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P2

blueyoda

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P2_front.jpg



INTENTION:
My intention was to “Cameronize” the movie by removing most of the silly humor forced in by the producer after he had fired Cameron, and to re-arrange scenes according to the rare director’s cut.


I also wanted to produce a mini documentary exploring the lesser known, early career of the director including as many details as possible about the little documented Piranha 2.


EDITING DETAILS:
James Cameron was fired from his first movie effort by its italian producer over “creative differences”. The director had been brought in because he was cheap, american (contractually, the italian producer needed an american director) and knew how to scuba dive.


The producer, Ovidio Assonitis, best known for producing and sometimes directing cheap american knock offs of Jaws, Exorcist and other american hits, was working on a tight budget of $350,000 and seeing that Cameron was a perfectionist who had his own ideas about how the film should be shot, fired him after 7 or 8 days and took over directorial duties. The result is sometimes glimpses of Cameron’s future signature style and other times pure italian exploitation cheeziness.

Best enjoyed if you’re drunk.

CUTLIST:
- New credit sequence
- Piranha vision tainted red as per Cameron’s director’s cut
- Most of the dumb comedy is gone
- Scenes re-arranged as per James Cameron’s director’s cut


CREDITS:
Special thanks to Neglify for previewing the workprint. Thankfully, he was drunk.


TECHNICAL INFO:
Windows XP, Sony Vegas


RELEASE INFORMATION
Single Layer DVD
AVI


SPECIAL FEATURES:
MAKING OF CAMERON (13 minutes)
A brand new documentary about James Cameron’s early career up to and including Piranha 2.

VIDEO BIOGRAPHIES (33 minutes)
Video biographies of 6 actors from the movie.

PIRANHA 2 vs ALIENS (2 minutes)
A scene comparison that shows elements from Piranha 2 that made their way into Aliens.

ALTERNATE MUSIC ENDING (3 minutes)
Replacing the music for the end sequence with the infamous “Bishop’s Countdown” from Aliens.

XENOGENESIS (12 minutes)
James Cameron’s first short film.

* The special features are only available on the DVD.
 

Neglify

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Congratulations on getting this done!

blueyoda said:
Special thanks to Neglify for previewing the workprint. Thankfully, he was drunk.

You're welcome. And I can't stress enough how serious he is when he says:

blueyoda said:
Best enjoyed if you're drunk.
 

LastSurvivor

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Anybody else having problems downloading this from MU?
 

Neglify

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Not me. I was able to download the DVD as soon as the links were available on .info
 

Dwight Fry

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Neglify said:
Not me. I was able to download the DVD as soon as the links were available on .info
Me too. What's the problem exactly?
 

LastSurvivor

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Thanks guys... well, twice it was trying to download the files but then stated it could not find them. However, have tried it again this morning and it's started downloading fine... I'll let you know if any problems. Cheers :)
 

LastSurvivor

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Okay, finally got around to viewing this.... here's my thoughts, also posted on the edit's main page. Thanks blueyoda for a lot of B-movie fun.

It may not surprise people to know that I love a good monster movie... in fact, even a bad monster movie I'll happily watch and enjoy after a beer. Piranha 2 however, much like its predecessor has stayed with me for about 25 years or so. However, whereas Joe Dante's original is actually a well made Jaws rip-off which stands up remarkably well even now, I'm afraid James Cameron's directorial debut which is Piranha 2 is little more than a crass cash in.

It had been a long time since I last watched my copy of Piranha 2, so as I settled down to watch blueyoda's P2 fanedit, I was genuinely quite excited to see if the little changes would make a difference to the movie at all. The fact that my girlfriend was watching this for the first time with nothing to judge it against at all, it would be interesting to see what her reaction would be afterwards as well.

Now, normally I would watch a movie such as this with a couple of beers. However, as I had been feeling pretty unwell I decided against alcohol, so it kinda left me thinking that I'd just spend most of the movie picking it apart. However, whilst P2's shortcomings are there for all to see, the film is nowhere near as bad as I remember it being. I'd forgotten for one, that the main performances here are actually pretty good - TV stalwart Tricia O'Neil, the always reliable Lance Henriksen and the eye candy for the girls, Steve Marachuk; all three of them put in good performances considering what they have to play with from a lacklustre script.

The changes which blueyoda makes here do improve the movie a little. Some of the stupid comedy is thankfully now missing and some scenes have been rearranged to try and make it as close to Cameron's extremely rare so-called director's cut as possible. There's no doubt it makes for a better movie, but that's not to say that suddenly P2 is a truly worthy sequel. Personally I would have gone a bit further and totally excised the two girls on the boat who get attacked by the flying killers (yes, I do mean Penthouse models Carole Davis and Connie Lynn Hadden), as they are by far the worst actresses of the film - but then, that's not what they're there for and as I say, I probably should have been drinking when watching this!

Indeed, to me, the recent remake of Piranha is more of a homage to P2 than it is to Dante's original. Dante's film has never felt anywhere near as exploitative or cheap as a movie like P2 (although some may argue it does), and as Alexandre Aja's Piranha is an attempt to return to the trashy exploitative days of 80's "B" movies, I'd say it makes a more natural fit with P2.

But, I'm getting off the beaten track here. Back to the edit itself...

A big plus are the unexpected amount of special features on show here. The "Making of Cameron" is a very interesting piece on Cameron's early career, whilst the "Biographies" are not just written text on performers, but also include many clips from the various movies and TV episodes which they have appeared in. Then there's the "Alternate Music Ending" which neatly ties in the finale of the film with James Horner's fantastic Bishop's Countdown from Aliens. It works really well, and there's some seamless audio editing going on by blueyoda. On top of all this you also get a short piece pointing out the similarities between P2 and Aliens, and finally you also get Cameron's 12 minute first short film "Xenogenis". Excellent stuff!

Technically, this is a perfectly sound edit. Picture quality is about as good as it can be for a film from this age with a low budget, and all the edits, be they visual or audio, work seamlessly. Talking of audio however, do watch out for some unintentially funny and clumsy sound effects looping throughout the film - this is the fault of the original production team and not blueyoda I might add!

So, recent years of watching countless Aslyum and Syfy "Z" grade monster flicks may have made me more forgiving of P2 than I may otherwise have been, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this edit. A well deserved 9/10 for me. Nice work blueyoda ;)

Oh, and before I forget... my girlfriend really enjoyed it too - particularly the main "flying" attack on the beach resort towards the end... although she was somewhat upset that Steve Marachuk didn't make it all the way to end. Awww, bless her.
 

bionicbob

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Great review LastSurvivor! I will definitely check this one out this weekend!:)
 

blueyoda

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Thanks for the thorough review, LastSurvivor! Very much appreciated! If you ever release an underwater monster fanedit I'll be sure to review it as well! ;-)
 

LastSurvivor

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Thanks Bob and blueyoda... glad you liked the review. Again, thanks for the edit - loved it :)
 

yaqqay

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It seems that Part 08 of the DVD is offline.
Am I here at the right place to ask for a re-up?
 

Neglify

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yaqqay said:
It seems that Part 08 of the DVD is offline.
Am I here at the right place to ask for a re-up?

It's not offline. I just rechecked the DLC and everything is online on my end. It may be "Temporarily Unavailable" in which case you would just have to wait until MegaUpload recognizes it.
 

felipemeyer

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Also having problems with parts 8 and 18...
Tried to update jdownloader (that usually works), but still nothing.
 

Uncanny Antman

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Weird. 18 just went online properly. Grab it while it's hot. :)
 

blueyoda

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You'd expect that paying for an account would get you good service...

Sorry about that. I'll try uploading to another host just in case this happens again.
 

geminigod

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You are a true artist with an amazing attention to detail, BlueYoda. Great job!
 

blueyoda

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Thanks a lot geminigod. I'm especially proud of the docs, as they took me months to assemble. All the magazine articles in there, I had to track down physical copies of; including the Penthouse issues. The Fangorias and Starlogs weren't too easy to find, either.
 
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