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 A resort and its tourists are terrorized by a big alligator who may be a local god peeved by the intrusion on its home. The natives also attack when they believe that gator is mad at them for working with the resort owners. 1979, 89 minutes, DVD
Among the multitude of folks credited with writing this movie (I never have figured out how a movie whose story is "big alligator terrorizes resort patrons" required any authors beyond the ten year old kid that came up with the idea after watching Jaws) was George Eastman. George is most famous for playing the part of Big Ape in 2019: After The Fall Of New York. The fact that he was willing to appear in that movie, but not this one because he was too busy writing and starring in two flicks whose names (Black Sex and The Pleasure Shop On 7th Avenue) probably reveals more about Big Ape than we needed to know, is only one of about twenty or so red flags raised merely in the opening credits.
First and foremost among those warning signs would be the stewardship of Sergio Martino. Sergio is an old hand at these types of movies, having been behind the George Eastman classic 2019: After The Fall Of New York and the Stacy Keach-Ursula Andress cannibal movie Slave Of The Cannibal God as well as forays into the giallo, spaghetti western, and Eurocrime arenas. I suppose that somewhere out there is a director that can take a plastic alligator and make an entertaining film out of it, but I think Sergio would have a better chance of coaxing a less than plastic performance out of Stacy Keach than he would with the big gator the natives call Kruna.
Now that I think about it, I could get behind this movie if it had Stacy in it. Can you imagine how surly and embarrassed he would be throughout the film as he matched wits with The Great God Of The River? As it is, we have to put up with the late Claudio Cassinelli in the role of Daniel, a photographer contracted by the resort that Mel Ferrer stupidly built in Kruna's back yard, to shoot some publicity photos. Claudio bought the farm back in 1985 in the sort of accident that most of us could only dream of. While filming the classic Italian cyborg movie, Hands Of Steele, his helicopter went down in the Arizona desert accomplishing what even the legendary Kruna couldn't achieve. Oh, and the director of that ill-fated turd? Sergio Martino!
Daniel arrives at Paradise House with his supermodel pal, Sheena. Sheena is an emaciated black woman who has "gator bait" tattooed across her scrawny ass as soon as you see her vainly attempt to vamp it up as Daniel shoots photos of her all the while winking at hotel manager/anthropologist Barbara Bach. Mrs. Ringo Starr doesn't serve any purpose in the movie other than to translate whatever the natives are babbling about and to get taken prisoner in the last third of the movie for the expected human sacrifice aspect of things. Sergio doesn't even have time for Barbara and Daniel to hook up, no doubt much to Claudio's chagrin.
Now, I was never entirely sure where it was that this Paradise House was located. At first I thought it was somewhere in South America near the Amazon because Mel mentioned something about Rio and most Italian jungle movies occur in the Amazon right smack in the middle of headhunter territory. But then Barbara announces that she's surprised that there's a monster gator running around loose because this is the Orient and there should only be monster crocs eating people. Then someone mentions something about Carnival which made me think we were talking about Mardi Gras and were back in Brazil or maybe a jungle outside New Orleans. Then when the credits rolled, Sergio gave a shout out to Sri Lanka for letting him float his fake gator in their bathtub. Final call as to location? Somewhere in some jungle.
Obviously, these giant-aquatic-creatures-terrorizing-tourist films all follow the same premise: there's a guy in charge of whatever tourist business is threatened and he refuses to take seriously any of our heroes' pleas to shut things down and contact the authorities because it would be bad for business. This business plan always involves a large gathering of tourists at some kind of party or grand opening just when megamonster really gets all amped up to rampage, resorting in the kind of hysterical stampede of ugly extras you're paying your money to see. It's especially satisfying if irritating characters you been loathing for the past seventy minutes get ground up in the humongous maw of the beast. (In this movie, there's a guy who jumps into the water early on and announces that it's great and that everyone should jump in and that no would even know if you took a shit in the water. I think that's exactly the class of patron that Mel was hoping he would attract when he first imagined Paradise House.)
By now, you're probably thinking that Paradise House is some type of late seventies Jurassic Park or Disney World in the jungle. Well, Mel did mention that he wasn't about to let the three million dollars that were invested in it go down the crapper just because some reptile had its panties in a bunch about progress encroaching on his stomping grounds (heck, according to Barbara, he shouldn't even be there!). Three million smackers? Just what sort of swank set up do we have here? Um, there's a hotel, a rickety bridge called "Crocodile Bridge" and a boat with a thatched roof on it called "Tarzan's Raft." Oh, and all the natives they employ wear these nasty white T-shirts with the Paradise House logo on it. You have think that old Kruna was doing Mel a favor when he tore it all to piss allowing a tidy insurance settlement for Mel's heirs.
The first inkling that anyone has that trouble is a brewing in the muddy waters of the river is that Sheena hasn't materialized after a night out with one of the native boys. She and he were in a boat and went over to the Island of Love (this surprised Barbara since it was a full moon and that sort of hanky panky was forbidden by the tribe during that particular moon phase). There they rolled around on the beach before Kruna got all crabby about people making a booty call during the full moon. Before you know it, Kruna has taken a chunk out of the guy, Sheena, and the boat! (There's not much in the way of gore in this movie - these killer fish movies always employ that technique where a guy flops around in the water before going under leaving a cloud of red food coloring in his wake.)
Daniel starts running his mouth to Mel about finding Sheena and that Kruna must have eaten her. He and Barbara go and investigate and discover that the local tribe worships the big gator and that they are under the impression that Kruna is throwing a fit because the tribe cooperated with Paradise House. This leads to an entirely pointless field trip to visit the crazy old missionary who lives in a cave with a big statue of a gator. He says absolutely nothing of significance and Daniel and Barbara leave wondering why they busted their hump climbing that waterfall to find him in the first place.
Things heat up between Daniel and the management of Paradise House when he radios the cops to tell them to come and get their big smelly gator. Mel instructs his right hand man to work Danny over a little bit and a brawl in the radio room ensues. The guy playing the muscle in this movie also played Ratchet from 2019: After The Fall Of New York and Trash's dad from Bronx Warriors 2. He gets most of the licks in on Daniel, but Daniel does get to kick him once. I think he was trying for some type of kung fu side kick, but it sort of came off as being a bit of dirty pool if you ask me. I don't know what the big deal was about any of this anyway since the police were coming in the morning and Daniel was leaving in the morning. What was going to be accomplished that night? I guess Mel could have called off the big party, but the natives went nuts and were going to massacre all these tourists whether they were out partying or hiding from giant alligators at the hotel bar.
After what seems like an eternity of build up (actually only about an hour) everything starts to break loose! The natives turn against Paradise House and start pulling college-level pranks like pushing the resort helicopter into the river and shooting flaming arrows into the guests. They also decide to abduct Barbara and storm the resort massacring everyone they can find. For his part, Kruna is a very busy gator, swimming back and forth across the river to alternately harass the folks on Tarzan's Raft and Daniel who is trying to rescue Barbara. This is finally the part of the movie where Sergio comes through with those action sequences that are so bad, they're funny to us and humiliating to the guys who made the film.
I wasn't sure if I laughed harder when Daniel told Barbara to go hide under a hut or dock or wherever while he tried to distract the natives by driving a VW bus through the jungle (that was pretty distracting) or when the VW bus was driving across the Crocodile Bridge and then plunged into the drink after a native chopped the bridge down with a machete (great workmanship!) so that we had to watch the plastic gator nudge a Hot Wheels VW bus as Daniel frantically got the explosives together that the workman thoughtfully left in the VW bus along with some scuba gear and oxygen tanks so that he could blow poor Kruna to kingdom come.
Not nearly enough happens in the first two-thirds of the movie good or bad to advise you to waste your money on it. The gator appears infrequently and appears to just sort of drift in the water (immobile plastic models have a way of doing that) except for the few scenes where we get a close up of its mouth and it actually appears that might have opened (though that could have just been really good editing and/or wishful thinking). Sergio also pads the movie out with characters that aren't necessary such as the previously mentioned crazy priest as well as an annoying little girl who sadly escapes Kruna's wrath. It's good to see that Sergio was willing to tackle any genre at any time, but it wasn't so good that I had to see that he was so willing. Sergio's big gator movie turns out merely to be a big crock.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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