Our first film was Tobe Hooper's 2000 flop Crocodile. Sperhauk hadn't ever seen it and when he saw it cheap he picked it up. I hadn't even heard of it but that's not too surprising. I might not have heard of it even if it had been a good movie. Some college kids go stay at a lake that has a large crocodile in it. One of them has a dog. Not much happens during the movie. There's a scene with the croc early on, before the students get to the lake, where he eats a couple of rednecks for busting up some of it's eggs, then not much happens for a while. The students have rented a houseboat and it's parked right next to the nest with the broken eggs. They have their fun and some personal drama before the croc does anything more than hide in the shallows of the lake. After a while the croc gets to chomping and there's the usual running about and screaming. The kids get attacked and the croc destroys their houseboat. While running through the woods the students come across the local sheriff and the comic relief hillbilly who are looking for the crocodile. The two men join in the fun but soon enough only 3 of the kids are left. Why they let that one jerk ass guy survive I can't imagine. We all hated him. It's one of many choices that the film makers made that didn't help make me think positivily about the movie and I'm not alone, it only scores a 3.1 on the IMDb. Some of the scenery looks nice enough but sometimes the action is too close to the camera and that camera moves too fast to see what's up. The special
effects are a mixed bag, some watchable, some pretty poor. There's an amazing shot of the croc jumping out of the lake and arching over the boat. Amazingly bad and not bad in a good way. There's a fun shot of the little fuzzy dog jumping through the croc's mouth. The dog was the best actor of the lot. I'm kidding, the guy who played the sheriff, Harrison Young, is a better actor. You'd have seen him in 1, or 5, of his movies. Still, that dog was pretty natural and his leap sure made us laugh. Not too much else did and the story is so familiar it leads to boredom. Not something I'd need to watch again.
Mike went to the premiere of The Giant Spider the other night and he got a free copy of the dvd. It's a locally produced horror film and we watched it, even though Mike warned us it wasn't that good. I never listen. It is short, only 70 minutes, but it seems longer. That's not added value. The movie is B&W and it apes the 1950's giant monster movies that our group of cinema fans enjoys. There's a giant spider roaming the area around a town. It chows down on the unsuspecting town's folk and there's lots of running around and yelling. The military is called in and there's more yelling from the bald general. More stuff happens but I can't remember how it ends. I was seriously falling asleep by then. All of us are fans of the 1950's SF and Horror genres and we weren't at all keen on it. It scores a whopping 8.4 on the IMDb until I put my 4.o score in. That was being generous, I thought. Technically the movie is fairly well made for the low budget. There's some green screen and cgi work that mostly works. The script is where thigns fall apart. Those old 50's scripts approached the story from a different angle than the film maker Christopher Mihm. They weren't intentionally trying to parody themselves and that distinction creates a different feel to the original 1950's movies. No matter, I wouldn't recommend it, better you should watch the movies that inspired it. At least we got to have an early night.
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