Crocodile - Tobe Hooper's Ali-gory!!

Good condition DVD of a movie that is better than it's budget and Hooper had unfinished croc and hotel business from Eaten Alive

A group of students are stalked by a giant crocodile after taking one of its eggs. In this entertaining horror film, several students go out into the American wilderness. Once there, they stumble across the eggs of a vicious, giant crocodile. Soon the crocodile is on a bloody rampage of carnage and destruction, and it's up to the locals, led by the sheriff, to stop the killer crocodile. Big animal horror directed by Tobe Hooper (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE), who covered similar evil reptilian territory in EATEN ALIVE.

Out on leave from college during spring break, six college students, Brady (Mark McLaughlin) his girlfriend Claire, (Caitlin Martin), his friends Duncan, (Chris Solari), and Kit, (D.W. Reiser), and their friends Annabelle, (Julie Mintz), Sunny, (Sommer Knight), and Hubs (Greg Wayne) rent a houseboat on a small river. At first, everybody gets along peacefully and are enjoying a great summer. During a game of football, one of them accidentally steals the egg of a giant crocodile. That same night, during a round of telling legends, Sunny reveals that she had slept with Brady, infuriating Claire. She storms off, leaving Brady confused about what happened. Early in the morning, the crocodile kills one of the friends and sends the boat down the lake. Awakening in the morning, unaware of what has happened, the five friends wander off the boat to find themselves in a new part of the river. Claire is still upset at Brady, and he and Sunny go off to talk. The crocodile appears and trashes the boat, sending everyone into the nearby forest. The crocodile stalks them relentlessly, causing several close calls. After two more are killed, they finally trap themselves in a small local grocery store. The crocodile breaks into the store, again sending them running off into the jungle. Come daybreak, the kids find the local sheriff, (Harrison Young) investigating the disappearances of another hiking group in the area. The crocodile attacks the boat, where Claire gets the idea to return the crocodile's egg. She does, and she and Brady watch as the crocodile swims off.

The Good News: It's not everyday that you see a well made giant monster movie, let alone a well made low budget one. `Crocodile' is a very underrated movie. Granted, it's no `Lake Placed,' or even `Deep Blue Sea,' but this is just as good. The campiness of the film is its greatest asset. This is a `Friday the 13th' film without Jason, and a giant crocodile in his place. I really love the film for that, because what happens along the way will be new but still different. The plot is still pretty predictable, but along the way we are treated to some pretty cool jumps. The first kill along the riverboat is the best one, but the jump from the campfire is still pretty cool. I also liked the crocodile robot, as it looked really convincing and totally creepy. It looked almost like a real crocodile in most of the scenes. The CGI was very fake looking and easily spotted in all the scenes it was in. surprisingly, there was a lot of gore in the movie. I ain't complaining, but the attacks were very brutal in the film. This is the one where we see limbs being bitten off or the crocodile munching on the alive remains. It was a shock to see such attacks, but it makes the movie look that much more professional. Overall, though, the best part of the film is its campiness. Hooper has done a great job of making the film enjoyable, and you can watch it several times without ever getting to be bored. You get more surprised by the jumps and the suspense really begins to come out after repeated viewings.

The Bad News: This will be severally attacked because of the cheeziness, and it is understandable why. There are a lot of scenes that are just oddly put together. The whole campfire scene was simply odd. It had almost no reason for being in the movie other than to fill time. The jump at the end was cool, but the whole way of going about it was done very weirdly. The whole small subplot about the two farmers who knew about the crocodile and are explaining to the sheriff what a crocodile can do to a person was also simply unnecessary. It didn't have anything to do with the movie, only to add body parts to the crocodile's gullet. I didn't see the need for their appearance. The whole cliché about the teens coming to a forest area to party and being stalked by a killer of some kind is getting tiresome. I like those kinds of movies, but try to get a little more creative in the reason why you're bringing them out to the forest.

The Final Verdict: If you have to watch a killer creature flick and the above two are gone, this is the next best one. It is a tad bit cheesy, but then it belongs in that genre of the teens-trapped-in-a-forest-with-a-killer movie. If has a lot of good parts as well as a few bad parts, and it is very entertaining.