Director: Fabrizio de Angelis
Year: 1989
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Heading out to an abandoned marsh, a group of ecology students studying the dangerous effects of toxic waste in the area finds it home to a ravenous, monstrous crocodile attacking the locals and must join up with a hunter to try to stop it before it eats through the group.
Review:
This is quite a fun and highly enjoyable cheesy creature feature. One of the more impressive elements here is the fact that there's quite a large number of creature attacks throughout that manage to work out an incredibly fun pace for this one. Starting immediately with the initial attack on the couple in the lake before turning to the surprise launch out of the water to startle the fishermen later on, there's a lot of great short attacks here with the croc launching itself out of the water to go for the attack. The first attack on the member in the woods searching for their dog, a rather tense scene in the swamp where they have to free their boat from being tangled in the weeds of the surrounding water being shot from the croc's eye-view surrounding them and the absolutely stellar encounter at the local pier where it attacks the villagers attempting to rescue the girl from the creatures' clutches and avoid the rampaging creature which is some thrilling moments of the croc head poking out of the water preparing to snap at the rescuers all manage to help aide the action of this one along.
With that letting the locals know of the creature, this turns the film into a great series of hunting-style action scenes where the local hunter joins them in their quest and the resulting scenes of the two different groups encountering the creature in the wilderness results in some fine scenes of the creature splitting up the group setting the boat adrift and crashing into the boat picking them off one-by-one or the chilling attack on the campsite as it comes out with them in their tents and heads off into the jungle at night. As well, that leads into the finale which is a rather rousing and high-energy action-packed affair with a great plan to stop the creature and results in some fun moments with the group on the boat and the creature in the water bringing about some great gory deaths along the way. The last plus here is the croc prop featured throughout here, which is always a plus due to the physical on-screen presence it generates.
While these here make the film work, there are still a few minor elements at work against this one. The main thing with this one is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of interest derived in the film's clichéd political cover-up angle, being a part of just about every single one of these types of creature features where the locals are involved in the creation of the monster but keep their involvement hidden in the interest of their political careers that would end up preventing lots of chaos and anguish if it came out earlier. It's obvious what's going on, but instead of following through on this and doing something interesting, it relies on the clichés which are distressing and leads to some downtime in these sections spilling it out even further. Likewise, the creature looks good in most scenes but it's still obviously a prop throughout here and doesn't really change that fact too often. Otherwise, this one was quite a fun and enjoyable effort.
Overview: ****/5
A wholly enjoyable and over-the-top action-packed creature feature, this is certainly more than watchable effort with way more positive features than negatives. Give it a look if you're a fan of these kinds of cheesy creature features or those curious about this kind of genre effort, while those turned off by this setup should heed mild caution.
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