Dinocroc

Pretty stupid, but relatively harmless nonsense.

Try to imagine a hybrid child of Jaws and Lake Placid; this flick shamelessly rips them both off at will. A giant crocodile with Stegasaurus stuff on its back roams in as well as out of the water, munching on everybody it can find. It growls a lot, too. At least the frequent deaths are often suggested rather than gruesomely exploited visually. You've got a skeptic sheriff, of course. His goofy daughter is a game warden who's against euthanizing puppy overpopulation. There's a guy who wants revenge against the monster running around and screaming a lot. There's even a big game hunter complete with Indy Jones garb. The ever-present annoying character who you love to hate, and that you know will get devoured sooner or later, is a loud-mouth freedom-of-the-press psycho journalist who is as irritating as those cable "news channel" talk show hosts.

The CGI is so fake it's funny, and the dialog is also absurd. People always yelling at a beast challenging it to fight is even more laughable. The story storms forward with its primeval creature making one kill after another, there's rarely a dull moment. The way they finally get rid of the thing is both innovative and amusing.

Goofy stuff, and OK if you watch it for the sole purpose of laughing your insides out.

There are some things I can never understand. Such as this movie. What if I were to create a really really cheap and crappy looking Dino and crocodile polygon model in Maya and then proceed to cut and paste that into an amateur video clip having people scream and getting eaten by the same thing? How can anyone even believe that an utterly fake CGI dinocroc that looks completely out of place, would influence the events in this movie? I know that its B-grade, low budget and all but the producers could do better than making a piece of crap that no one will ever seen see or sit through. It just does'nt make sense. Are people really so stupid that they would sit through this? Apparently so. For laughs? No, this thing isn't even worth laughing at.

After a 100-million-year-old dinosaur, related to our present-day crocodile, is discovered a corporation by the name of "Gereco" decides to conduct genetic research using its DNA to stimulate growth. As it so happens the experiment is a complete success until one of their specimens escapes and begins consuming everything in its vicinity. However, rather than alerting the authorities the Gereco company decides to keep everything top secret in the hope that they can somehow contain the damage themselves. Now, rather than reveal any more of the story and risk spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it, I will just say that this movie was pretty much what I expected from a Roger Corman film in that it had a definite B-movie quality to it. The acting wasn't that good, and the CGI could have used some improvement as well. But Jane Longenecker (as "Diane Harper") was certainly cute and even though it was mostly predictable there were a few surprises here and there which managed to keep my interest for the most part. I especially liked the suspense toward the end. In any case, while I don't consider this to be a good movie by any means I suppose it wasn't terribly bad either and so I rate it as just slightly below average.

Just for the record, Dinocroc is not the worst movie I've ever see, or even one of them, not even close. But I don't really recommend it either. Dinocroc is certainly not without redeeming values. The scenery is decent, though could have done with more of an atmosphere, while the soundtrack is haunting and not too obvious and Joanna Pagula as well as having an alluring presence does what she can with a rather stereotypical character. On the other hand, I was very mixed on the story, it didn't ever bore me, it did start off well and it deserve credit for not being too derivative of Jurassic Park, on the other hand it has a very standard concept which was partly why I was never surprised at what went on in the film, the attack scenes are not suspenseful and come across as goofy instead and the the climax is abrupt and just not convincing on any level. Apart from the scenery, Dinocroc was lacking for me visually also, the editing is not as choppy as similar movies I've seen but there are moments where it is rather obviously done which detracts from any kind of nail-biting terror or suspense. I've seen worse effects, but these ones are still artificially rendered with the monster crude and not scary or the like at all. The script is horribly cheesy also, while the characters are stereotypical and made to do irritating things(like the man using his dog as bait but is still killed) and the acting is bad, especially from a bland Matthew Borlenghi and an over-the-top Costas Mandylor. All in all, cheap and irritating nonsense but not the worst way you can waste your time on. 3/10 Bethany Cox

...In that this movie never seems to deliver exactly what it wants. I, personally, love cheap straight-to-video monster movies, but this one just doesn't satisfy enough. I was expecting Tobe Hooper's CROCODILE, but was left with the sequel. Overall, worth renting if you enjoy the genre.

1.5 (out of 5) Rated: "R" for some creature violence/gore, and language.

Summary: DinoCroc is what you get when you mix SNAKEHEAD TERROR and CROCODILE 2: DEATH SWAMP. Don't expect an oscar.