No, you can't get friendly with a crocodile
Don't be taken in by his welcome grin
He's imagining how well you'd fit within his skin.*
Sometimes we watch movies because we yearn to immerse ourselves into the talents and imaginations of the artists involved in their creation. Sometimes we watch them to have our minds stimulated by the ideas they contain. Sometimes, we watch them just so we can kick back and have a heck of a good time.
Which brings us to Tobe Hooper and the newest rampaging reptile movie, Crocodile.
When it comes to combining horror with just the right amount of ironic humor, nobody does it better than Hooper. From the Texas Chainsaw Massacre to this tale of mother-love gone amok, Hooper knows just how to balance the elements of his film so that the gruesome doesn't become overwhelming but still manages to keep us from quite wanting to be alone in the dark.
In this film, he has a group of college kids on spring break afloat on a lake in Middle of Nowhere, USA. The lake is named for the ancient Egyptian crocodile god, Sodek, because back around the turn of the century and obsessed hotelier attempted to resurrect a cult of Sodek worship. He didn't succeed, says the local legend, but there are tales that the creature he imported as the idol of his group yet lives.
Hollywood's idea of what college kids are like usually doesn't bear close scrutiny, but Hooper and his cast are quite believable despite the inevitable stereotypes. What makes the thing work is an excellent dynamic between the three main characters, good-guy Brady Turner (Mark Mclauchlin), his high-spirited lady-love Claire (Caitlin Martin) and Brady's best bud Duncan McKay (Chris Solari.) Duncan and Claire have a feud of long standing, and his efforts to break them up have a dark, hard edge underneath that actually provides a little more emotional depth than is usual for this kind of movie.
Hooper also avoids the obvious cliche of having this group be the instigators of the disaster-to-come. That task falls to a couple of drunken local fishermen who encounter the croc's nest and start using her eggs as hand grenades. The young folks probably would have gotten away unscathed, except that one of them tucks one of the surviving eggs into Claire's backpack.
And Mama wants it back.
That's not to say this movie is going to win any awards for originality. Co-writers Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch (Spiders) don't wander more than a step or two away from the creature-feature conventions. Indeed, much of the credit for moving Crocodile away from the mob has to go to the actors, including Sommer Knight as the required airhead blonde. Only, this airhead has the personality of a barracuda on speed. And, of course, the master himself, Tobe Hooper, who keeps a firm hand on the schlock control so that just when you think you know what's going to happen, it doesn't.
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