God bless The Asylum. Nobody makes low-budget rip-offs of major studio films like these guys -- and I think Mega Piranha may be their best release yet. Where else are you going to find Greg Brady (Barry Williams) as Secretary of State ordering military strikes on a foreign country with no apparent involvement by the Department of Defense or the White House? Where else can you find '80s pop sensation Tiffany playing a genetic scientist? Best of all, where else could you find humongous piranhas hurling themselves out of the water smack dab into warehouses and other buildings or snatching a helicopter right out of the air?

The fact that the filmmakers didn't have the budget to make the CGI effects look even remotely real just makes a good thing even better. Little things mean a lot, as well. For instance, there's one scene where the Secretary of State is speaking to his Special Forces guy over the phone; it's obviously dark outside at the Secretary's Washington location, but it's the middle of the day in Venezuela. Apparently, no one thought to check Venezuela's time zone, which is actually half an hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time. (Chavez made the half-hour change in 2007 because he didn't like being in the same time zone as the U.S.)

Our story begins with the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela joining a foreign minister and a bevy of bikini-clad young ladies on a leisurely sail through the middle of the jungle. Suddenly, a school of super piranhas attack, sinking the boat and eating everyone who was on it. Of course, no one else knows what happened. While the Venezuelan government claims it was a terrorist attack, Secretary of State Bob Grady (Williams) sends his top Special Forces guy, Jason Fitch (Paul Logan), down to find out what really happened.

I like to refer to Paul Logan as "Iron-face." Apparently, at some point in his childhood he held a clenched-teeth, tough guy face for so long that his face actually froze that way, rendering him incapable of making any other facial expression whatsoever. Anyway, Fitch barely makes it off the plane before he's accosted by Dr. Sarah Monroe (Tiffany) telling him the ambassador's boat was attacked by giant piranhas she had been experimenting on. Venezuela's Colonel Diaz disagrees -- and remains disagreeable even after being convinced of the truth. Can Fitch and Monroe's team find a way to stop the megapiranhas -- which are growing "exponentially" in size and breeding like crazy to boot -- before they make it to the coast, spread out across the whole western hemisphere, and eventually take over the world?

If ever a movie begged for a "Things I Learned From This Movie" list, it is this one. Here are just a few things I learned from Mega Piranha. First off, when you're trying to increase the food supply by genetically engineering larger versions of existing animals, it's probably not a good idea to include piranha on your experiment list. Megapiranhas double in size every 36 hours and can eat through sheet metal. If you're at the beach when megapiranhas attack, do not take cover in a warehouse or any other large building because the megapiranhas will fly out of the water and crash into the roofs of these large structures, immediately setting them ablaze. Your best defense against a megapiranha attack in the water is a commando knife; if you are on land and find megapiranhas flying toward you out of the water, your only hope of survival is to immediately lie down on your back and start doing bicycle kicks. If you are a government official and do not have time to order the evacuation of, say, Miami before megapiranhas will reach the shore, an imminent hurricane warning makes for the perfect cover story. The only way to stop a school of megapiranhas involves dropping armed gunmen directly in the water alongside them. Navy Seals can speak normally even with snorkels in their mouths. You can tell if there are any megapiranhas whatsoever in a large body of water simply by pointing a box (sonar?) that detects fish at the water. If you're an American citizen and happen to be arrested in Venezuela, some little scrawny soldier is going to continuously yell at you in Spanish regardless of whether or not you understand the language -- and you might be subjected to Venezuelan torture, which consists of a soldier hitting you in the head with a phone book if you refuse to give him the answers he wants to his questions.

Needless to say, this is a hilariously bad movie that I enjoyed tremendously. I wouldn't even want this movie to be given the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment because Mike and the bots couldn't make this any funnier than it already is. It was a little depressing for me to see how much Tiffany has changed since her pop princess days, but the only thing more unstoppable than a pool of gigantic piranha is time itself. I suggest you watch this movie with a bunch of your friends -- I guarantee a good time will be had by all ... this is 92 minutes of hilarious, bad movie magic.