Krocodylus (2001)

A television producer, a camera chick & two surfers head to a distant island in the Philippines in order to make a documentary about "blood surfing", an extreme sport where the surfers throw blood into the water then surf in the midst of sharks. But after a good day's surfing, the group discover that something has destroyed their boat. They are then pursued by a monster saltwater crocodile that kills for fun & that is after them in a big way. Along with a group of pirates who patrol the island & a sea captain who is itching for a way to get revenge on the croc for ruining his life, the crew must find a way to escape the island & the croc's teeth.I really love killer crocodile films – my love for this under-appreciated subgenre stems from watching my late father's VHS copy of the Italian flick Killer Crocodile during my youth. That film was awesome to my nine-year-old eyes & even today it still gets me going. Ever since then, I've seen a number of similar films.Blood Surf is one of the millennium's first ever monster crocodile films – made in 2000 to be exact – and I first saw it on late night television. At the time, I thought it was pretty silly given the lack of a good script & some pretty mediocre visual effects (the crocodile looked pretty fake). Years later, I obtained a VHS copy of Blood Surf & decided to review it. Was my initial assessment of the film accurate? Well, yes & no.Blood Surf is a horror film for surfers. The heroes of the piece are a pair of dumb white-bread surfer dudes (& the top-ranking female is an Aussie camera chick), one of whom has an unhealthy love for his surfboard; the premise involves an extreme form of surfing – not content with killer waves, they hit upon the idea of surfing in shark-infested waters – and the film is filled with all manner of surfing dialogue & terminology. The film even goes so far as to acknowledge its inspiration – "What's the name of that killer shark movie?" one surfer asks; "Jaws". "There's no mechanical fish on this island." The film, in an attempt to reach out to the jaded teenage market, has a sex scene where one of the surfers has sex with who is later revealed to be an underage local girl (the scenes being intercut with the death of the girl's parents makes this a real mess of a scene). I wonder if anyone out there might be interested in actually making a real attempt at actually "blood surfing" (it would be a pretty wild ride, despite being an insane idea). This film's first act is quite good.But once the crocodile begins attacking, Blood Surf quickly falls into the tired Jaws templater that it was billed as. The visual effects are pretty poor – once the croc appears, you will know why they kept it hidden. The creature is simply a large animatronic croc that looks pretty badly designed (the crocodiles in the Killer Crocodile films looked much more convincing & those two films had a much lower budget than this one) & which is 'supplanted' by miniatures, bad CGI & stock footage. The inclusion of pirates into the film is a poor attempt at causing complications in the story & some of the croc attacks are so fake-looking that they will incite laughter in the audience.On the acting front, the cast do a reasonable effort at filling their roles but you'll still realise that their roles are nothing more than cardboard clichés. Most notable is the film's version of Quint – Duncan Regehr's character of John Dirks – who even dies the same way (getting bitten in half). Katie Fischer seems to be overdoing her native Aussie accent in an attempt to pander to the Americans in order to bring back memories of the Crocodile Dundee films. Director James D. R. Hickox, who is the brother of genre director Anthony Hickox (who made the likes of HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH & the Steven Seagal actioner SUBMERGED) gets a fair amount of mileage out of the surroundings & the underwater shots but doesn't seem to be as good a director as his brother (who himself is only a passable director at best), making piecemeal out of what should have been a reasonable monster flick. Still, it's not a total loss & the story will make many Jaws fans laugh their heads off.

Sometimes I rest my head and think about the reasons why movies about killer sharks and/or crocodiles are still getting made these days. They've been making these lame "Jaws"-copies since the 70s, it's not like they're getting any more well-liked. The idea is still exactly the same. So we have an animal that starts murdering people. First it takes down some secondary characters, then it starts attacking the main characters, usually played by a couple of nobodies except for someone who used to be a bit more famous, who usually plays a specialist. One of the main characters usually dies before the others kill the animal somehow, usually with an explosion. Then, we usually get a last shot where we see that the animal is still alive, or has laid eggs, etc. etc. "Krocodylus" basically uses the same overused ideas, and does absolutely nothing to create even a tad bit of variation. Unless you count the fact that the "specialist" is a captain in this one variation, in that case your standards are pretty low. It's funny that he's played by Duncan Regehr though, he like totally used to be Zorro.Hell I'll give it a bonus point for that.

A Movie about a bunch of some kind of filmmakers, who want to make a documentary on a new kind of surfing in shark-infested waters. As an absolute fan of movies including some kind of vicious animals or monsters, I thought this might be my kind of movie... it wasn't!!! This should be more of a guideline of how not to do it! It has a lot of accidental humor in it and the evil beast is an incredible joke, in the final scene it goes after the main characters *rolling*, the feet are obviously waving in the air! It looks ridiculous! Good for a laugh though. If it were only for the lack of talent between the actors, the embarrassingly stupid dialogs and the hilariously stupid crocodile, it would be at least worth a laugh, but it gets worse: I'd guess, the people in charge of this movie noticed how weak it was, so they though up the old idea of "sex sells"... Totally, i mean TOTALLY without any reasons one of the main actresses shows her breasts to the beast. And somewhere towards the beginning there's some kind of meaningless "makeout". This is the last ingredient making the movie absolute trash to me. It's incredible how people actually spend time producing such rubbish! If you are seeking for a real waste of time: watch this movie!!!

An MTV-style film crew consisting of American T.V. programme producer Zack Zardine (Matt Borlenghi) his camerawoman, the Australian Cecily (Kate Fisher) and two surfer 'dudes' named Bog Hall (Dax Miller) and Jeremy (Joel West) arrive on some nice looking island somewhere, it's not actually revealed where. The crew plan to shoot an expose on 'bloodsurfing' which is apparently the latest craze in extreme sports. Surfers throw bait into the sea and cut themselves to attract sharks, just to see if they can out-surf them without being eaten. Once there they are greeted by Sonny Lofranco (Cris Vertido) and his wife Melba (Susan Africa). Their search for the perfect location leads them to the shark infested waters of Lilo-Cay. Sonny, Melba and their daughter Lemmya (Maureen Larrazabal) take them in their boat. Soon after arriving and having already shot some 'bloodsurfing' footage Sonny, Melba and Lemmya are all killed by a 30 foot saltwater crocodile that some say 'owns' the island. The boat is sunk. Zack, Cecily, Bog and Jeremy appear stuck on the island until such time a rescue party arrives. However, after a run in with some, erm well I don't really know what they are. Pirates? Drug smugglers? Revolutionairies? Fat ugly people who just don't like being with other people? Who knows? And more importantly who cares? Not me that's for sure. Anyway, after escaping from these guys who look like pirates, they are picked up just off the coast of the island by Captain John Dirks (Duncan Regehr) and his girl Arty (Taryn Reif as Tara Reif). The film crew believe they have been saved. Little do they know that the crocodile and Captain Dirks go way back and he has a score to settle and four members of a film crew aren't going to stop him. Captain Dirks heads back to Lilo-Cay for a final showdown with the giant man-eating crocodile.Directed by James D.R. Hickox this is one awful film, but it's still not as bad as Tobe Hoopers Crocodile (2000). Everything about this film sucks. The script by Sam Bernard and Robert L.Levy is terrible, extremely slow as the crocodile isn't even seen or mentioned before the 30 minute mark and by that time I was seriously bored and annoyed with the hideously unlikeable characters thought up by Bernard and Levy. The whole film is also frustratingly predictable as well, within the first 10 minutes anyone familiar with horror film stereotypes and stock characters will be able to guess who dies and who will survive. The crocodile effects are awful and seem to be repeated over and over, there is a small puppet head that obviously has someones arm stuck inside it controlling it's movements as the water splashes become huge! The CGI shots of the crocodile are just plain embarrassing to watch. There is no gore apart from when a character is bitten in half which is achieved using CGI to digitally remove the actors legs, again it looks terrible. There is also a brief scene when someone is impaled on wooden spikes when they set a trap off. There is a reasonable amount of nudity and sex, plus the female actresses are nice and easy on the eye. There are basic continuity and logical errors in the film too, in one sequence Cecily is filming Bog and Jeremy 'bloodsurfing' but from the angle and distance she is at it would be physically impossible to obtain footage of both the sharks and surfers at the same time, and surely that is the whole point of her shot? When Dirks manages to harpoon the crocodile the angle of the wire changes dramatically between shots, in one shot the angle of the line looks like it's coming from the sky, in the shot straight after the angle is completely different and it seems as if the line is coming from below the surface of the water when in actual fact the harpoon is attached to the back of the boat and the line should be almost level with the surface. I could carry on, like why does the crocodile jump off the edge of a cliff if it's so smart as this film tries to make out? But I would probably exceed the 1000 word limit if I listed everything that was wrong with this film, so I won't. I hated this film, but rather scarily it's still not as bad as Tobe Hoopers effort at a giant crocodile film. Definitely one to avoid.