Dinocroc

If you know what to expect, then Dinocroc, may not be such a terrible watch. The best word to describe it would be amusing, because it is just as unintentionally fun as it is intentionally.

The premise is your typical science experiment gone wrong. One night, a genetically engineered baby croc (prehistoric croc actually) escapes from a lab, and after a midnight snack of human flesh, it grows to full size in a matter of hours (now that's funny). A mixed matched handful of people go out to stop it, before it kills any more.

In addition to fairly weak acting, and visual effects that wouldn't fool a four year old, Dinocroc also has several blatant Jaws rip-offs. At the same time however, it makes a few wiser decisions. It chooses to avoid extreme gore, and clear sighting of the creature until the director feels it's time to move into action mode.

These movies are usually made for no more than a couple of million dollars, but Roger Corman has made so many that together they probably cost as much as Titanic. I don't know much about him, other than he's a veteran of the B-movie industry. I've chosen not to ask why he does this sort of thing. Dinocroc is not bad, there is better but there is also much worse.

This is your standard genetic experiment gone wrong plot - a "dinocroc" is created by Evil Co. (or something like that) and starts munching the locals. The story centers on an animal control officer and her dad (the local sheriff) and her boyfriend. The female lead is quite good, but the male lead plays his part as if he's mildly retarded. It's gets funnier every time he says a line. One starts to wonder about the extremely low standards the girl must have in men. Then there's an Australian croc hunter, loud and obnoxious, but with a tender side, blah blah blah.

The film moves along okay until the ending, which is not only utterly unbelievable, but anti-climactic as well.

Overall, a somewhat below average creature feature, but the CGI was perhaps a bit better than usual. I wouldn't exactly recommend it.

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.

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

Roger Corman makes entertaining movies, and he's made several giant monster movies for the sci-fi channel. Out of them all, this follows his classic style the most, including not so good special effects.

The classic style that didn't work includes the monster not showing itself, lots of people shots that are just fillers, and slow story development.

The special effects croc is a joke. It has no believability to its character.

This is a cheesy movie what people expect from a borderline B movie. Since this was first in line of many of this type of movies to come, it may have had budget problems. In any case, the movie itself was successful, and spawned many different super beast movies. The later productions has much better quality.

I couldn't warm up to this movie, and this is not one of the best of super monster series that came from Roger Corman's production.