Half-Dan, Half-Ante
Whenever Joe Dante’s Piranha comes up in conversation, and in my circle of friends that’s surprisingly often, the one point that everyone inevitably brings up is the appearance of a little stop-motion creature about fifteen minutes in. This Ymirish-like monster is shown just this once and never seen again, but because of its incongruous screen time the image not only sticks with the viewer long after the film is finished, but opens up a bevy of unanswered questions.
The non sequitur is a Joe Dante trademark. But many of these seemingly random moments have a greater effect on the audience than mere slapstick. The goal of most directors seems to be to give the audience a film that is a cohesive whole, where every scrap of film serves a deliberate purpose and strives toward a predermined end. While Joe Dante is cerainly capable of that, it seems as if he’s unable to resist punching holes through the the reality he’s fabricated and showing another underneath. It isn’t enough that we’re viewing a terrifying world brimming with monstrous fish, or Florida during the Cuban Missle Crisis, but if we only had the means to actually enter those situations we could disregard the main narrative and follow that stop-motion creature on a seperate adventure or watch the entirety of Mant! Dante doesn’t just entice you into his skewed worldview by offering depth, but provides a lateral shift that gives the viewer just enough added wonder to want to enter his fantasies more completely.
There’s a whole other world in there. And probably another underneath that one, too.
This post was written for the Joe Dante Blog-A-Thon. Check out Mastermind Tim Lucas’ Video Watchblog for more entries.
And happy birthday, Mr. Dante!