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(More customer reviews)There are films that stay with you long after you've seen them because they touch something deep inside you, lift your spirit, or relate to you in a way few films can...and then there are films that are a blight on the collective consciousness, ones that define a new, previously unheard of level of total cinematic rottenness...Crocodile (1981), originally titled Chorake, most definitely falls into the latter category. Directed by someone named Sompote Sands, whose previous credit includes an obscure Thai made Ultraman film titled The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. the Monster Army (1979), the film features a cast of nobodies whom I hesitate to call actors only because they obviously had little or no skills, this movie generally being their only credit. The only named I recognize attached to this feature is that of Herman Cohen, the man behind such features as I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), Konga (1961), whose only apparent involvement seemed to be in the form of the distributor of this little Asiatic produced nugget of joy.
At the outset of the movie a booming voice pours forth, stating "From the very beginning man has been trying to destroy nature...perhaps one day he will succeed...but, then again, on that day nature may rebel, and this could happen", `this' referring to following scenes of a cataclysmic storm destroying a miniature representation of a tropical, southeastern Asian coastal village. Oh man, those phony natives are getting it good...and from the carnage something nasty (and bitey) this way comes...the next twenty or so minutes of the film are hard to discern, but basically focus on two couples, one with a young daughter, leaving the bustling city to take a vacation at a tropical resort. Once arriving, there's much frolicking, and eventually the two women and the young girl are eaten by a giant crocodile (I guess the vacation's over), or so we're led to believe as we don't actually see them getting attacked or anything, only a bit of thrashing about in the water. Anyway, once it's learned what actually killed the women, that of a colossal croc, the grieving men set out on a quest to destroy the creature what ruined their lives. Oh, by the way, I almost forgot to mention this wasn't just any, run of the mill mammoth crocodile, but a ginormous, voracious reptile embiggened by atomic radiation...geez, I thought that plot device died out in the 1950s. All right, so the two men hook up with a sweaty, shirtless, very muscled sea captain with a giant tattoo of an eagle on his back, and head out into the open water in search of the large beast, whose since wiped out numerous miniature fishing villages. They're soon joined by an overly effeminate news photographer, who provides some unexpected, but much needed comic relief, along with giving us more potential crocodile fodder. Eventually the S.S. Funboy and her crew run across the fearsome, humungaloid, beast, highlighted by a sequence involving a plastic crocodile attacking a toy ship, setting up for the climatic final confrontation of grievous proportions...
This movie's a huge, tedious mess...the first twenty minutes are so disjointed I would challenge anyone to properly put the pieces together and come up with some sort of cohesive storyline. The scenes, many of them too dark to see much of anything, are tacked together with little or no thought towards continuity, indicating perhaps a retarded orangutan was hired for the editing process. Eventually some semblance of a plot does become evident, but guess what? It's one I saw in a much better film by Steven Spielberg called Jaws (1975)...perhaps you've heard of it? Given the immense popularity of Spielberg's film, the knock offs following were abundant, and of all the ones I've seen (which is to say I've seen a great many), few failed as miserably as this one, in my opinion. And that's pretty pathetic given the makers of this film are not only following an established formula, but actually lifting scenes directly from that other film. The most vivid example is near the end when the ship is sinking, and one of the men, in a Chief Brody-like maneuver, props himself on the now angled crow's nest of half submerged ship in an effort to take pot shots at the approaching beast, whose size ranged from big (about twenty feet) to ginormous (one hundred feet), given which part of the movie you were watching. There's a particularly stoopid occurrence of self sacrifice soon after this which I'm hesitant to go into further if only because it provided me with so much laughter in its complete ridiculousness, and I'd not want to spoil that rare opportunity of enjoyment for anyone else. Perhaps this was included in an effort to outdo Jaws, but, if so, it fell short of its intended mark. The movie is brimming with pointless filler including stock footage of monkeys, sea coral, numerous close ups of crocodile eyes, etc., my favorite possibly being a mondo scene where an actual crocodile is butchered by a skinny Asian man with a large knife...lovely...there's very few scenes where we actually see the crocodile attacking anyone, as much of it was inferred by people splashing around in the water, biting on blood capsules or such indicating something was attacking them in the water...there was one pointless sequence in the middle where the creature eats a water buffalo, finally giving us some sort of frame of reference of the beast, and then a couple of scenes near the end when various individuals find themselves in the jaws of the creature, allowing the audience some much needed visceral thrills. I did like some of the mass destruction sequences, especially the scenes involving small, Asian people being tossed around and such, but I despised the often out of sync musical score...ouch...it's a mixture between cacophonous, insipid, absolutely horrid disco pieces and goofy, monotonous, psuedo classical thematic music during the more serious sequences, none of which did much to help the overall end result any. The film did feature a grand, explosive finale, for what it's worth...
The picture, presented in widescreen (1.85:1), on this VCI Entertainment DVD release is just plain awful. I can deal with the minor wear elements present, but there was a consistent, irritating jitter throughout the film, indicating a poor transfer. If the hideous material in the film doesn't induce a headache, this aspect surely will...the audio, presented in Dolby Digital stereo, is decent enough, but given the rotten scoring and lousy dubbed dialog, it's not doing anyone any favors. As far as extras, there are two radio spots, along with trailers for other films like Kiss of the Tarantula (1976), Don't Open the Door! (1975), The Twilight People (1973), and Gorgo (1961). Overall this film, the material and the presentation, deserves one star, but I'm throwing in an extra due to the unintentional humor.
Cookieman108
If I learned anything from this film it's that not only can enormous, irradiated reptiles live in the sea, but they can also fly...
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