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The 1978 movie Quentin Tarantino called the greatest ‘Jaws’ rip-off ever made: “True gonzo gruesomeness”

Mon 20 April 2026 19:15, UK

Shark movies existed before Jaws, but after Steven Spielberg’s breakthrough feature changed Hollywood forever, every single entry in the genre that followed for the next 50 years exists in its shadow.

That’s how ingrained in the cinematic consciousness and pop culture the film has become; it doesn’t matter how different any picture is, in terms of style, story, or content, because it’s a shark flick, it’s become the measuring stick by which all spiritual successors will forever be measured.

Because it became the highest-grossing release in cinema history and ushered in the age of the wide-release blockbuster, it was only natural that the industry sought to capitalise on Jaws‘ popularity by ripping it off as frequently as humanly possible, and it didn’t have to be about sharks, either.

Within no time at all, multiplexes had been inundated by the likes of Orca, Grizzly, Alligator, Barracuda, Great White, Monster Shark, and all sorts of cheap-and-cheerful exploitation efforts that hoped lightning would strike twice by pushing a deadly predator to the forefront of a genre film.

Some of them weren’t bad, but many of them were awful, and Alien being pitched as “Jaws in space” even shows that its influence led to at least one masterpiece. For Quentin Tarantino, who’d consider himself something of an expert on grisly, gore-heavy creature features, one of them stood head and shoulders above the rest. Or head and fins, to be more accurate.

“Piranha for its cleverness, and the true gonzo gruesomeness of its bloody climax at a summer camp for small children,” he revealed, citing John Sayles’ scripts for both Joe Dante’s sophomore film and the aforementioned Alligator as being two of the finest Jaws rip-offs ever written, but one took the cake.

“The movie seems to relish the idea of putting chubby-legged and armed little tykes in the pathway of vicious razor-sharp teethed little fish,” he ruminated, which is all anybody could ask for, really. “Also, at the climax, Piranha has a suspense beat worthy of the Spielberg original.”

In that beat, Bradford Dillman’s Paul Grogan has to turn a valve, closing a waterway to the ocean that prevents even more piranhas from flooding through for their next meal. It’s underwater, and in what Tarantino called a “very exciting” scene, the hero has to submerge himself to do it, all while being nibbled at by the vicious titular beasties.

Paying Piranha an even higher compliment, the two-time Academy Award winner called it both “a satire on Jaws rip-offs and an exciting bloody Jaws rip-off in its own right.” Who else thinks Dante crafted the best instance of aquatic plagiarism to follow in Jaws‘ wake? No less of an authority than Steven Spielberg, so Tarantino is in good company by placing it at the head of the pack.