Main cast: Mark McLachlan (Brady Turner), Caitlin Martin (Claire), Chris Solari (Duncan McKay), DW Reiser (Kit), Julie Mintz (Annabelle), Sommer Knight (Sunny), Rhett Jordan (Foster), Greg Wayne (Hubs), Harrison Young (Sheriff Bowman), Terrence Evans (Shurkin), R Vern Crofoot (Harvey), Larry Udy (Arnold), and Adam Redmond (Lester)
Director: Tobe Hooper
This laughably bad movie has it all: fake-looking computer generated monster, obviously fake rubbery crocodile monster that actually swallows its prey, and acting so wooden that I soon suspect that the crocodile isn’t the only thing that is generated by computers in this movie.
This silly tale is about a bunch of high school kids bickering over the typical matters of jealousy and sex when a 25-foot crocodile gets angry because they mess with her eggs. Moral: you don’t mess with anybody’s eggs, period. The crocodile actually forces their boat to drift off to some remote area of the swamp and then eat them all one by one as these idiots flee on foot along the marshy area. There are scenery chewing by some secondary characters with really annoying tics and effected speech defects.
The young cast are appropriately pretty and decked out in revealing outfits. Heck, Mark McLachlan has his muscle shirt artfully sprinkled wet around his chest all the time like some bad audition to be a Teen Beat centerfold. He is unfortunately so atrociously wooden that compared to him, a dead tree falling to the ground gives an Oscar-worthy performance. The heroine Claire, who is as usual the smart one, is the only one who seems remotely human in this movie.
Just to drive home how stupid this movie is, the kids’ bright idea for a grand fight with Bad Mr Croc here is to whack its head with puny little twigs. You read that right. Twigs.
Tobe Hooper is the guy behind the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but I think he has just taken the chainsaw to his own career with this really horrible and laughable piece of bad comedy. It’s a hoot to watch, but seriously, it’s not that bad enough to be fun. It’s just bad. And for a movie by the once-great director, it’s also sad.
