Der Fluß der Mörderkrokodile

This film starts with a photographer being flown by helicopter to a hotel/resort in the middle of the jungle, because he has been hired to take some publicity photos for the owner. Once there he is introduced to everyone of any interest (to the viewer anyway) and is given a guided tour of the place (once again more for the viewers benefit than his, a quick and lazy way to set the story up). After this opening ten or so minutes its on with the story, this photographer falls for the owners assistant and tries to chat her up when she is alone, outside. At the same time two locals sail to a nearby island and make love. On their way back they are attacked and killed by a giant alligator, of course the photographer and his soon to be lover hear their screams. The next morning one of the two killed the night before is reported missing, the photographer puts two and two together and along with a broken boat realizes something is not quite right. The hotel owner however is not convinced, and as he has his first guests coming to stay he doesnt want to start a panic. Its now down to the photographer and his girlfriend to prove the great alligator exists. I like all these italian rip off movies from the late seventies and early eighties and this one isnt too bad at all. Sergio Martino is a solid director who seems to make good, handsome, well made movies that are better than their low budgets would suggest, mountain of the cannibal god, A man called blade and 2019 after the fall of new york are a few examples. There is not much gore and the alligator is rarely seen, but the locations are nice as is the camera work. I liked the ending as well. Some may find the film a bit dull and slow but I liked it and recommend it.

Surfing on the wave of "Jaws" the cunning Sergio Martino sniffed out a huge niche market in this firstborn "Alligator" that was shameful duplicated by the Americans one year later with Lewis Teagle's Alligator and son on, the production looking by the thematic side is well-done on costumes on the tribe, lavish scenarios, and fabulous landscape at Sri-Lanka, nonetheless who would expect about the plot? Even the latest Jaw were really bad all them without any exceptions became often repeating itself, upon this point of view Martino's Alligator is a copy of Jaw.

How it works in "Jaw" is need a resort to took place all those unfortunate tourists in danger on those calm waters, they find in gorgeous Barbara Bach's angel face an appropriate trophy girl to offer for the giant creature, as really happens on the picture, a young hero in Claudio Cassinelli to save the helpless girl, Martino imposes a superstitious African tribe that believe in a Alligator's God willing to feeding with human fresh, at last the producers and writers put a supposed greedy and heartless man in the body of Mel Ferrer, then we've perfect formula to make the audience going to frenzy.

Aside the mix of foam, latex and cardboard on the innocuous Alligator all the remainder is someway very palatable for the target public, at cavern's sequence made in Italy had a great impact in so wondrous Alligator's skull, when Barbara and Cassinelli meet a hermit father, further the producers didn't retrench the budge sunk a brand new helicopter and renting all real resort at Asia, gorgeous girls in sexy bathing suits, the happy lady and finally that stolen the show the toothless little girl with the amusing smiling, not so bad.

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First watch: 1983 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-Youtube / Rating: 5.25.

A film that I had never heard of before, found thanks to the advent of streaming movie services and not sure if that is a good thing, or bad thing. Many films tried to capitalize on the success of Jaws and the Italians made many films themselves. A lot of the time they would use sharks or mutant sharks and in the case of this film they would use either a crocodile or alligator. Who the heck knows? In the title they use gator, but they're always mentioning crocodiles, but then they kind of imply it may be a gator...so it is one or the other and definitely a mutant of some sort as the poor beast seems unable to leave the water, which both alligators and crocodiles can do!

The story, a photographer and the skinniest model go to take some shoots to help promote this new African resort. A place that lets the tourists get close with nature and the animals and is obviously not in Africa. Well, we get lots of tension building with no payoffs for the first half hour and then finally we see a couple get killed and the photographer starts making it a big deal as the hotel owner downplays it, but with virtually no proof I would have to side with the hotel owner. Then again, the idiot spent three million to build a resort in Africa, I mean why? If I had that money, that is the last thing I would do as it would take forever to see any returns on the investment! Wait, oh yeah, forgive me as I forgot I was writing about a whatever in the water killing people and you will forget too when watching this! It all builds up to a rather crazy and entertaining conclusion, but boy it takes forever to get there!

Barbara Bach of Bond girl fame and various other movies is the most notable star along with Mel Ferrer who is in so many Italian horror films you may not know the name, but you will know the face. Also a bit interesting is the little girl who I recognized from another Italian horror film, but was not sure which, then I saw her here and linked her to the girl in House By the Cemetery who tries to help good ole Bob!

So, you get a whole lot of not a lot going on in this one and then all of a sudden you have people being chomped left and right, impaling themselves, people being shot with arrows and vans crashing into the river while the crocodile or gator tries to eat the occupants making for a somewhat satisfying conclusion. Still, not enough to make that tedious first hour and ten minutes worth going through. When I saw this thing was Italian, I figured it would be bad, but a lot of fun; unfortunately, the fun is all compressed into like the final 15 minutes of the film.

Although this is billed as a Jaws rip-off, the whole theme park threatened by a huge lizard sounds a lot like Jurassic Park too me, more than ten years before Michael Crichton published that book.

In some country, somewhere, photographer Claudio Cassinelli has been employed to take publicity shots for new resort owner Mel Ferrer. This new resort is seems to be smack bang in the middle of a jungle surrounded by hostile country and natives who help the newcomers, but also seem pretty superstitious and twitchy. Claudio, like in Island of The Fishmen, loves to do a bit of snooping, and finds that Mel isn't beneath some dodgy antics to get the tourists in, like having sidekick Romano Puppo feed musk rats to the local crocodile population.

Also like in Island of the Fishmen, Claudio sets his eyes on Barbara Bach, Ferrer's assistant who can talk with the natives (basically the same role she had in Island of the Fishmen then!). Whereas everything seems to be going okay for everyone, there are rumblings from the natives that all these newcomers have angered the God of the river, and that he's come back as an Alligator (not a crocodile - they do have a discussion about this). So, is monster Alligator real, and more importantly, how many people is it going to eat?

This is a film of two halves, really. There constant bickering of the characters and the lack of gore is a complete letdown, and yet the elevated cheese factor completely saves the film in the end. While it takes ages to get to any action, it's worth waiting until the film gets to Richard Johnson's appearance as a crazy priest. His demented performance as a man driven insane by the alligator is hilarious. Director Martino also saves most of the action until the end, and although we never do get a gore-fest, the alligator does get to go radgy and attack every person in the resort, at exactly the same time every person in the resort is trying to escape from the angry natives!

Although made in 1979, just check out that eighties vibe with the dancing tourists. I was already to hate this one but then Martino pulls it out of the bag in the last thirty minutes. Well done m'man! Martino's next four films are comedies, so I'm giving them a miss.

This movie has generally been critically lambasted over the years, and quite unfairly. It's generally been regarded as a "Jaws" rip-off even though the only thing it really has in common with "Jaws" is a fake-looking beastie and a guy (Mel Ferrer) who doesn't want to scare off the tourists from the luxury hotel he is operating in an undisclosed Third World jungle location. The giant caiman (incredibly, this movie has even been taken to task by some people over its inaccurate English-language title)may not be just a normal overgrown monster, but may actually be the god of a nearby group of indigenous people (do you remember that from "Jaws"?--I sure don't), who turn out to be even more dangerous to the hapless tourists than the caiman. There is also a mad missionary (Donald O'Brian)living in a cave who might be the Robert Shaw figure, but might just as well have been "ripped-off" from the novel "Heart of Darkness" as from "Jaws".

The hero (Claudio Cassanelli) is a photographer(i.e. not a sheriff)who comes to the resort for a fashion shoot. But then his model gets together with a native to make the beast with two backs out on a river island, after which they're both promptly eaten by the giant beast with one back, so it is up to the photographer and the PR spokeswoman for the hotel (Barbara Bach)to stop the rampage of this enraged "god" before he chows down on more tourists. And they also have the murderous and sacrifice-happy native tribe to deal with. This movie has a real social and environmental message about the developed world exploiting the developing world and despoiling nature. It's pretty muddled (not much more convincing than the ones found in most Italian cannibal films) but it's also very un-"Jaws"like.

This movie has also been unfavorably compared to director Martino's previous cannibal outing "Mountain of the Cannibal God". This movie doesn't feature a naked Bond girl like Ursula Andress (and clothed latter-day Bond girl Barbara Bach is admittedly a poor substitute), but it also doesn't contain tasteless animal atrocity footage (watching people get eaten by a patently fake caiman is a lot more fun than watching a real monkey get slowly eaten by a real snake). It also gives the underrated Claudio Cassanelli a chance to shine, away from the shadows of big international and American stars like Andress or Stacy Keach (there's certainly no danger of Bach upstaging him). Sure the caiman's pretty fake, but this is still infinitely preferable to Tobe Hooper's "Crocodile" or other recent CGI garbage. Watch it and judge for yourself.