Movies: Lowering the BAR.

There's a lot to recommend Sergio Martino's 1979 croc-attack flick, currently circulating about the states under the species-dubious title The Big Alligator River. Unfortunately, the star of the film, the titular "big alligator" isn't one of them. By turns interesting and awful, BAR is an almost textbooks example of what's so fascinating and frustrating about Euro-schlock genre cinema. An admitted rip off the legendary US blockbuster Jaws, Martino and his screenwriters managed to pack into their allusive work notable and meaty references not only to Spielberg's shark-attack masterpiece, but also to the ur-text of nature revenge films: King Kong. The whole thing is topped off with a nice anti-colonial theme that, if perhaps a bit tangled, is played straight and earnest enough to dispel any doubts about the filmmakers' sincerity. Martino's handles actors well, shows a considerable amount of style behind the camera and in the editing room, and has a knack for the sort of efficient pointillist characterization needed in large ensemble action-heavy flicks.

That said, he also seems perfectly happy to build his movie around some of the worst special effect seen this side of an Ed Wood film, smoothers his films with an awful sub-porn grade Italio-funk score, edits some of his movie with a butcher knife woefully in need of sharpening, and seems utterly tone deaf when it comes to shifting gears between different emotional registers.

The plot, while predictable, is handled nimbly enough that it never feels like a grind. Daniel, a NYC commercial photographer, and Bait, pro model and victim, are hired by Mr. Bad Idea. Mr. Idea is developing Paradise House, a tropic resort in the jungles of Africa (played gamely by Sri Lanka). Mr. Idea is hoping that Daniel and Bait can develop a photo ad campaign based on the resort's raw natural beauty and Bait's hot bod. Daniel and Bait are introduced to Thug, Mr. Idea's bully/overseer, and Ali, the resort's resident customer service manager and anthropologist.

At first, the whole think looks like paid vacation, but then Bait sneaks off with a local man and breaks a regional taboo by getting her freak on during the full moon. For this no-no, an ancient river god appears in the toothy form of a gianormous crocogator-thingy to make quick work of Bait and her summer fling. This scene is interesting in that it complicates the otherwise simple anti-colonial theme of the piece. Though very little is made of it, the incident that kicks of all this crocogator-driven bloodshed is not actually and example of white's exploiting Africans (or semi-blackfaced Sri Lankans, in this case). Rather, it's a local man and an imported African American woman trying to get a little nookie on a verboten night. The local tribe interprets the return of the big lizard as a sign that they shouldn't have befriended the white and now must chase them off. The whites interpret the whole thing as either a symbol of their own arrogance or the native's inherent tendency toward irrational violence. Either way, the mounting violence that follows is, on both sides, the result of ignorance and poor communication. Because the rest of the film leaves this complication unexamined, I'm not sure if this view of colonialism as a communal tragedy of errors is intentional or subtle. Either way, it's what ended up on film and it's neat to ponder.


Timed as it is with the sudden mass desertion of the resort by the native workers and the discovery of a mauled canoe, Daniel suspects there's something sinister. He's given to insights like that. It's a natural outgrowth of being a photographer – professional observer, don't you know. He explains his concerns to Mr. Bad Idea, who dismisses because Amity, as you know, means friendship. Um . . . I mean, because guests are arriving for the resort's initial season and the last thing Paradise House needs is Daniel's patently absurd paranoid fantasies of some sort of crazed native uprising/crocogator bloodbath harshing the mellow.

Daniel and Ali decide to investigate by themselves. Not only do they discover that the natives blame the palefaces for the return of their vicious river god, they discover a Ben Gunn-ish missionary who can confirm the monster beastie's existence.

All this build's up to a climax that owes more to Poe's Masque of the Red Death - with a lavish nighttime hotel party that turns into a slaughter on both river and shore – than Jaws.

As far as big toothy water reptile stories go, BAR has everything you need and a little more. Like the Corman-produced, Sayles-scripted Alligator, it even uses its somewhat silly genre premise to lightly evoke some welcome social themes.

What it utterly lacks is a nice crocogator. Crocogator flicks, which I fancy I've seen more than a few of, live or die by the pleasure their scaly protagonists can provide. Viewers don't necessarily need the most realistic monsters, but the do need the monster to thrill them. The ballyhooed "alligator" of the title is a travesty. In the model shots, the crocogator is played by what appears to be a small rubber gator, the kind you can find being sold for a buck or so in museum and zoo gift shops. While its tail leisurely sways back and forth as it swims, the rest of its body is completely immobile. Its legs are perpetually looked in a bent standing position (NB: though the beast is in standing position, the film avoids ever showing it on land – the technical problems involved be well beyond the budget/ingenuity of the filmmakers) and it's mouth hangs open like a scoop. In the non-model shots, the crocogator appears as a static mouth and back unit. The tail, which turns out to be prehensile, flails about on its own; we get no shots ever showing it connected to the rest of the animal. Even by the admittedly low standards of the crocogator horror/action genre, this fails it hard.

Generous souls will, perhaps, want to give Martino the benefit of doubt. The film's last scene involves a stagey wink meant to punctuate an in-film joke. Maybe, the kindly viewer might propose, the wink telegraphs to the viewer that this whole thing has been a spoof. Perhaps, instead of rip-offing Jaws, the film was actually a send-up of the American big fish rampage flick. There's not much evidence of this in the flick. The crocogator attack scenes are staged grimly – if poorly – as opposed to the occasional tongue-in-cheek set pieces in Alligator. Furthermore, there's little in the "making of" featurette available on the No Shame Cinema (and there's you're problem, you should have some) disk that Martino is anything other than impressed with his lame monster. Still, a layer of ironic detachment would have gone a long way here and if the viewer wants to add it in the post-post-production phase, it can't hurt.

Another way to view it would be to suggest that it's a sort of experimental giant crocogator flick created with the goal of making a giant crocogator film that foregrounds everything except the monster that's central to the subgenre. Evidence is scarce for this interpretation too. But, personally, that's how I choose to redeem the film.

Now let's never mention The Big Alligator River again.

Movies: "Eh, I'm sure the first-class passengers are fine."

The Netflix copy that appears on the white slip pocket for Crocodile 2: Death Swamp (a.k.a. Crocodile 2: Death Roll for you Brits who, I guess, don't enjoy films with "swamp" in their title) ends with the following comparison: "Think a scaly Jaws."

This comparison isn't totally inapt, though the Jaws they're thinking of is Jaws 3.

C2: DS or R is a unconnected follow-up to Crocodile, the 2000 straight-to-video data point on Tobe Hooper's long downward spiral from legendary horror director to guy-who-makes-stuff-like-Crocodile. The only link between the two films is the presence of the titular reptiles. So, if you thought that all the nagging questions that Crocodile left you with were going to finally receive the answers that viewers demanded, you are going to be sorely disappointed.

Even if you didn't want those answers, don't get smug – you're going to be sorely disappointed too.

C2: DS or R starts off as a heist flick. A group of four bank-robbers roll a small southwestern bank only to have their "carefully planned" heist go all Wild Bunch on them when police arrive at the party early. The robbers blast their way out and – cut – make it to the airport where they board a plane for Mexico. Joining them on this flight are several supporting characters, including two stews (the smart one and the panicky one who, improbably, is afraid of flying), the winner of a trivia bowl contest on his prize trip, the plane's pilot, a nurse, and an ambulance chasing lawyer.

To round out the cast, we are also introduced to the smart stew's fiancée, who is waiting for her in Mexico.

The flight takes off and encounters some nasty weather (weather so bad, in fact, that it actually changes the configuration of the plane they're flying in). The captain is told to turn his crate around and notifies the passengers and crew of this development. This doesn't sit well with our criminals and they seize the plane and force the captain to fly on. Like their bank-robbery plan, this doesn't go so well either. Some gunplay in the cabin dooms the flight and they crash down in a vast and trackless swamp. On impact, the first class cabin actually sheers off the economy-section, which then promptly explodes. (Didn't you always suspect that's what happens when a plane goes down? The cheap seats just blow up and the first class folks get to walk away?) This leaves our tiny cast stranded in the swamp.

Meanwhile, Smartie's fiancée hires a tracker he randomly encounters in a bar to track the missing plane down. He does this instead of going to the authorities because the Mexican government seems profoundly unconcerned about searching for downed airliners. This is, I believe, a sad reality of life south of the boarder. Hundreds of thousands of passenger jets go down in Mexico every year, but the Mexican government's attitude is, "Eh, I'm sure the first-class passengers are fine."

We should pause here because there's a noticeable shift in the flick. The set-up of C2: DS or R is, curiously, a very different flick from what follows. The robbery and botched escape gives Gary Jones the chance to play with some 70s grindhouse-era elements, from the clunky title fonts to the use of split screen. And, to his credit, he uses these retro visuals confidently. In fact, his evocation of the cheapie exploitation aesthetic is, in some ways, more sincere and genuine than the ironic, winking, non-committal efforts of a flick like Grindhouse. The former is genuinely a cheap effort to make something visually appealing, the latter is sort of a Disney version: enough to make you feel you're there without making you suffer through any of the downsides of the real experience. That said, Grindhouse is, of course, better if only because a believable recreation of crap is, for all intents and purposes, crap.

After we've stranded our croc-bait in an environment with suitable waist deep water, the flicks visuals calm down and what we get is a fairly by the numbers body count flick, given a slight spin by the group's robber/hostage dynamic. Shortly after crash down, the group is attacked - and partially devoured - by an outsized croc. The robbers promptly dispatch it and then make the unarmed survivors mule their loot through the swamp. But the robbers never counted on the powerful maternal instincts of the common North American crocodile. On finding her baby dispatched, Momma Croc's heart turns black and only bloodshed will quench her thirst for revenge! This emotional dynamic is common is many large aquatic predators. It is not only common in crocs (Crocodile) but great white sharks as well (Jaws 3).

As Momma Croc begins to pick off the cast one by one, Fiancée and tracker attempt a rescue. But will it be too late to our stranded hostages?

Yeah. For most of them.

Oh. Wait. I meant to leave that a cliffhanger.

Regular readers of ANTSS know that I'll pretty much watch anything with a giant alligator or crocodile in it. Tell me that you've got a flick in which a giant croc lurks in the potted plants of a bowling alley and preys on the wacky regulars of league night - the plot of the Mario Bava 1975 classic Beyond the Crystal Door of the Torture Chamber of Professor Blood Madness, L.L.D., 2: Dark Whispers in the Tomb of the Laughing Tears (a.k.a. Scream, Terry, Scream) – and I'll go along, despite my better judgment. This flick, while pretty much on par with the previous installment in the "series," pushes the limits of even my utterly uncritical indulgence. If you're a normal human with a perfect healthy lack of interest in the revenge fantasies of postpartum mother crocodiles, there's really little of interest for you here.

Movies: Don't be taken in by his evil grin.

In the interest of full-disclosure, Screamers and Screamettes, there's something I need to confess before we get to the review of Rogue, Greg Mclean's 2007 follow-up to his Dundee-ate-my-slasher-flick Wolf Creek. The confession goes like this: If you want a good review from ANTSS, then put a man-eatin' alligator or crocodile in your flick. That's all it takes.

Shameful really.

I'd like to tell you I demand innovative visuals, solid and involving story-telling, and a deft directorial hand.

But that would be a lie. Sure, I dig all that stuff. But if you want to guarantee a five-star, two thumbs up, whoopjamboreehoo wonder review, then all you need to do is put a big toothy amphibious lizard in your flick.

Why? I don't know. Why does anybody like anything? The heart wants what the heart wants.

Anyway, so publicly recognizing that I may have no critical distance on Rogue whatsoever, let's get on with the review.

Rogue represents the third flick ANTSS has reviewed from that most wonderful of croco-gator-centric film subgenres: the crocodile horror film loosely based on actual events. The first, Primeval, involved a fictional new crew's efforts to capture Gustave, a real-life giant African killer croc. The second, Black Water, was loosely based on the story of an Austrailan man who was chased up a tree by a couple of saltwater crocs. Rogue comes with its very own real world inspiration (though it is more Primeval than Black Water in its relationship to its source). Rogue was inspired by a saltwater croc named, of all things, Sweetheart. Back in the late 70s, Sweetheart, a 5-meter long beastie who weighed in at a ton and some change, got territorial about a popular fishing hole. Though crocs don't tend to attack boats, Sweetheart put the chomp on several fishing boats, actually sinking more than one. From that humble tale, the mighty beast of Rogue sprang forth.

The plot is simple. A sampler box of Euro and American tourists load on to a river tour boat. After some nicely shot nature footage and some efficient characterization, the tour group turns to head home. But before the group can get back to civilization, the group spots a signal flare and goes to in search of the distressed boat. What they find, of course, is a sunken boat and one really big freakin' crocodile. The boat is sunk, the tourists find themselves on a slowly shrinking tidal river island, and the chomp-chomp-chomp ensues.

In contrast to Wolf Creek, which exploited the gritty feel of digital to harken back to the low-fi aesthetics of '70s flicks, Rogue is shoots for high-gloss, effect heavy, big blockbuster, epic feel. This isn't another Aussie Chainsaw Massacre; this flick wants to be Oz's Jaws. Despite the new, slick packaging, some of Mclean's visual touches carry over. Most notably, Rogue is served up with a heaping side of the lyrical natural Romanticism that seems to be a sort of shared national trademark among Australian horror filmmakers. Thematically, Mclean also lightly revisits the urban versus rural man thing that was the core of Wolf Creek, though here it plays out as a series of fairly harmless bit of character development. Mclean also backs up from the gore factor. Though the body count is actually higher in this film, much of the violence is of a chomp-and-vanish nature.

The cast is willing and able; though, after some initial interaction, they're not given a whole lot to do other than play out a handful of classic crisis-film archetypes (he's the doubter, she's the crying one, he's the one who hopes to make up for past failure) and scream a lot.

Like the shark in Jaws, Mclean keeps his croc off screen for as long as he can. This is, by now, standard operating procedure for any monster-in-water flick. When the beast finally does appear, it looks fine. It is much better looking than, say, a Sci-Fi Channel original, but it still looks rather odd next to the actual crocs used in Black Water.

So, where does Rogue fall in the croc-flick spectrum? Rogue is a polished, expertly handled creature feature. Like a solid pop song, its pleasures are satisfying, if somewhat narrow in scope. I'm going to slide it under the grim and haunting Black Water, but above the uneven and politically awkward Primeval.

A MOMENT FOR THE BLOGGERS:

"A Moment for the Bloggers" is an irregularly regular feature on ANTSS where I, your humble horror host, tries to share a little nugget of wisdom about bloggin'.

Here's today's helpful hint. When you don't like a flick, don't give into to your impulse to prove you're smarter than the filmmakers by questioning the "realism" of their flick. You know what I mean: questioning how a flick's spaceships would work or whether it makes any sense that zombies would walk a certain way or whatever. This isn't because filmmakers aren't capable of committing howlingly stupid blunders. Believe me, they are. It's because the moment you do this, you inevitably say something that reveals you own ignorance. It can't be avoided. It is, like the speed of light or the coolness of Mexican wrestlers' masks, one of the constants that form the infrastructure of the universe.

Let's talk cases. While looking for images of Rogue's poster, I came across a review that hated, hated, hated Rogue. But instead of simply saying that they found the CGI croc unconvincing, they had to start ranting on about how filmmakers use crocs because they can always "fudge a meter here or there" and make their crocs unrealistically large and threatening. In fact, the beastie in Rogue measures a consistent 7.5 meters. While large – the average is about 5 meters – it isn't unheard of. It's even a whole meter smaller than the largest on record. According to National Geographic, the biggest saltwater croc ever caught was slightly more than 8.5 meters long. So, while Mr. Can't-Be-Bothered-to-Google ranted about the intellectual laziness of Mclean et al, he really just revealed that, unlike the filmmakers who labored months and months to get their flick in the can, he couldn't be bothered to do even the minimal amount of research needed to write a blog post that was free of grotesquely smug stupidity.

Take away: Be careful when disparaging the work of others. You don't want to sound like a pompous and ignorant jackass.

Movies: Why are Aussie vacations so darn dangerous?

In a perfect world, Netflix would be able to point you to just about any genre you could think up. No matter how obscure, idiosyncratic, or otherwise uninformative.

For example, one of my co-workers likes watching flicks that feature boarding schools. I don't know why. She didn't go to a boarding school. She doesn't have any kids, let alone any that go to a boarding school. I put it down to her being originally from Massachusetts. But, whatever the reason, she should be able to find movies by asking for "semi-twee boarding school movies." She'd maybe get Dead Poets Society, the History Boys, Cider House Rules, The Emperors Club, and so on. The "semi-twee" would spare her such flicks as Boarding School, the early '80s German sex farce (?), that would come up in a straight out keyword search, but doesn't really have the vaguely gay, emotionally-crippled, school tie aesthetic she's specializing in.

I bring this up because, on this dream Netflix, a search for "monster crocodile flicks based on true stories" would yield you at least two hits: Primeval and Black Water. It's a genre waiting to explode. With a little attention from filmmakers, I think "monster crocodile flicks based on true stories" could be the next "J-horror remakes."

We've already covered Primeval, so today we look at Black Water.

Like the former film, the latter, a small-scale 2008 Aussie creature feature, is based on a true story.

The Real Story

In 2007, an Australian cattle rancher named David George was tossed from his horse. He suffered a blow to the head. In a dazed and semi-concussed state, Georges recovered his horse and mounted up in the hopes that the horse would instinctively ride home.

Instead, the horse lead Georges in an isolated mangrove swamp in the Cape York region. Worse, while staggering about, Georges's horse disturbed a crocodile nest, royally pissing off the resident crocs and their touchy friends.

To escape the enraged lizards, Georges abandoned his horse and quickly scrambled up a mangrove tree. The horse was eaten. The crocs kept Georges treed for an entire week. So he wouldn't fall out of the tree in his weakened state, Georges tied himself to the trunk. Georges later told reporters "Every night I was stalked by two crocs who would sit at the bottom of the tree staring up at me. All I could see was two sets of red eyes below me and all night I had to listen to a big bull croc bellowing a bit further out. I’d yell out at them, ‘I’m not falling out of this tree for you bastards’.”

Eventually, Georges was found and rescued by a helicopter crew who had to drop a rope to him and lift him out of the croc-infested area.

The Film

Despite having a real story as inspiration, Black Water most resembles not the misadventures of David Georges, but rather another recent Aussie flick (itself "based on true story"). Like Wolf Creek, the film follows three young folks on a vacation gone awry. Even the gender mix is the same: two girls, one guy. There's the road movie aspect and the slow-build into that follows our trio through a tourist trap or two. Two of Wolf Creek's minor themes even pop up again: the lush beauty of nature and class of a modern, urban, educated Australia with its much mythologized, wild, primitive fringe. But, instead of a psycho-version of Crocodile Dundee, we get an actual croc filling the role of stalker.

Our film opens with a trio of young vacationers – sisters Grace and Lee, and Grace's boyfriend Adam – saying goodbye to Grace and Lee's mom. We quickly establish that Adam's an office drone, Grace is preggers (but Adam doesn't know), and Lee is the baby of the group. Unlike Wolf Creek, this film doesn't spend a lot of time getting to know these guys. They are meant to be almost generic Everymen and Women. All we need to know about them is that they're essentially nice folks. After a montage scene in a croc farm and a short bar scene in which our heroes decide to take a river tour, we've got our principles in a little motorboat and headed into the mangrove swamp.

Before you can "chunder on a bunyip's budgie smuggler" (as the Australians say), a particularly mean-spirited croc tips over the boat and gobbles-up the guide.

Our lucky threesome scrambles up the nearest mangrove tree. Temporarily safe, the trio assesses their options. They can make a mad lunge for the boat, which floats tantalizingly close to the base of their tree. They can try to use the tangle of mangroves to get free. By hopping from tree to tree, mayhaps they can stay high and dry while reaching terra firma. Or, of course, they can wait for a rescue that may well not be coming. And all the while, as they debate, small splashes and water ripples let them know that the killer croc.

The script is tight and effective. Many Interweb critic-types have opined that the idea of watching three folks get stuck up a tree is tedious. This does the clever script, which makes the most out of a minimal cast and a villain that, Jaws-like, you almost never see, a serious injustice. The characters, while not much deeper than the waist-high swamp water that surrounds them, feel real enough to give the danger their facing some traction. You don't love these poor vacationers, but you don't very well want to see them get torn apart by a crocodile. After a slight drag, necessary to rule out the "let's just sit here" plan, the movie moves on at a nice clip, with our heroes trying outsmart the sinister, seemingly omnipresent croc, or a "pash nut out larrikin" (as the Australians say).

The film looks good. Like Wolf Creek, Black Water is strangely romantic about the natural landscape. The details of the mangrove swamp – from close-ups of its less sinister fauna to cut shots of the way light plays on the swamps inky black water – are loving shot. When I was watching Wolf Creek, I ascribed this to the fact that the filmmaker was a painter prior to picking up the camera. Now I'm thinking that we might be seeing some national tag. Regardless of the origins of this trend, it makes for some odd juxtapositions. Imagine, for example, if somebody shot a Friday the 13th film and was determine to not only kill off campers, but shoot Crystal Lake itself as a beautiful place. It leads to a sort terrible sublime sense of things: nature is overpowering in simultaneously good and bad ways.

The croc, actually played by several different veteran crocodile actors, usually looks great. There's a couple of shots were I think we're dealing with super-imposed images and the result is clunky. I respect the impulse to work with real beasties over CGI or animatronics, but the results occasionally look worse. Gore effects are minimal. For a croc attack pic, it's quite restrained. The film emphasizes tension and suspense over the horror of bloodletting.

In the limited genre of "monster crocodile flicks based on true stories," Black Water towers above the competition. Opening it up to the broader, "alligator/croc rampage" sub-genre and I'd say that Black Water probably ranks in the top ten. As a horror flick in general, I'd say Black Water holds it own. I'd recommend it next time you "come to raw prawn some shonky trackie daks" (as the Australians say).

Movies: What a croc.

Welcome screamers and screamettes. Today your humble horror host gives you yet another reason to never venture into the developing world. We covered the hazards man-eating plants pose. Today we discuss the real and imagined dangers posed by giant crocodiles.

At the heart of Michael Katleman's 2005's giant crocodile flick Primeval is a genuine monster story: the story of the real Gustave.

The Real Story

Reports of the real Gustave began to surface in 1998. At first, they seemed incredible. Fishmen who made their living freediving in Burundi's Lake Tanganyika reported that several of their number had been devoured by a giant crocodile. They claimed this beast would show up every few years, kill several humans, and then vanish again for several years.

In 1999, French ex-pat naturalist Patrice Faye identified the giant croc. The creature was enormous: it measured about 20 feet in length and weighed a ton (making the animal about twice the size of the average adult male crocodile). The average male crocodile lives on 45 years, but Faye estimated that this animal was at least 65 years old. The animal had numerous scars from small arms fire. In one reported incident, soldiers fired AK-47s at the crocodile as he dragged down a 15-year-old student. The croc didn't seem phased by the weapons and, in the words of one of the soldiers, "swallowed the bullets."

Faye dubbed the beast "Gustave."

Park records of the animal's frequent disappearances from it "home" in the Rusizi National Park showed a correlation between this croc's absences and numerous fatal crocodile attacks along the Rusizi River. Combining park records and the reports of locals, Faye estimated the killer croc might have claimed as many as 300 victims. Controversially, Fay suggested that Gustave was not attacking humans for food. Crocodiles are not gluttonous eaters by nature. After one large kill, a single croc might not eat again for a month. By contrast, this beast would go on violent binges, attacking, in one instance, 17 human victims in the span of three months. In 2004, over the course of two bloody weeks, Gustave took five victims all within two days of each other. Faye's grim conclusion is that the animal kills for amusement.

In 2002, efforts were made to capture Gustave. A giant steel cage was built, but Gustave easily spotted and then foiled the trap. One year later, Gustave vanished. It was widely believed that he was killed by one of the heavily-armed rebel factions fighting in Burundi's off-again, on-again civil war.

In 2007, after a nearly four-year absence, Gustave appeared again. He attacked a group of fishermen, killing one of them. Since then, Gustave has been hunting the Rusizi.

The Fake Story

With such a horrific monster in the starring role, the saddest thing about Primeval is that it simply never catches fire. Despite it's truly horrific inspiration, the film never rises above the status of B-grade horror fluff. It takes the real croc, the real horrors of Burundi's civil war, and the template of the real effort to catch Gustave, and turns it all into a generic action flick with a big croc as just one of the many dangers our rag-tag team of jungle flick archetypes must deal with.

The film follows Tim, a reporter who is in the doghouse because 1) he seems incapable of buttoning most of the buttons on his shirt and 2) he just botched a story and libeled an important government official. As a make-good, he's assigned to hottie reporter Aviva and sent to Burundi to capture Gustave. Tagging along is Steve the cameraman, played as comic relief by former 7-Up pitchman Orlando Jones. Once in Burundi, our first world heroes meet up with the inevitable Great White Hunter and the naïve Ineffective Intellectual Scientist.

What follows is a pretty much by the numbers story of the hunters becoming the hunted as a semi-convincing CGI Gustave turns the tables on our heroes and begins snatching them up one by one. The croc doesn't look bad – though one of the least convincing scenes involving Gustave happens pretty early in the flick and this throws off the disbelief. Take a lesson from Jaws, kids: save the monster for the end.

Viewers are also treated to many of the standard Dark Continent Adventure plot points: there's a ritual dance by native shamans, the white woman gets sexually menaced by a savage African, somebody contrasts the beauty of the country with it brutality, and so on. The inherent racism of some of these tired stereotypes occasionally becomes weirdly explicit, as in a bizarre "joke" Orlando Jones makes about slavery being not so bad in as much as it got his people out of Africa. You might not find this stuff offensive, but I'll wager you won't find it particularly funny or interesting either.

This generic story template is given a slight tweak, however, by the introduction of a second, concurrent storyline involving murderous rebel soldiers and their mysterious leader: the bloodthirsty "Little Gustave." (As an aside, in real-life, the croc was named after the rebel leader and not the other way around.) Actually, it is in these scenes that the flick finds some of the petrol so missing elsewhere. Katleman is an able action director and his flick really snaps along when he pits his heroes against human protagonists rather than CGI monsters.

Primeval is a middle of the road flick. It is too solidly built not to deliver on a minimally sufficient level. If this thing showed up one lazy afternoon on cable, you probably wouldn't hate yourself for popping some popcorn and flopping down on the couch. But that's about as far as this flick is going to take you.