Il fiume del grande caimano

A year after The Mountain of the Cannibal God, Sergio Martino decided to go back into the jungle - although instead of bloodthirsty cannibals, this time he brought with him a ridiculous looking fake crocodile! The influence from this film obviously came primarily from Steven Spielberg's Jaws (which was a big hit among Italian film directors in the seventies), with a bit of the cannibal sub-genre thrown in for good measure. It's safe to say that this film isn't very good - and has nothing on Sergio Martino's more successful films (his Giallo's in particular), but at least the film is fun enough for most of the duration. The plot revolves around a legendary crocodile that lives near a tourist resort in Africa. Unfortunately, the over-sized crocodile is not pleased about the tourists' intrusion and so takes it upon itself to kill everyone! On the land, the natives believe that they are being killed by the tourists and so they take to the lake in a boat...but in the lake, the hungry crocodile awaits them!

Of Martino's three jungle movies (the other two being The Mountain of the Cannibal God and Island of the Fish Men), this one is definitely the weakest, although it's not all bad news as it's still entertaining enough. Naturally, the crocodile looks completely ridiculous but this adds charm to the film and I'd rather see a silly looking and obviously fake crocodile terrorising people than a CGI one. Unlike Martino's other films, this one doesn't feature much in the way of gore, nudity or sleaze which is a shame as I would have preferred more of all three. Like Island of the Fish Men, this film stars Barbara Bach and again she looks absolutely great. Her co-star is Claudio Cassinelli (also from Island of the Fish Men, as well as Mountain of the Cannibal God) and he looks the part as the rugged male lead. The scenery is good and the film is obviously shot on location, which helps Sergio Martino to build the atmosphere surrounding the "mythical" central monster. Overall, The Big Alligator River is silly and fairly poor quality, but it's a fun viewing and therefore isn't all bad.

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.

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.

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.

Some kids bathtub toy goes on a killing spree. I mean, some ancient jungle god (in the shape of a Giant Alligator!) gets offended by a resort being built in the heart of the jungle. Then a supermodel sleeps with a native and REALLY cheeses him off! Actually, I suspect it might have been the incredibly irritating "bocka-ch-wocka" disco music that plays relentlessly through the entire film that drove the reptile to kill in the first place. The Great Alligator goes on a boring munchfest, eating more innocent natives than guilty white people and requiring that soaking wet and barely dressed shapely women be tied to rafts and offered as a sacrifice. Yeah, okay. Poor Richard Johnson plays some weirded out prophet who lives in a cave and looks like the guy from Monty Python. I kept waiting for him to run up to the camera and croak out: "It's!" at any given moment. The alligator is silly, bobbing back and forth and looking like a big rubber toy. This was obviously "Jaws" inspired, and sadly, imitation is NOT always the sincerest form of flattery. Stick with Piranha. This movie makes "Eaten Alive" look better than I originally gave it credit for.