The only movie where you root for the croc to eat the dumbass morons in this movie...

When a group of vacationing college students accidentally steal a mother crocodile's eggs from her nest, she unleashes a torrent of vengeance upon them and forcing them to team up with a pair of hunters to survive the slaughter.This here was a pretty enjoyable and reasonably entertaining killer creature feature that has some pretty good parts. The fact that this one is fairly cheesy is its greatest asset, making the film both enormously cheesy as well as generating its biggest flaw. By featuring the attacks with the CGI creature as the main attraction and using the admittedly-excellent animatronic in spurts where it looks ultra-convincing throughout these moments, it gets a lot of fun out of what is essentially a slasher movie with the villain being an unstoppable crocodile instead of a human. The three main attacks, the riverboat attacked when it's docked away, the foot-chase through the woods and the super-market attack, are given a good mixture of both uses for the creature but are the films' big action moments so there's a lot to like from there as well as giving the film some color with it's brutal and bloody deaths. With limbs ripped off, decapitations, death rolls and even live devouring, it's got more than expected in here and that's a fairly nice addition. Still, the cheesiness of the fake-shark, the cliché plot points and even character additions and utterly annoying main cast that are given lame story lines that aren't fun to follow along can provide this one with some problems.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Brief Nudity, and scenes of substance abuse.

Of the various horror notables to emerge in the 1970's Tobe Hooper scored by far the finest achievement with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Its a great shame then that he also fell the hardest, his work largely drying up and turning crappy. This Nu Image (they of such classics as Octopus, Spiders, Octopus 2 and Spiders 2) effort is pretty much his nadir, a really crummy affair that manages to be less entertaining even than the massed crappy ranks of Sci Fi Channel original creature features that have befouled screens in recent years. Its a tale of youngsters on Spring Break, partying it up on a houseboat in a lake until a couple of them come across a nest of variously shattered eggs and decide to mess around with the few that aren't broken some more. The expected happens. Now, I have absolutely zero sympathy for anyone who gets themself into a situation like this, quite apart from common decency its a matter of basic common sense not to mess with someones young, especially when you have no idea what or how big that someone is. Like, if you were trying to steal eggs from a golden eagle and the thing came down and pecked your eyes out and then pooped on you or something, nobody would be sympathetic because rank idiocy isn't a thing of sympathy. So I pretty much wanted several of the cast to die particularly horribly, and I can't say as I had nice thoughts for the rest as none of the characters are likable or interesting. Sadly, the horrible death never comes. All the kills are pretty tame, when actually on screen they generally come down to nothing more than mildly bloody and not especially convincing chomping action and occasionally some minor blood spray. It pretty much ruins things as gore was the main thing that could have propped this one up, and is especially unfortunate as the usually great KNB team handled the effects work. The crocodile itself is at least pretty cool, a good sized and decently fierce looking beast achieved through a mixture of animatronics and CGI, its more than convincing enough for a film of this stature and raises the game whenever its on screen. But since it isn't on screen all that much and rarely gets to do anything cool (mostly its just jumping and gobbling people) it doesn't raise the film too much. Still, attacks on a houseboat and local store are kinda fun and it does amuse in a couple of spots. The cast do their best with the material but its pretty much horrid so they don't put across a good impression. Mark McLachlan is a limp hero, Caitlin Martin a nice looking but dull love interest, Chris Solari making the biggest impression as the loud mouth ass of the group. There's some nice scenery and the film is never completely boring, but its really pretty terrible and I wouldn't recommend it other than to the least discerning viewers.

Crocodile (2000) ** (out of 4) Direct to DVD film from director Tobe Hooper about a bunch of college students who hit the river for some sex and beer but end up being menaced by a twenty-foot croc. The film starts off okay but wears out of steam by the fifty minute mark. The characters are all very obnoxious so it's hard to care if any of them live or die. The CGI effects are among the worst I've ever seen. Hooper's direction puts this slightly above most other direct to DVD titles but the film is a long way off from Alligator.