Purely Joyful Movie!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

An Exercise In Nonsense

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

Killer Crocodile is set in Santo Domingo & starts as several American ecologists sail through a swamp there, they are looking for proof that big business is dumping it's toxic waste into the swamp & causing an environmental disaster. Pollution levels in the water are extremely high & when they discover a pile of toxic waste barrels dumped in the swamp they intend to blow the whistle & put an end to the illegal dumping. However after setting up camp for the night Conchita goes missing, the other's fear for her safety & when her dead, mutilated body turns up the local medical examiner claims that she was killed by some animal. Local big game hunter Joe (Ennio Girolami) fears that a killer Crocodile may be on the loose & he is proved right when a huge twenty foot Crocodile attacks a small village killing a couple of people, the town Judge (Van Johnson) doesn't want to know so Joe & the remaining environmentalists set out to kill the Crocodile first before it kills anyone else...This Italian production was co-written, produced & directed by Fabrizio De Angelis & is a straight forward Jaws (1975) rip-off that is pretty awful, as a huge fan of the Italian exploitation genre it's safe to say that it's better days were well behind it when Killer Crocodile was made. The Jaws similarities are there for all to see, the water based menace that eats people, the fact that it lurks just under the surface with only part of it visible above the water, the craggy old hunter who sets out to kill the monster, the music is a virtual note for note reworking of the classic Jaws theme, the local businessman & town officials who want to keep the killer animal secret for fear of bad publicity & just the way the script is written screams of Jaws. As you might expect Killer Crocodile has none of Jaws effectiveness, it is really dull & boring with long stretches where nothing happens, the attack scenes are so poor & unimaginative that any self respecting creature feature fan will want their money back once the end credits begin to roll. The character's are awful, they are all bland & stupid who aren't helped by an awful script that contains some terrible dialogue. With a film such as Killer Crocidile it's easier & quicker to list the things that are good about it, well it has one or two mildly gory moments & that's about it. Listing all the things wrong with Killer Crocodile would take a lot longer. At 90 odd minutes long Killer Crocodile drags & crawls along, you get the occasional really bad attack scene, a few shots of the Crocodile in the water & those throughly dull humans who are hunting it down. This is bad, very bad.Reasonably well on location Killer Crocodile was made before CGI became commonplace & therefore we have a big rubber Crocodile that barely moves as it's floats in the swamp, it's never really seen eating anyone although it does bite someones arm off whose stump then spurts a lot of blood. There's also a couple of dead bodies seen & that's about it. Most of the victims are killed off screen. There's no nudity or sex either & overall Killer Crocodile is fairly tame & forgettable. There's no tension, suspense or scares in this annoyingly drab film. Filmed at the same time as it's sequel Killer Crocodile II (1990) which uses many of the same cast & crew.The acting is bad, well at least the dubbing is bad. In fact it's hilariously bad with seemingly no attempt to match the dialogue with the on screen actor's mouth movements. The special effects are average at best & don't convince but they aren't as bad as some that I have seen although that's not saying much.Killer Crocodile is a really dull & boring film that is your basic common or garden variety Jaws rip-off, the effects are dated & the whole film is forgettable. There are better creature features out there, don't bother with this one even if you can find a copy.

Well, this wasn't nearly as bad as I initially feared it would be, and that's pretty much the best compliment you can give to a cheap and anonymous Italian-produced creature feature rip-off. "Killer Crocodile" is actually a rather funny movie if you analyze it a little bit… Even though it was made more than 14 years and numerous amounts of other B-movie rip-offs later, Fabrizio De Angelis still pretends his film is the first imitation of Jaws ever accomplished! The premise is very similar, and especially the POV-shots and use of music are shamelessly stolen from Steven Spielberg's groundbreaking monster-movie, like no other movie tried to do that before. But hey, nonetheless the movie is very entertaining, rather fast-paced and at least the vast majority of the small budget went to special effects department. The giant croc, albeit not very menacing, is a fairly impressive mechanical creation that is proudly shown several times throughout the entire movie, so at least you don't have to fear that all the action and death-sequences take place off-screen. The plot is standard monster-movie guff, with a group of over-ambitious and spineless environmentalists cruising down the Santa Domingo River and discovering that these swamps are used as a dumping place for industrial radioactive waste barrels. Months, maybe even years of dumping waste in the water is unquestionably also the reason why the crocodile mutated into a gigantically angry and insatiable killing machine that devours everyone who sets foot in his swamp territory. The activists get assistance from an ultimately stereotypical macho-hunter (Italian exploitation-regular Thomas Moore), while the mean guys who're polluting the swamps desperately attempt to get rid of them. De Angelis cheerfully serves one cliché after the other and the screenplay is entirely tension-free, yet you forgive him because it's such cheesy fun! The acting (and mainly the dubbing) is horrid and most of the dialogs are completely misplaced, but thank God for good old-fashioned gratuitous gore. Call me biased, but this type of horror-cinema is certainly a lot more enjoyable than the nowadays monster-movies with hideous CGI effects, like "Blood Surf" and Tobe Hooper's disastrous "Crocodile".

After sitting through not one, but TWO crappy recent killer-crocodile flicks ("Crocodile" and "Blood Surf"), where the digitized croc looked like a four-year-old kid had painted him onto the film, I was hoping that "Killer Crocodile" would be a refreshingly old-school monster pic, with a refreshingly old-school, well-made mechanical monster. Alas, the croc in this movie may be mechanical, but it's not well-made. It's lifeless and stodgy. And it growls. "Killer Crocodile" would like to be an Italian "Jaws" (there is even a character here who's a BLATANT knock-off of the Robert Shaw character), but there's none of that film's artistry on display here. The other characters are a bunch of nobodies, and it takes them about half the movie to decide that, yes, although this croc may be a rare species, they do have to kill it before they become its next meal. I mean, ecological conscience is a fine thing, but it has its limits. (*1/2)

This film is the definition of comic badness. The croc changes sizes seemingly at random. In one scene it even looks about 20 feet tall. People fall in to the water for no particular reason and it's not even clear what country this is supposed to take place in. Fortunately the film is fun and fast paced so you can ignore some of the faults. The gore is plentiful and the animatronic crocodile by Gianetto De Rossi is pretty amazing for a movie with such a low budget (well at least we know where the money went). Thomas Moore's (Ennio Girolami) performance as Joe the grizzled croc hunter adds alot to the film also. Some imaginitive camerawork and a decent jaws ripoff score by Ortolani doesn't hurt things either.Overall a decent fun flick, just don't expect JAWS.Shot back-to-back with Killer Crocodile II