The late ’90s and ’00s were a weird forgotten golden age for crocodile and alligator horror flicks. The best were in two series: You had Steve Miner’s “Lake Placid” in 1999, Tobe Hooper’s “Crocodile” in 2000, Gary Johnson’s follow up “Crocodile 2” in 2002 and the Todd Hurvitz/Howie Miller collaboration “Lake Placid 2” in 2007. Those movies used varying degrees of camp, jump scares, gore and quirky characters to entertain you while following the basic creature feature formula (namely, creatures eating people). They fell into the evil reptile sub-genre of horror also occupied by the likes of the “Anaconda” series (1997-2009), but they specialized in gators and crocs. Aside from these four, and the one I’m discussing here, none of the others from the period are worthy of being mentioned.
“Croc,” which was released directly to television in 2007, is best known for being directed by Stewart Raffill, who helmed two campy so-bad-they’re-good classics: “Mac and Me” in 1988, a cheesy “E.T.” knock-off with grotesquely pushy product placement for McDonald’s, and “Tammy and the T-Rex” in 1994, which is surprisingly good as a tongue-in-cheek high concept sci-fi romcom vehicle for young stars Paul Walker and Denise Richards.
As it turns out, this means Raffill is uniquely suited to tell a decent drive-thru evil crocodile story. “Croc” is a straightforward genre picture more than its sillier predecessors — either Raffill’s or within the genre of that period — but it still brings on the fun by having a charmingly laid-back cast of main characters, hateable antagonists and decent crocodile-related scares. Raffill’s movie knows that it isn’t a masterpiece and settles on being a good way to pass an afternoon.
The protagonist is an American hippie named Jack McQuade (Peter Tuinstra) who owns a zoo in Thailand, where he focuses and dotes on his star crocodiles. Business would be good if not for the sinister machinations of a rival zoo that has both government and organized crime connections. Yet McQuade’s business problems wrap themselves up real fast when a 20-foot ancient crocodile coincidentally starts terrorizing his community. Gore is splattered and the body count adds up as McQuade and a low-rent Captain Ahab figure (Michael Madsen) team up to stop the reptilian baddie.
It’s a pleasant little grisly tale, if you’re into that sort of thing. It is never boring, but hardly memorable. The title tells you that it will be a killer crocodile movie, and that’s exactly what it is — and not one thing more.
The best of the gator/croc films came more than a decade after the last of the ’90s/’00s golden age — 2019’s “Crawl” by Alexandre Aja. Compare “Croc” to “Crawl,” and it comes up far short. “Crawl” is a genuinely scary movie, with top notch special effects and truly great character performances. It doesn’t need to lean on camp. “Croc” is aware of its limitations and goes for camp to compensate for the inferior quality. It is no “Crawl,” but if you want to enjoy a brainless natural horror film, it is silly enough to work on its own terms.