Supercroc

I found myself cheering every time the giant lizard ate another one of these crappy actors.

Every line is a cliché, the effects are made on decade old computers, and the actors must have been friends of the director. All in all I get the expression that they collected some guys, gave them some gun replicas and gave them a couple of lines each. It really feels like a cheap TV-show on sci-fi channel or something, with special effects substandard to even high school media students. Who on earth gave these guys funds for this. I bet someone is having rich parents.

This film made me angry. For wasting my time, as well as others.

The cover of the Australian DVD sports the tag line "Original Uncut Version" and it is rated "M" (presumably for mature audiences) for "coarse language". I haven't watched any other version, just this Australian DVD, so I cannot say what, if anything, has been cut from other versions. Yet, this so-called "uncut" version itself is pretty lame anyway... The sole reason I recommend this Australian DVD is the great art on the cover! While the US DVD, whose covers scans I have seen on the net, features a crocodile eye over a cityscape, the Australian DVD features a giant crocodile jumping out of the sea to swallow a helicopter. There is nothing else to recommend about this movie, just DVD cover art, and only the Australian DVD at that...

I thought it was just me, but no, apparently the sound really is that bad. But then I am one of those people who leave the Closed Captions turned on by default on my television. They would have been a blessing for this movie. During the.first half of the movie I couldn't help but think that if I had been watching this in black and white I would have assumed it was a B-movie from the 1950s. But I like those sort of films (where's Ray Harryausen when you need him?)....unfortunately the story gets less and less convincing as it goes on and even introduces a conspiracy sub-plot with a very predictable final scene. Sorry, it's no threat to 1959's "The Giant Gila Monster".

Fist off, I love movies of this ilk. I can handle stilted acting, cheesy special effects and extreme close-up to hide the fact that there isn't a cast of thousands in the crowd. The reason for really low rating is because of the sound mix.

Budget limitations might be an excuse for seeing matte lines or transparent effects. Budget limitations might be an excuse for a lot of reasons but there is no excuse for the sound mix on this movie. Most of the time the dialog is completely inaudible. That might not matter to some, but it's a major distraction. Often the music cues simply stop before the cue is finished. In one sequence near the end of the film where the two principals are obviously having a key discussion, the overdub of machine gun fire is so loud that you can't hear a word that they say.

I was prepared to like this movie. I expected a low-budget film and with that comes the expectations of less than stellar performances and effects. The camera work was fine, the acting okay (from what I could tell from facial expressions), everything that you would expect but somewhere in post production this film was totally destroyed by somebody who thought loud music and gunfire was more important than anything else in the film. At least they could have supplied a subtitle track or a close caption option so the viewer would at least have some way of knowing what the actors are supposed to be saying.

Maybe the scifi channel can pick this up and give it a remix. The people at Asylum productions should be ashamed of themselves.

The acting is competent, with Kim Little (sort of resembles a Faith Ford and Elisabeth Shue hybrid which is kind of cool), playing her cards close to her chest as Government palaeontologist called in to advise on a giant crocodile that's been unearthed by an earthquake, threatening coastal towns en route to LA. Soldiers in the field (Hall & Blashaw) are being pursued by the indestructible behemoth with General (Novak), Little's character and other assorted advisors frantically co-ordinating efforts to control the beast's path of destruction from HQ.

It's all digital camcorder, CGI, synthesiser-sound, cheap home movie stuff, and while the performances are probably better than average for this type of production, the overall result is lacklustre. A raft of audio-visual tricks that don't paper over the budget holes, no realistic interaction between actors and the title antagonist, MTV-style light, sound and editing techniques, masses of stock footage but most disappointing of all, precious little horror or suspense.

It's the kind of movie that looks conceived and executed by visual artists instead of storytellers, all smoke & mirrors sans substance.