Mystery Science Theater 3000: KILLER FISH

January 10, 2019 10:52 AM - Season 12, Episode 5

"The adventure that drags you in, pulls you under and tears you apart!" How pleasant. Movies would have us believe there are two major natural threats to people in the water. This movie focuses on the second one. There is a plot involving stolen jewels, but there's a reason the movie's not called TREACHEROUS THIEVES. It's the next-to-last episode of The Gauntlet, and the subplot, involving a returned Dr. Erhardt's quest to have Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank's ashes scattered while playing Idiot Control Now (Joel and the Bots' song from way back in 303 POD PEOPLE), continues, as it turns out Kinga has all of Dr. F's old experiments backed up. This is about three times as much plot as MST usually has. Add in that Jonah is doing something mysterious to help get him and the Bots out of their situation....

Episode on TVTropes - MST3K Wikia

Rotten Tomatoes (Critics N/A; Viewers 27%) - Wikipedia

IMDB (4.1 stars, 1979)
"Jewel thieves attempt to recover treasure from piranha infested waters. Mistrust and betrayals happen amongst the gang in the quest for gold."
Directed by Antonio Margheriti. Written by Michael Rogers. Starring Lee Majors, Karen Black and Margaux Hemingway.

posted by JHarris (13 comments total)

While this was riffed on as a rip-off of Jaws and Jaws II, in fact this was the third piranha movie to come out of a decade that also gave us killer bears, ants, spiders, ants, alligators, bees, worms, and best of all killer birds, snakes, lizards, spiders, and frogs in one movie!
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 12:14 PM on January 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

"Idiot Control Now" has a pretty catch hook.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:17 PM on January 10, 2019

it’s hard not to love Joel.
posted by valkane at 2:58 PM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Ah, it's time (without much warning I admit) for MST Club again, at 7 PM Eastern, 4 PM Pacific, at https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub or about an hour from this writing. Hope to see you there!
posted by JHarris at 3:01 PM on January 10, 2019

I like how they addressed Erhardt's voice change as that he's simply more mellow now. Nice and clean explanation on the same level as "You changed your ten pin". And I have to wonder if J. Elvis told them that he would only make the appearance if he didn't have to screech.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:19 PM on January 10, 2019

If this one ends with a missing cast member reappearing and saying that the fish are actually friendly and very advanced and we all live in a bubble city now, so help me…
posted by rodlymight at 5:18 PM on January 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

I wonder if MST3K will ever do Piranhaconda.
posted by duffell at 6:56 PM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Is Piranhaconda one of those Asylum bad-on-purpose movies? Or an Asylum just-bad movie?

BTW, it should be remembered that for all their crimes against cinema, they also make Z Nation, which is like The Walking Dead but written by people with a sense of fun. It's fairly popular, and might be worth checking out if you want to see The Asylum at their best.
posted by JHarris at 11:28 PM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

My mom lived in Brazil in the 70s, and used to play a lot of backgammon, so this whole movie I was sort of looking for her in the background.
posted by theodolite at 1:20 PM on January 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

If in the 90s everybody wanted to be Fabio'ed, in the 70s, everybody wanted to be Lee Majors'ed.

Still feel they could have worked in a ninja and/or a convoy somehow, though.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:38 PM on January 11, 2019

This was one of those 70s movies where all of the white people feel interchangeable. Something about the fashions, I think.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:02 PM on February 23, 2019

MST Club is what we call our weekly watch-along of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and other assorted things. Our main show is Thursday nights at 7 PM US Eastern time (that's 4 PM Pacific), with the MST3K episode part of it starting two hours in. This happens at https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub. We also currently have shows Sunday and Tuesday nights, showing other interesting things. Come by if this is of interest to you, we're friendly!
posted by JHarris at 3:55 PM on April 27, 2023

Ack, I posted this in the wrong thread....
posted by JHarris at 3:58 PM on April 27, 2023