Piranha (1978) ***

There are more entertaining Jaws (1975) (review) rip-offs, there are funnier Jaws rip-offs, and there are gorier Jaws rip-offs (The Last Shark (1981) falls into all of those categories), but Piranha (1978) is the most well-made Jaws rip-off (and there aren't even any sharks). A campy knockoff (there's literally a camp in the film) that Steven Spielberg liked enough to hire Joe Dante to direct multiple films that he produced (Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Gremlins (1984) (review), Innerspace (1987), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) (review) among them) and that spawned (sorry, not sorry) a sequel (Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), directed (and disowned) by James Cameron), two remakes (Piranha (1995), which I'd never even heard of until now, and Piranha 3D (2010), which is a lot of fun) and a sequel to said remake (Piranha 3DD (2012), which I've yet to see).

You can find my Joe Dante Feature Films Ranked list here.