Crocodile

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🎙️ EPISODE 388: 11.17.21 Man, I think I'm watching too many bad movies lately. They're starting to wash into one another. Even when they're so technically and aesthetically different, they all feel the same. After #GatorVsCrocVember is over, I need to take a break from the shitty / B-movie. I need to let my brain recover a little bit. This is all to say that I watched a third monster reptile movie. We're done with the Alligators (both I and II) and onto the Crocs. It's Tobe Hooper's direct-to-video 2000 film, Crocodile, which features a delirious blend of late 90s style frat party comedy, some genuinely nice practical FX, a comically bad CGI croc that is LOL-funny (especially blended with the physical one) and the most over-acting no-name cast you're ever gonna stumble on.

Yes, THAT Tobe Hooper, director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, and more importantly I'm Dangerous Tonight, a made-for-TV movie from 1990 that I loved and will bring up whenever I can. As I mentioned in my review for Massacre, I find Hooper's filmography fascinating: a true fall from grace... on the surface. The arc that is going from dark, violent independent horror to mainstream big box office horror lite to (eventually) ridiculous CGI crocodiles killing a bunch of late coeds on a spring break is, well, yeah I think "fall from grace" fits the bill. The only question remains then: Is there anything here?...


And to that I say, "Sure! Why the hell not!" This movie is the filmic equivalent to being "dumb as a rock" but the plot isn't necessarily nonexistent (like with the Joey Bologna vehicle Alligator II). Sure, nobody in this thing can really act, and the college kids especially all fill incredibly niche tropes that fall in line with many movies geared toward that demographic, regardless of genre. Let's see, we've got:

• main character guy ✔️
• main character girl ✔️
• wacky best friend / asshole with red hair ✔️
• weird vaguely creepy guy destined to die first ✔️
• totally nondescript guy with shaved head destined to die second ✔️
• guy who grew up around here and knows the local legends ✔️
• quirky girl with short hair and toy poodle dog ✔️
• bimbo/slut ✔️

Yup, that'll do.

You hook up with the kind of wavelengths this movie is working on right from the very get-go with the classic sex/pizza joke...


I often wonder who first said that joke? It's one of my least favorite jokes of all-time I've decided insomuch as it's always deployed in a certain 'type' of media that screams, "this 'type' of media is for stupid people." Neither. Here. Nor. There.

Thankfully, you're not watching Crocodile (2000) for the LOLZ and they know this and they get to the first kill pretty quickly as these two hick fisherman should know better than to fuck with a giant croc's giant crocodile eggs...


(Also that's kind of a sly nod to Hooper's history with animal rights, no?)

Anyway, there's not much to this one. This giant croc came over from Egypt (or something) 100 years ago. The drunk co-eds fuck up their houseboat and are lost in an obscure part of the lake's shoreline as the big ole monster picks them off one by one, yet can never quite manage to snag the toy poodle...


There is some decent stuff that doesn't directly involve the croc. For example, I enjoyed this level of hilariously bad over-acting by all of the young actors...


...and these hilarious CGI worms on a dead guy's detached hand...


Meanwhile, the local sheriff teams up with two absolute freakshows that harken back ever so slightly to Leatherface's family and fucked up house...


There is a totally half-baked subplot involving those two weirdoes wherein the older one wants revenge on the croc (who they call "Flat Dog" lol) for killing his daddy, and the younger wants to persuade the killer crocodile to murder the older one because of (something?) and offers it a bunch of dead chickens to no avail...


In fact, I would say that went pretty horribly for him!

But the heart of this movie and why it sort of / actually works is the design of our monster, and the aforementioned nice practical FX blended with comically bad CGI. Take for example the scene directly prior to the first clip I pulled above...


That is some genuinely nice action! And there are several sequences like that. This is as forgettable as it gets in most every other way, but I can't deny getting sucked into the madness of the crocodile scenes.

The film ends when Main Character Girl finds a crocodile egg in her backpack, the egg spontaneously hatches a baby croc and she tosses it into mama's mouth and they both swim away... BUT NOT BEFORE THE CROC TOSSES RED HAIR GUY INTO THE AIR AND SWALLOWS HIM WHOLE AND ALSO PUKES HIM OUT FOR SOME REASON FIRST (he somehow survives)...


And that's Tobe Hooper's Crocodile (2000). I watched it. Only one more of these reptile movies to watch now! Hooray!!

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 387 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 389 ⫸

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