THREE KILLER CROCODILE PICTURES!
FROM FOUR DIFFERENT COUNTRIES!
CRIKEY!
First up, from Australia comes BLACK WATER, a much different kind
of
crocodile picture than the ones I'm used to and by that I mean it's
not sleazy. Generally I have a rule for this sort of thing, which can
be summarized as this: some things are best left to the Italians. But
having said that, I do think BLACK WATER as written and directed by
David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki is a pretty good little picture.
Just not an exploitation one.
BLACK WATER is the story of Grace, Adam and Lee as their vacation
goes about as poorly as possible. They set out for a fishing trip but
just miss the boat going out. Unfortunately, they accept an offer
from a guy who works at the dock to head out on the river and do some
fishing. The guy, named Jimbo, works with the regular fishing guide
and seems like a nice enough bloke so they say what the hell and head out.
What could go wrong? For about five minutes, nothing. Then the boat
is capsized by a big croc, Jimbo goes under and the trio are forced
up a tree in a mangrove swamp to stay away from the croc. Jimbo ain't
coming back, the boat floats capsized nearby and the croc may or may
not be nearby. That pretty much sets up the picture. They immediately
realize that they're in deep shit, especially as no one saw them
leave on this fishing trip. There is some squabbling as to what to do
and eventually Adam's plan of righting the capsized boat and riding
it out is agreed upon. Saying much more would give too much away, but
you can imagine that there ain't gonna be an easy way outta this.
I like that nobody does anything intensely stupid and they all come
across as real enough people trying to survive a harsh situation. The
croc itself never seems to be acting like a super "movie croc", he's
just hungry and patient. Everything it does is stuff you've seen on
Animal Planet a hundred times. Obviously for dramatic reasons he pops
up in the scary moments,but he's not doing unreal shit like hot
wiring a car or throwing his voice. The film succeeds in milking some
suspense from not ever knowing if the croc is just below the surface
or long gone. They seemed to have used a lot of real crocs in the
shoot and that works pretty well towards the realism factor. You fans
of real life animal attacks being the sick fucks that you are, will
probably recall the similar incident a few years back where some guys
had this same problem. I suppose if you wanna be whiney you might
complain that the conclusion gets a bit "hollywood" but it's not a
fucking documentary, so deal with it. I suppose there's some sort of
message in there about man's insignificance in the big scheme of
things, blah, blah bottom of the food chain and more blah, but who
needs that? It's really just a lean survival tale and a competently told one as well.
The three leads are all pretty good and that's a big plus. I have
read comparisons to OPEN WATER which are understandable, but it's not
a copy by any means. As I said before it's not anywhere near an
exploitation picture and I doubt it'll ever make the Saturday SciFi
channel marathon, stuck somewhere between CROCODILE 2: DEATH ROLL and
DINOCROC but it does succeed at what it sets out to do.
Which brings us to Italy and Sergio Martino's THE BIG ALLIGATOR
RIVER. Mel Ferrer plays the owner of a club-med style tourist resort
somewhere in Africa. At least I think it's in Africa. Sexy euro-babe
Barbara Bach plays his assistant, Alice. Just so we know Ferrer's
raped mother nature good and hard, we see the construction crew using
dynamite to blow trees away and the local natives working the site.
Also he has a guy that uses the old piglet on a rope method of
crocodile baiting, in order to provide the tourists a good croc show.
He ties the little pigs to a rope and trolls them in the river. It's
actually more hilarious than it sounds. Ferrer seems to have come to
some sort of truce with the local natives who seem to worship the
crocodiles of Big Alligator River. I have no idea why it's not called
Big Crocodile River but someone at some point comments that the
native's idol of Kroona, the giant crocodile looks like an alligator.
And that's enough about that. Ferrer has high fashion photographer
Daniel (Claudio Cassinelli) coming in with a model to shoot some pics.
The model sneaks away with a native one night and both are eaten. At
first no one suspects a crocodile and Ferrer, playing the Mayor
Vaughn role, does not want to start the whole "panic on the Fourth of July"
JAWS bit. He's got a big tourist gala set to happen and the swimming
area is protected by an iron "crocodile gate". The natives warn of
the wrath of Kroona but no one but Daniel and Barbara Bach's
character Alice. They are even warned by the old crazy white guy
hermit with his "it's not an animal, it's a demon" speech. Bach gets
kidnapped and tied
spread- eagled to a raft as a sacrifice to Kroona which is actually
pretty hot in a post-war pulp magazine cover kind of way. With the
big tourist party under way on a party boat, Kroona the croc and the
natives launch a duel assault. The natives are shooting flaming
arrows into everyone and everything and Kroona attacks the raft for a
quick buffet. After nearly sinking the boat everyone tries to
scramble to shore where the natives wait with their bows and spears
ready. Kroona manages to chew through what seems to be fifty tourists
in some chomp- chomp-chomp action. The big crocodile head puppet
looks and works pretty well but the minature full body croc model is less convincing.
When it's used in underwater shots attacking a boat model it doesn't
move and is basically a kid's big rubber toy. But it does have a
certain pre-cgi charm to it. Models are used for the burning resort
as well as a van that look like models but in quick shots they are fine.
During the JAWS inspired climax, a van containing Bach and Cassinelli
go into the river at night and when they submerge it's daytime. The
very ending is a bit of a head scratcher as everyone seems to have
forgotten the overnight bloodbath but that's okay. The music by
Stelvio Cipriani is very groovy in a tropical jungle beat kind of
way. For the most part it's a very good looking picture and the dvd
by No Shame Entertainment is great. I really wanted more sex and gore
as there is very little but for a part JAWS, part jungle adventure
picture it is consistently entertaining. Which is about ten million
fucking away from the turd that is our next flick, the simply titled
CROCODILE. Not one but two countries fucked this up, South Korea and
Thailand. I know what you are thinking, how hard is it just to make a
killer croc movie? Just a croc eating some people, maybe some titties
and blood, some guys kill it and that's it. But you really have to
have some fucking clue as how a movie is constructed. Got no ideas,
fine. Copy JAWS but make it at least somewhat interesting. Fucking
Turkey copies shit all the time and it's watchable. Even India made a
JAWS copy. This thing stars some guys and was directed by another
guy. The story goes: a doctor's family is eaten by a croc while they
are on vacation. But first as a sign of the film making technique to
come, we get a sex scene. Sort of. With absolutely no set up we see a closeup of the wife's face as she comes.
Only her face. Not even another person. And cut to the beach. The
wife can't find the little girl. She wades into the ocean. In a "gotcha"
moment an inflatable beach tube pops up from under the waist deep
water, scaring the mom. Was the giant croc holding it til the right
scary moment-in the waist deep water? Next a close-up of a real
croc's eye then the mom thrashing and that's it. The dad then grieves
as he listens to a phone message from the daughter , thanking him for
buying the beach tube. He listens to the message again later. So he
hooks up with Korean Hooper and Korean Quint and sets out to kill the
croc. The movie goes on with hardly any establishing shots. One
minute we are at a tourist crocodile park watching a real croc get
skinned then bang- what appears to be a real caiman wanders through a
model village, crushing tiny huts. Lots of shots of people screaming
and caught in a whirl pool. Lots of tail thrashing. They also spit up a lot of blood.
The croc at this point is Godzilla-sized. He's huge because of h-bomb
testing apparently. They have a close up of a real amputee thrashing
in the water but they have attached raw meat to his long healed stump
in an attempt to make it look like a fresh croc bite. I hope he
didn't get that done just for the movie. At one point they set a
giant bear trap on the ocean floor and a second later the croc's tail is caught in it.
I guess nobody saw it swim up. The scenes where he attacks the boat
involve some one throwing the live caiman at the toy boat. They do
use a large sculpted croc head for some shots that is at least
entertaining, especially when it eats a cow. I think it ends with an
explosion, but it's all a blur of awfulness. I remember Korean Quint
goes out Quint style. It was distributed in the US by Herman (KONGA)
Cohen. Thanks Herm, you're just swell. I bet you didn't even watch it
yourself.