Crocodilo, a Fera Assassina

For many people this is one of the worst by Sergio Martino, but I really love it. First I gotta say that I love Sergio Martino and for me he is maybe the best exploitation Italian director, better than Di Leo and Lenzi too. Big Caimano River is a real b-movie, and I say that as a compliment: a real b-movie as today nobody do anymore. It's a sort of "Jaws" rip-off, with a big alligator which scares a small village in the forest. The movie is sometime stupid, but is so funny. You can easily see that the alligator is fake, but this doesn't disturb me. Instead, I think it's almost touching: that time is over, the time of the house made fx-effects. The underwater ending sequence is fantastic. Also the truck is fake but, you know, that's b-movie. And that's what I like.

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.

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.