were going there. I got to a, went to a Methodist summer camp. I went to so many summer camps. I was very spoiled.

But I went to Methodist summer camp, which was a lot of just let's go to the lake and let's swim in the pool and, you know, fun stuff. But I got in trouble. They called my parents because of a joke that I made that they deemed inappropriate. What was the joke? And now I want to know the joke. I did this thing. I was like, would you like for me to show you a scene from the nutcracker? And they were like, sure.

And then I held my crotch and went, do. That's good. That's a great joke. They called my mom. They called my mom and said Emily. She mimicked God's testicles. They were like she did an inappropriate joke in front of all these kids and you should come get her. My mom went.

She's a kid. Yeah. But my mom went, we already paid you, right? And they were like, yeah. And she goes, I'm not coming up there. Like that was that. But yeah, there was like, for me, it was a ton of like swimming in a lake. And there was always some giant snapping turtle that everyone said lived at the bottom of the lake.

And I was like, why? the fuck would we persistently have this in every summer camp lake and i got a swimmer's year one year at this one place and we had this we were sleeping um there was an overnight thing and we all had tents and a bat got into my tent it was fucking terrifying and then i got out of the tent went and slept in my sleeping bag in a counselor's tent and my eardrum busted my god i know i got swimmer's ear and my eardrum exploded and blood like went all over my face and they had to call my mom and she did pick me up but it took her a minute I think she was taking her time there are dangers in the water that aren't the piranha yeah you get swimmers here or if you're swimming jeans you could drown I guess

very true a lot of bad stuff can happen in the water yeah so we see the so there's the camp the little girl doesn't want to go in the water there's a mean camp guy he's wearing like an old woman's gardening hat I think that's the worst hat in the movie The worst hat And hey, if you want a hat that says the worst hat on it, go to maxfunstore.com. Okay. It does kind of look like our hat, guys.

It does. You can get our hat in both dad hat and bucket hat styles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, perfect for yelling at kids at summer camp who don't want to go in the water. That's right. So he just needs for her to go in the water for some reason. I don't know.

He's just a mean guy. Anyway, back in the Maggie. story. They're going, I guess the only way they can get to the camp to warn everybody is to go on a like Huck Finn raft. I don't, oh, that's right. The doctor tries to drive their Jeep away and just randomly crashes. Right. So they don't have the Jeep anymore. So they have to take this Huck Finn raft. Which where did they fucking find it? Did they make it very quickly or like, I always has a little line. This is when he first mentions his daughter. He has a little line. He's like, oh, when my daughter read Huck Finn, I made her this raft.

Oh, that's cute. I miss that part. Yeah, anyway, it is the explanation for why they have this and why it's the only way they can travel. I know. It's very cute. So they're going down the river. They see the dog of the old man who was earlier throwing random meat in the water. I don't know why.

He just wants to get killed by piranha, I guess. But the piranhas eat his feet and they find his dead body with the feet shoot off. That was pretty gross, actually. I guess they don't eat bones. Yeah, they just left the, like, feet bones sticking out of his legs. That is wasteful, piranhas. Very wasteful. Eat the bones, piranhas.

It's like the crust. Remember those old KFC commercials? Eat the bones. Oh, yeah. I ate the bones. I ate the bones? Yeah. Those are great commercials.

They love them. They didn't really eat the bones. No, just a boneless chicken sandwich. Yeah, but they did. Do you guys eat the tail of shrimp? When you eat shrimp? I do. I do too.

Yeah, I eat the tail. Are we supposed to do that? I think you can't eat it. I think it's fine. My dad used to do it and it was like a challenge. It was just like, real man, eat the tail. Oh, oh. I was like, well, if they're millennials, they do.

Yeah. They eat the tail like groceries. Oh, isn't that right fish? Remember how millennial. Honestly. That's the sound of millennials when there's an ass around. That's right. Honestly, these fish do eat.

ass. 100%. At the whole time, every time there's a scene where they're trying to do jaws, but they're like,

but it's a thousand little fish, it does look like everyone's just getting eaten out or their dick sucks. It doesn't really look like they're dying. Right. But, you know,

close enough. Yeah. So also something we, we learn is that if you're a scientist in this movie, you don't say piranha, you say piranha,

peranya. Maybe that's actually how you say it. Anyway, the scientist guy, calls it piranha. Anyway, they see a kid. Oh, we learned that he's breeding these piranhas for a secret operation during Vietnam,

where they're going to release them in Vietnam and hopefully kill everybody. But they just keep them now in this little pen. I don't know why. But then the war ended. The war ended. And they were like, well, I'm not going to throw them away. Well, he did try to kill them. They tried to poison them.

And then a number of them became resistant to the poison. and then became cannibals when they were eating the weak one. So they were eating each other. So they're kind of like, you know, the MRSA like virus. Oh shit. Yeah, that's like antibiotic resistant. Yeah. Oh, shit.

That is crazy. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, that first, that's the explanation. I don't know why the piranhas are still alive in this pool. I guess they just cannibalize each other and have kids to the point where they can keep living, whatever. Sounds like a fun Saturday night. Sounds like a fun Saturday night.

Is that the plot? Is that the plot of that movie, The Invite? I don't know. I don't want to see that movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually saw the movie. I think the movie's really good. It was good.

Yeah, I liked it a lot. Oh, okay. Well, shit. I'll go see it. It's really good. It's really good. All right. Anyway, so yeah, the old man dies.

The doctor dies trying to save a kid who's floating on a canoe, whose dad got eaten. Anyway, then the army gets called in I don't know, what happens in fucking piranha? At this point the movie just kind of starts dragging. Yeah, really drags. This is the longest hour and 20 minute movie I have ever fucking seen.

And yeah, and it starts very strong. Like, it's so fun at the beginning. And then they just start hanging around. The piranhas don't kill anybody. Okay, so we have this like whole middle of the movie where not much happens. Let's take a break. and then we'll talk about the crazy fucking ending.

Nice. All right. Hi, it's Jordan. Emily. And Matt. We're here with a special message for you from our Jumbotron. What's the Jumbotron? What is that?

What is that? Tell me. Thank you for asking Matt and Emily. Anyone who goes to maximum fun.org slash jumbotron can pay a very reasonable nominal fee and get us to announce anything you want, within reason. Within reason. Can be weird.

So you can send a special message to a loved one. You can, we'll plug your band, we'll plug your podcast, we don't care, we'll do it. Maximumfun.org slash jumbotron, a great way to support the show. We have a listener who wants to share a message with all of you. This message is for Lindsay from Kevin. and as a special bonus, when you get a Jumbotron, Emily will read your message in one of her classic accents. That's an accent.

What are you got? All right, Lindsay, you don't listen to the podcast, but I do. So happy birthday. And I love you anyway. Thank you, G, E and M. I think that's our names. I think so too, yeah. All right, good.

I know how to. I hate running. Everything makes me angry, but not your podcast. Emily, thanks for the 10 on hackers. Wish y'all would come to Michigan, but I get it. I thought I was a normal middle-aged man, but is this a dang parasocial relationship? Was that?

How many accents did I just do? I had a stroke. Yeah, two or three. All right. You got, ooh, three for the price of one. There you go. Part of this was when you realized in the middle of it that this person said things like y'all and was from Michigan. And you're like, oh, no.

I've already done a British accent, though. Just a down home Michigan boy. Happy birthday to Lindsay. Yeah. And I like that it started out a birthday message for Lindsay and just devolved into this guy, wondering if he has a parisocial relationship. Well, the greatest thing is it goes, Thank you, Jay, E, and M.

I hate running. I hate running. Everything makes me angry. Why did you start with I hate running? I don't know. I think he was just naming some stuff he hates. I just hate running and everything makes me angry, but not your podcast. But there's two things I hate.

Everything and running. Listen, if you want us to read your insane rambles, Maximfund.org slash jumbotron. Thank you to Kevin and thank you to all of the people who will go to maximum fun.org slash jumbotron.

Okay, back to the show. Hey, we're back. It's free with ads. We are talking about piranha or parania. However you want to say it is fine with us. It's okay, so they call in the army. There's a very severe,

I guess British scientist woman who says piranha. The army Yeah the army doesn't seem to care if anybody dies I don't know if they want to get the piranhas back I unclear on what the army wants here But they like arrests Maggie and Paul And put them in a jail

Where in the jail there's a lot of graffiti Did anyone notice on the jail wall The cool S is there in 1978 The Stozy S is on the wall I didn't notice that That was a weird Mandela effect thing for me. I'm like, I thought that got invented on T-shirts in 1994. Right. That was a 90s thing. Cool.

Wow. We perfected it. Now I need to know when Stucy was invented. Yeah. Why is it called Stucy? I don't know. I guess that's where in my mind, the origin of the cool S is from the clothing brand Stucy, which is something, you know, you got at Miller's Outpost in the mall. Now I've got something else to look for on eBay. Thanks a lot, Jordan. My shopping problem isn't bad enough.

Right now that you have all your Sega Game Gear games. Oh, I ordered more. I got. And there's no Jaws game because I saw that one when she's playing in the arcade and I'm like, oh, that looks fun. Maybe it's on Sega Game Gear. It's not. But I did get the X-Men game and I just ordered Jurassic Park. Hey, all right.

That Jurassic Park game is really fun. It is? Okay. I'm excited. Very cool graphics. They're kind of like stop motiony. I'm a gamer now, guys. A toxic gamer, bro.

Anyway, so You know, there's like There's like the camp thing The piranhas eat the piranhas start eating the camper That was pretty bucked up The kids die in this That's like pretty fucked up It was crazy and I'm just like

These kids and they were eating a lot of butts They were doing like close-ups on butts And I'm just imagining the news Showing up and being like On tonight's news We found a bunch of kids With no fucking butt What this means for best

Back to school clothes. Yeah, right. Kids are losing their butts and your kids could be doing it tonight. I love it. So we get one more like villain character, just very late in the movie.

This guy Buck Gardner, who's kind of like the mayor from Jaws, he has a like resort that he wants to keep open. They introduced this guy so fucking late in the movie. So late in the movie that I was like, did I miss the beat part in the beginning in which this is established? Because why do we need a new villain now? we already have the piranha.

I didn't even think they were able to establish him as a villain. He said free barbecue. And I was like, this guy rules. This guy's a hero. I know. Kids he wants. I guess he's supposed to, like, he knows about the piranha. So he has that assistant.

And that's the line Matt played. He's like, the piranhas are eating the guests, sir. And he doesn't care. So he like keeps his resort open. And he is like dressed as like a, like the guy who tells smoky that he needs to like do. do the run with the bandit. He's like this guy in a nudie suit. But he talks like he's a jersey muff.

He's just not even trying to do a Southern accent. He talks like this. He's on buck. It's me. Downhold buck. Hey, Piranha. Hey, Piranha. I'm swimming here.

I'm swimming over here. And there's a very funny part where he's walking through his resort, which has all this stuff and all these rides for kids and it has a petting zoo. And he gets a little piece of food. And just as he's walking by a pig, he feeds it through the pig. like, hey baby. It's so funny to say, hey baby to a pig. Hey, baby.

Say hi to your mother for me. Oh, I thought it was my ex-wife. I'm a root and toting cowboy over here. Hey, baby. Get you a little gabagoole for later. I got a wife at home, but this pig is my gumma. Yeah. Saturday nights are for the girlfriends.

That's right. When you take your pig out. Hey, baby. Anyway, next time I see a, I don't know when I'll see a pig next one. I'm going to go, hey. Baby. Hell yeah. Baby, pig in the city.

Yeah. Maybe that's where the name Babe came from. Hey, that'll do ex-wife. Improving a baby to a piggy walks by. That'll do X-wife. Oh. So anyway.

Yeah, and then it's just kind of like piranha chaos till the end. Like there's a guy water skiing who it kills. A boat crashes into another boat and explodes. And it does not seem like the piranha had anything to do. I think it just happened. This is an unrelated boat crash. It was kind of cool. It was cool.

It was cool. It was very strange. I know. It's like the end of Syriana. That's not the Piranah's fault. Did the piranhas destroy the USS Cole? Find out in Piranha 4D. Yeah.

It was really strange and then, you know, the, the, what was he? Surfing. What is that called? Water skiing. Water skiing. guy. The scene was kind of hilarious because he is noticed, he notices a dead body covered in blood floating at the top of the lake and he's trying to tell the two

hot women who are running the boat and he keeps saying things like, yeah, stop, stop. And then they do stop. And then he sinks and then he goes, keep going, keep going. They drive more. And then he tells them to stop again and the lady gives him a look like, what do you want from us? And I was like, this is great. This has almost nothing to do with the movie. This is just a fun little vignette in the middle of this terrible.

Right. I bet it was like Joe Dante's buddy who was just really good at warsking. Yes, that's what I thought to. Let's do a little stunt stuff. Let's do that. Fun. They finally get me money for a movie. You should be in it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, just random stuff starts happening. The prana cutting everybody. But Maggie and Paul's plan is there going to go to some. random factory and release pollution into the water, which will kill the piranha. So they do it. But the laboratory where the pollution is is underwater now.

So they have to tie a rope to Paul. And he has to go underwater and like open the valve to release the pollution. Pretty cool scene. Pretty cool. It looked pretty great. Well done. You could tell like a guy had to go underwater and they had to film it and he had to like turn the crank and stuff. Yeah.

And the little guy was down. there. The little guy. Wait, he was down there? No, I mean, he's down there. I hope he's okay. We didn't see him.

Oh, yeah. I think this was another different factory. Why? But I don't know. I don't know. There's no reason to complicate this fucking movie so much. Like, just, it's just, you have to go like, okay, things are happening. Yeah.

Things. So he turns the crank. It releases the pollution, but the piranhas like biting him all he's doing it. And then you, there you go. That's the noise. I hate it. And then you think Maggie's going to pull him up, but the rope is broke. And you see his like bloody hand come up.

Yeah. And then later like the news is filming all of the like, you know, all the, you know, mayhem and stuff. And there's like a lot of little kids covered in sheets. It's kind of grim. It's really grim. And like the camp guy's crying over this kid that's covered up. He takes his gun to his temple. Yeah.

He has this fucking gun to like set off. He has a starting pistol. I think it's just a gun and then he's shooting it at camp. Yeah, he's shooting it in the air. He was like, I wanted to work at the fucking Kentucky Derby, but all I got was this fucking camp counselor job. And he's shooting a gun in the air for nine-year-olds to have a little inner tube race. It's so fucking funny.

But the little girl that's our main dude's daughter who doesn't like to get in the water. That's like kind of a non-reveal is that that's his daughter. Yeah, but she's a good little actress. I got to say it. She's probably one of the best actors of the whole fucking movie. But she, like, goes out to save some of the people, like, kids that are getting eaten up at one point. And so our main guy is a bit of an alky. He's a bit of a drinker.

He has a thermos that has, like, whiskey in it or something. And he's in the stretcher, like, traumatized and bloody. And his daughter's, like, crying and brings him his alcohol. Right. Flask bottle. Like, Papa, your juice. Drink your juice. This will wake you up and help you drive.

Yeah, they're like putting it on his lips. Like, stay with us. It's a metaphor for Vietnam. Yeah, yeah. A shameful chapter in our history. So then, yeah, they're talking to the piranha scientist woman and they're like, oh, it's fine. She's like the piranhas are all dead. The piranhas are all dead because they need fresh water and they can't go into the ocean.

but we remember some random person said they could survive in salt water so we see all these shots of the ocean and it turns red and what do we hear Matt? You know we hear. Anyway. They're back. And then a surprisingly beautiful score plays under the credits. Yeah. The music in all the camp scenes, the music is this beautiful like wine country classical guitar.

It's so funny. I don't remember at all what that sounds like. It's gorgeous. If you think of like if you've ever been wine tasting, it's just the music that's playing in the winery. I don't think I hear anything when I'm wine tasting because I'm in another place. Yeah,

because you're swallowing instead of spitting. Yeah, fuck spitting. Why would I do that? Which makes you a cool girl. Cool. Well, it used to. Now I'm 40 and it's less cool every day. Well, yeah, that's the end of piranha or parania,

however you want to say it. We're going to tell you what we thought about it. But first we got to do the hunk watch. It's hunk watch. Yeah. Any thoughts on the hunks of Pallana? Our lead guy. Like the lead guy is sexy as fun.

He looks like a young, young Charlton Heston kind of with that. And he's got a full head, a curly dark hair. I mean, he's the most obvious hunk. And I mean, the little dude. The little fish dude, he's my guy too. But he ain't no hunk. He's a little guy. He's a little guy.

Matt, any thoughts? Oh, I think, you know, I'm going with the collective piranha. Oh, you love them. They're my hunk. Eat me, daddy. They're my hunk because enough of them and they are eaten.

Yeah, they make you into hunks. That's right. It's true. A little hunks of meats of meats. Yeah. I am giving it to the woman driving the water skiing boat. Oh my God.

Yeah, she was very hot. She's a babe. She's a babe. Random woman driving the water skiing boat. Both her and her friends were hot. Yeah, they're very hot. I was like, oh, that's cool.

70s was awesome. Seven news is great. All right. That's the Hunk Watch. We're going to tell you what we thought of the movie overall when we come back. Hey, we're back. It's free with ads. We're going to tell you what we thought of Piranha.

But first, we want to tell you about our bonus episodes. It's called We Like Shows. In these episodes, we kind of go around the horn. We pick TV pilots to review. Matt, it's your pick this month. What are we watching? We are watching from HBO, the series The Outsider, based on Stephen King's novel, The Outsider. This is, we're watching the pilot, the very first episode, directed by Jason Bateman, starring Jason Bateman.

Oh, I didn't know he directed it. Yeah, yeah, as well as, there's a killer cast, stellar story. Very excited for you guys to talk about it with me. Oh, I started watching, I already watched it. And I had watched it before, but I've already three episodes deep rewatching it again. Yeah, once you started again, it's really got an incredible rewatch value. And for someone who loves Stephen King, and that is one of my favorite books, I have to say in terms of adaptations, it is up there with like Shawshank Redemption to me. Oh, wow.

Okay. So, yeah, we got lots of thoughts about that. You can hear that behind the paywall. Oh, yeah. You go to maximum fun. dot org slash join you get our bonus episodes all the bonus episodes from every show on the network and yeah we've talked about a lot of cool stuff on we like shows we did yellowstone last month that's right uh we did what else what else doubt and abbey that was a fun discussion all kinds of cool nights of the seven a night of the seven

kingdoms seven kingdoms uh yeah max maximum fun dot org slash join okay uh let's rank pirana on a scale of one to 10 super loud commercials. I'll go first. I'm going to give this an animal attack August 7. I think it is a really solid, fun, bad movie. And yeah, you get these little glimpses of kind of cleverness that show you the, you know, the Joe Dante that will go on to do some weirder things. Yeah, I don't know, it's fun to goof on. It is very low budget. It's very janky. But if you're, I think if you're tuning in for a animal attack movie from 1978, I think this is a kind of a flavor that is really So yeah, it is not good, but it was a blast to watch. So I'm going to give it a seven.

Emily, what did you think? Yeah, I agree. It's like one of those good, bad movies, but the meandery, like, second half. Yeah, the middle is very boring. I just could not wait for it to be over. I was like, is it still on? And it's only an hour and 22 minutes long. So I do, I think it was cool.

The first half was really fun. And then I just got super boring. by it and it's like if it's a good bad low budget horror like you know sci-fi thing at least make it hold my attention so i'm giving it a five on this one yeah matt would you think i gotta give it a four okay um i think it was fun at the beginning can't be fun and i was like okay you know maybe it could get me uh but it really it when it lost me it really lost me and i yeah i feel bad because this feels like a movie that I really would have enjoyed if I saw it with a group of people. Ah, that's true.

If I had been riffing on it with the homies, I think it would have been great. For the sake of this podcast, you know, having to watch it, put up with ads. You know, I'm keeping really, you know, to the scale here. What is it? On a scale of one to four super loud commercials, I could take four of these and that's about it. Yeah. Very fair. Well, that was Piranha, our final movie of Animal Attack August.

We got lots of good stuff coming up for you later this year. Keep it locked. That's right. Keep it locked in. Keep it locked here. That's what I'm going to start saying. Keep it locked here. Locked in just one podcast.

Lock in. Just one. I'll say there were a couple of things that people said in this movie that I was like, I'm bringing, hey, that's far out. Back. Far out, man. Yeah. Far out.

Let's do some play. Let's do some plug-in. Anybody got anything going on? Stay tuned for the Anticraft, which is coming out soon. It's my arts and craft show on YouTube. You can find the link to go ahead and subscribe to the channel so you'll be ready with the updates for when they come out. That's right. Check out those show notes.

Check out the notes. That's where this stuff is. Matt, you got anything? Yeah, come to Seattle on September 1st, fourth and fifth at Laf's Comedy Club. My wife and I will be there doing stand-up, doing a live podcast. It should be really fun. So please, if you are in Seattle or the surrounding area, come out on the fourth and fifth,

or if you are in Portland on the 7th and 8th of September, will be at Helium Comedy Club. So come to those clubs if you are in the Pacific Northwest. Thank you. Excellent. And if you're listening to this before August 30th, you can see me at Cape and Cowell. That is a free ass Comic-Con in Alameda, California

at Faction Brewing. That's right, a free Comic-Con at a brewery. It's so much fun. Come say what's up, get some books signed. A couple of past. Free with Ads guests will be there too. It's going to be a fun, fun day, and it's free. That is August 30th

Cape and Cowell Khan. And if you are in the Atlanta area, you can see me at DragonCon all weekend. I'm doing some shows. sign in some books. I'm going to put up information on my social media when it becomes available.

But yeah, if you're going to DragonCon, look for me there. Okay. Tune in next week when our movie will be The Geiver. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists' own shows.

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