Not to be confused with Tobe Hooper’s 2000 creature feature of the same name, the 1979 Crocodile is a Filipino export that never would have seen these shores, if not for the monster success of Jaws prompting every huckster with access to a camera to cash in quickly. It’s all your fault, Mr. Spielberg.
Swiped from the Godzilla template (right down to the atomic-testing angle), the wafer of a story has a giant crocodile wreaking havoc as it flattens a different beach community every three days on the dot. One of its first victims is the young daughter of a doctor (Nard Poowanai), prompting the kind of personal revenge in direct opposition of the Hippocratic Oath. When sharing the screen with live humans, most of what audiences see of our reptilian villain are close-ups of a blinking eye and, rarer, close-ups of chomping jaws … with the wire that makes it work in clear view.
One character exclaims, “He destroyed an entire village as if were a toy!” (Because that’s more or less what the to-be-demolished sets are: models.) Continues the man, “Our crocodile is a mutant! By god, a mutant!”
And by god, is this film wretched! Testing the definition of “watchable,” director Sompote Sands (Magic Lizard) mattress-pads the running time with so many emergency sirens, so many typhoons, so many upturned docks, so much context-challenged stock footage and not enough of the extras who clearly have filled their cheeks with stage blood, ready to spit it out when told. Lord knows shameless producers Dick Randall (Pieces) and Herman Cohen (The Headless Ghost) had their hands in some real turds throughout their careers, but Crocodile — their only project together — is a mile-high Pinoy pile of it. —Rod Lott