Milton", and it stars Tricia O'Neil, Lance Henriksen, Steve Marachuk, Ted Richert, Ricky Paull Goldin, and Leslie Graves; no crew or cast members from the original film returned.
Cameron, previously a special effects artist for Roger Corman, was hired as director after executive producer Ovidio G. Assonitis fired his predecessor.
The production was fraught with difficulties, as Assonitis exerted heavy creative control, hired an Italian crew that did not speak English, and prevented Cameron from participating in editing.
Both a critical failure and a box office bomb, Piranha II was largely disowned by Cameron, who attempted to have his name removed from official credits and prefers to refer to The Terminator (1984) as his first feature-length film as director.
[3] A Caribbean coastal resort, Hotel Elysium, is menaced by a series of vicious marine animal attacks originating from a nearby sunken shipwreck.
Diving instructor Anne Kimbrough's student is one of the victims, but her estranged police officer husband Steve refuses to let her see the corpse despite the fact that, while she knows what did not cause the death, she does not know what did, either.
Concerned, Anne finds that she is being frequently bothered by tourist Tyler Sherman, and decides to take him with her to the morgue to get a look at the body.
Attempting to capture one as proof of the incoming threat, she is intercepted by Tyler, who informs her that he is a biochemist and member of a team which has developed the ultimate weapon: a specimen of genetically modified piranha, capable of flying.
When Chris and Allison are stranded in a raft above the shipwreck, Anne and Tyler arrive in a motorboat and dive down to the wreck to plant the timer charges that Gabby left behind.
Steve, piloting a police helicopter, ditches the chopper and swims to Anne and Tyler's motorboat where Chris and Allison are.
After the financial success of Joe Dante's Piranha, producers Jeff Schechtman and Chako van Leuwen immediately began work on a sequel.
Corman sold the sequel rights to Schechtman and van Leuwen, who developed a script with writers Charles H. Eglee and Channing Gibson, based on a treatment by longtime New World producer Martin B. Cohen.
Drake set to work rewriting the script with Eglee, who would later collaborate with James Cameron on the TV show Dark Angel.
Some time before principal photography started, Miller Drake was fired by Assonitis and Cameron was promoted to director.
The special effects were designed and supervised by Giannetto De Rossi, who had previously worked on the Lucio Fulci films Zombi 2 and The Beyond.
On the Terminator 2: Judgment Day commentary track, Cameron jokingly defended the film, tongue firmly in cheek, as "the finest flying killer fish horror/comedy ever made".
He broke into the editing room in Rome and cut his own version while the film's producers were at Cannes, but was caught and Assonitis recut it again.
In a 2008 interview on The Hour, Cameron jokingly denied breaking into the editing room, then recounted the story as a "hypothetical scenario", and told host George Stroumboulopoulos how he "would've broken into the office" if he actually did it.
Some critics called the film "abject",[9] others opined that "the piranhas...look as though they had been remaindered from a joke shop" and that they resembled "haddock with dentures".
[10] According to Tim Healey in The World's Worst Movies (1986) the film is "a strong contender ... for anyone's list of all-time horror turkeys".
[14] James Cameron refers to The Terminator as his first feature-length film, despite the fact that it was made in 1984, two years after Piranha II: The Spawning.