From the off it was blatantly obvious to me that Crocodile was going to be exactly what I was expecting. A cheap looking, shoddy acted, hammed up yawn-fest. Tobe Hooper settles to create this tamely mediocre attempt at bettering the previous years other crocodile related success, Lake Placid. But Lake Placid was different on so many levels. And one of them was that it was good.
The ingeniously titled Crocodile would probably have worked better as a TV movie. But then it could have probably worked better not being made at all. But it must have been obvious all the way that this was going to be another of those straight to video projects. And another opportunity to spray the immortal words ‘From the Director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ all over an otherwise non-noticeable cover.
Cliché-filled and poorly executed Crocodile genuinely scrapes the barrel of weakness. Teenagers, drinking, sex, toothless locals, campfire tales, dumb girls and an annoying yapping pet. That is practically the content of this film and I’m sure we can all string out the plot all by ourselves without ever having to rent this abysmal disaster at all.
But just in case you need more. A group of teenagers go for boat trip on a lake in Southern California. But the fun soon dissolves into disaster as they become stalked by a large man-eating crocodile.
OVERALL SUMMARY
There’s a complete lack of originality, a total lack of freshness and a criminal shortage of anything decent whatsoever. If this movie was intentionally supposed to pay homage to cheap B movies of the past then fine but even if that was the excuse it still is no way up to scratch. And there weren’t many B movies in those days using computer generated imagery. Shoddy CG, bad editing. Am I missing anything? Tobe, pull your finger out son? Get back on top of your game!
