Killer Crocodile

When a team of environmentalists go to a remote swamp somewhere in Central America they find that it has been polluted with radioactive chemicals. They also discover a huge crocodile which has been exposed to it as well as a corrupt politician who has allowed this pollution to happen. Anyway, so much for the plot which, while certainly not Academy Award winning material, has a couple of good things going for it all the same. First, it has some nice scenery-for a swamp at least. Likewise, I thought Sherrie Rose (as "Pamela") didn't hurt the scenery much either. To a lesser degree it featured an interesting crocodile which nobody would mistake for the real thing. On that note, although some might find this to be a liability I believe that if a person uses their imagination and has a sense of humor then they might actually appreciate the time and effort that went into it. Of course, that may be more difficult for some and I certainly wouldn't blame anybody who couldn't make allowances. Even so, to me the worst part of this movie was the clumsy dialogue. While I realize that it was filmed in Italian and dubbed in English it was still pretty awful all the same. And it really affected the overall quality of this movie. Anyway, to sum it all up this was clearly a grade-B movie which probably won't appeal to anybody other than those who enjoy cheesy rip-offs of films in this particular genre. That said, I rate it as slightly below average.

Well, this wasn't nearly as bad as I initially feared it would be, and that's pretty much the best compliment you can give to a cheap and anonymous Italian-produced creature feature rip-off. "Killer Crocodile" is actually a rather funny movie if you analyze it a little bit… Even though it was made more than 14 years and numerous amounts of other B-movie rip-offs later, Fabrizio De Angelis still pretends his film is the first imitation of Jaws ever accomplished! The premise is very similar, and especially the POV-shots and use of music are shamelessly stolen from Steven Spielberg's groundbreaking monster-movie, like no other movie tried to do that before. But hey, nonetheless the movie is very entertaining, rather fast-paced and at least the vast majority of the small budget went to special effects department. The giant croc, albeit not very menacing, is a fairly impressive mechanical creation that is proudly shown several times throughout the entire movie, so at least you don't have to fear that all the action and death-sequences take place off-screen. The plot is standard monster-movie guff, with a group of over-ambitious and spineless environmentalists cruising down the Santa Domingo River and discovering that these swamps are used as a dumping place for industrial radioactive waste barrels. Months, maybe even years of dumping waste in the water is unquestionably also the reason why the crocodile mutated into a gigantically angry and insatiable killing machine that devours everyone who sets foot in his swamp territory. The activists get assistance from an ultimately stereotypical macho-hunter (Italian exploitation-regular Thomas Moore), while the mean guys who're polluting the swamps desperately attempt to get rid of them. De Angelis cheerfully serves one cliché after the other and the screenplay is entirely tension-free, yet you forgive him because it's such cheesy fun! The acting (and mainly the dubbing) is horrid and most of the dialogs are completely misplaced, but thank God for good old-fashioned gratuitous gore. Call me biased, but this type of horror-cinema is certainly a lot more enjoyable than the nowadays monster-movies with hideous CGI effects, like "Blood Surf" and Tobe Hooper's disastrous "Crocodile".

Rented this film for being a horror-moviefan and got me one of the most amusing comedies I've seen. It's very hard to give this film any horror categorizing, did they ever (the film-makers) thougt this would scare anybody? After one minute or so the croc appears and I realized that this can be 90 terrible minutes of my life, but ooh, one needs to laugh sometimes.

With the special effects, that already by others been clearified, which are stiffy to say the least, the musical score that is ripped from John Williams jaws (in particular the second track of the "jaws"-soundtrack) - it's already then amusing. Then comes the characters, boy o boy, the teenagers behaviour in Fr:13:s movies are deep thougt genious moves. The dialogue for ex: ....yeah.....maybe you're right about that.....(dramatic thinkingpause) ..or maybe you're wrong.... (and the camera starts pulling back after this refreshing turn of event). Interesting how this monstrous beast loses a big tooth on a very thin wall that just about stands for itself and how a propellermachine can explode - once, twice, three...four...I lost count of the explosions. Finally, for now, the experienced hunter that shoots the hero (the croc) with a elephant-rifle time after time with no effect to the beast whatsoever jumps overboard onto the crocs back and starts poking it with a boathook (yeah, THAT will do a wonders).

Tons of stuff like this and I can only recommend this for those who want to laugh at a bad (but amusing) movie, a little gore, but that is NOT what you remember after seeing "Killer Krokodile" (the spelling on the swedish cover).

(Got to see the sequel)

This film is the definition of comic badness. The croc changes sizes seemingly at random. In one scene it even looks about 20 feet tall. People fall in to the water for no particular reason and it's not even clear what country this is supposed to take place in. Fortunately the film is fun and fast paced so you can ignore some of the faults. The gore is plentiful and the animatronic crocodile by Gianetto De Rossi is pretty amazing for a movie with such a low budget (well at least we know where the money went). Thomas Moore's (Ennio Girolami) performance as Joe the grizzled croc hunter adds alot to the film also. Some imaginitive camerawork and a decent jaws ripoff score by Ortolani doesn't hurt things either.

Overall a decent fun flick, just don't expect JAWS.

Shot back-to-back with Killer Crocodile II

This Italian "Jaws" knock-off really only has one redeeming feature, so I might as well open with it: the croc is real! Well, not real real, but I mean that it isn't a cheap CGI effect like in "Blood Surf" or God forbid "Crocodile". The puppet they use can't really move well, but at least it's actually freakin' there. It even looks pretty scary from time to time, they really did an excellent job with such a limited budget. It's just too bad they couldn't use the model in a better movie, because all other aspects of "Killer Crocodile" are well below average. The characters are annoying, the dialogues are uninspired and the story developments are all lifted directly from "Jaws". They even bring in a blatant Quint rip-off just for those who don't catch on quickly. Hell, even the music is just John Williams' theme with one or two different notes to avoid a lawsuit. In the end there are no scares, no real memorable scenes and a pretty boring finale but like I said, the puppet's damn cool. It might be worth a watch just because of that, and also for the rare "so bad it's good" moment.