“I tell you, there was nothing left but his head.”

Justin’s rating: If they had played the song from Heart over the opening credits, I would have given this a full letter grade higher in my rating. Alas.

Justin’s review: Having gone out on deep sea fishing expeditions with my grandfather when I was younger, what I’ve seen pulled up from the sea more than convinced me that I don’t want to go splashing around in that hellish bathtub. I recall that in addition to being frightened of sharks, jellyfish, and stingrays, I was freaked out by the idea of schools of barracuda out there ready to nibble on my tender flesh.

Nowadays I know that barracuda aren’t anything more than sport fish with a slightly unnerving look, but one never knows when they might get maced with sinister chemicals and begin a rampage against all humanity. Heed the warning of this film well, I say!

Certainly not a by-product of the Jawsmania of the late ’70s, Barracuda fished around for any horror possibility in smaller fish with a sinister reputation. And surprisingly enough, this movie does have bite, even though it hosts perhaps one of the worst soundtracks I’ve ever heard.

A peaceful Florida seaside community finds itself under siege, so to speak, by oddly aggressive barracuda that are acting more like piranha than anything else. Movie piranha, I should say. But why are the fish graduating to first-degree murder when they should be summering in the Atlantic?

That’s the core mystery here, and all I can say is that it involves the government, some secret experiment, and an ecological disaster. Oh, and hypoglycemia. Seriously. I actually appreciate that Barracuda tried to flex its storytelling chops a little, and that appreciation grew when I witnessed how actually unnerving this film’s underwater scenes are.

Sure, they can’t show trained barracuda attacking or spring for CGI (which was both prohibitively expensive and non-existent in 1978), but this movie did put some effort into taking us down into this alien world and then fling bloody limbs all willy-nilly.

The local sheriff and a transient marine biologist end up becoming partners in this investigation that rises out of the ocean and involves those pesky humans. The town is gradually descending into chaos, and it doesn’t take too long for these two to connect the aggressive fish with aggressive people. Hint: It’s not a student exchange program.

When Barracuda wasn’t impressing me for being a cut above a cheesy Jaws clone, it was being a prime exhibit of ’70s hairstyles, interior decorating, and earthtones. I wanted to shout through the screen for these people to hang on and persevere, because a much more colorful decade was to come. Unfortunately, they couldn’t hear me because the barracuda had already bitten off their ears.

While it certainly has its moments and a pretty killer ending, Barracuda suffers from plodding pacing, a lack of the titular fish for huge portions of the film, and generally low production values. Again, the soundtrack is an absolute assault on my ears, and the awkward line deliveries weren’t helping me heal. It’s OK for a B-movie creature feature, but a little better as an eco-conspiracy flick.

Intermission!

• The floating hand seems pretty extreme for a barracuda bite
• Random kidnapping by shotgun
• That travel bag just got executed, Florida-style
• “What’s the matter, you want it back?”
• He kidnaps pets for ransom
• Does every man in this community hire their kid to assist?
• Dogs love to fetch human heads from time to time
• Well that’s a lot of fish guts, thanks movie
• Maybe he’s not eating because this diner serves fish with their heads still on
• This movie has all the wood paneling in the world
• “He said he’s marry me if I took off all my clothes.”
• People love to be woken up with a hand over their mouth
• This film spends too much time looking at severed fish heads