Il fiume del grande caimano

Filmed in beautiful Sri Lanka, The Great Alligator otherwise known as Alligators otherwise known as Big Alligator River has featured in several worst movies ever made lists. Honestly I think the people who included it need to watch more films, as this wouldn't likely make my bottom 500 despite still being bad.

It tells the story of a group of tourists who anger the locals and before you know it there is one angry giant alligator after them and the native people aren't very friendly either.

I can't come up with a reason folks would consider this one of the worst ever, sure it's bad but not to that degree.

It looks dated sure and the plot and pacing are really quite dire but all in all I've seen this very same thing done considerably worse.

I would certainly not recommend this to anyone, but it's not THAT bad.

The Good:

Some great nature shots

SFX aren't that bad

The Bad:

Very slow burner

Plot is a bit of a mess and gets worse the further in you go

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

I don't approve of swine swindling

Adam (As in Adam & Eve) was an idiot

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.

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.

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

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

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.

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.