Conscious that I am failing miserably to watch more TV this year, I watched a few programmes I had recorded on V+ tonight, including the nail-biting quarter-final of University Challenge between Oxford Brookes and York.  After that I had a quick look on the EPG and saw that the film Mega Piranha was just starting on Syfy, so I thought I might watch it for a laugh.

All I knew about it was that it was another film from The Asylum, who made that truly awful Sherlock Holmes rip-off film, so I was expecting some something spectacularly bad, but this surpassed even those expectations.

To get some idea of scale of the badness, this is a small excerpt from Wikipedia’s plot summary:

The megapiranhas continue to move north, consuming two battleships and a nuclear submarine. They eventually reach south Florida, where they kill at least five Puerto Ricans on a beach and manage to blow up two hotels.

The IMDb has a page for ‘goofs’ where it lists continuity errors and other mistakes.  I think they ran out of steam on this film, or maybe the internet is just not big enough to list them all.  They listed some spectacular things like the mountains of Florida, the way the scientist manages to connect a small oxygen tank to power a helicopter when its fuel line was shot, or the presence of coral reefs at the bottom of a freshwater river, but still missed plenty.

My favourite bit was the idea that a nuclear submarine would have nuclear torpedos…

The biggest surprise was in the end credits, where it turned out that the middle-aged scientist with enormous breasts was actually Tiffany – yes; that Tiffany, the one who did I Think We’re Alone Now.

The thing is, I would thoroughly recommend watching this film, preferably in large groups where you can compete for spotting the biggest scientific errors, worst acting, or least special effects.   I have seen more realistic visual effects on home-made films on YouTube.   Some of them even made the efects in Blake’s Seven look sophisticated.  You haven’t lived until you have seen giant piranhas launching themselves out of the water to embed themselves seven stories up in a hotel wall.