Der Alligator

This movie has the charm of the old and cheap monster movies. Well, not that old (since it was filmed in 1989), but it definitely has a 80's feeling to it.

Let's start with the good points of this movie : "Killer crocodile" (and its sequel, filmed at the same time) is cheap, but most part of the budget went into the crocodile itself. No CGI, but a full (plastic) giant crocodile, which is a good starting point. There is a certain amount of gruesome deaths (with limbs cut off and everything), and, since there is an attack about every 10 minutes, you don't get bored watching the movie. Also, the music was made by the famous Riz Ortolani, who was already familiar with horror movies set in beautiful locations of south American forests, as he is also the composer of the theme for the infamous "Cannibal Holocaust".

But the gruesome deaths don't really make up for many other problems in the movie. The acting is definitely the worst part of it : it's just ridiculous (except for the late Ennio Girolami, playing the character of the mysterious Joe, a boor and lonely hunter out to kill the beast). The dialogues try to underline plot elements that don't really lead anywhere, when not being completely over-the-top.

And the crocodile might be giant, but still : its big yellow eyes and deep growls make him seem actually cute at times.

In conclusion? Don't watch it if you're looking for a masterpiece. But it definitely is pretty entertaining... Although not for the reasons the director wanted it to be.

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".

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.

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.