Film Review: LAKE PLACID: THE FINAL CHAPTER (2012)

Actress Yancy Butler returns to battle giant man-eating crocodiles in Lake Placid: The Final Chapter (2012).  Having survived the ordeal of her previous encounter at the infamous lake, Reba (Butler) is now settled with Sheriff Giove (Elisabeth Rohm) with the protection of her town by barricading the growing population of crocodiles from the rest of the world with an electric fence.  Reba would rather just kill them all but it seems that they are now an endangered species and protected from being hunted.  This does not stop big game hunter Jim Bickerman (Robert England) or his group of men who plan to break into the barricaded area in order to steal the valuable eggs of the crocodiles.  When Bickerman’s men accidentally leave the gate to the quarantined area open an school bus of lost and unsuspecting teenagers find their way to the beach where they are the meal of the day for a swarm of crocodiles starving for food. 

It’s great to see Butler back as Reba as she has grown into the roll with her no nonsense attitude towards her job of both protecting the endangered crocodiles and wanting to kill them all.  She has a lot of fun in the roll and every time she’s on the screen she cracks and sizzles.  Rohm is the more subdued of the two and isn’t given as much room to have any fun but she does play the typical mother whose daughter is one of the bus load of teenagers trapped behind enemy lines.  It is England who truly outshines them all as Bickerman a relative of Betty White’s Delores Bickerman from the original 1999 film (so a nice nod there).  He is given free rein to have as much fun as he can in a film that saddled with mediocre CGI crocodile VFX.

The film is written by David Reed (who also wrote Part 3) and directed by Don Michael Paul.  This is a film that knows it’s the fourth film in an ever going franchise of diminishing results (and for those of you counting there is a Lake Placid Vs. Anaconda film on the horizon for this year).  This is not meant to be a good film but I give it points for bringing in some impressive stars and letting them have fun with the mediocre material because if they’re having fun we’re all having fun (and if you make it into a drinking game it’s even more fun).

Film Review: DINOCROC (2004)

The sci-fi horror genre is plagued with bad mutated monsters and thus far hidden creatures of lore that have finally surfaced to wreak havoc on a group of unsuspecting individuals.  Dinocroc (2004) is one of these films as well as the debut film of director Kevin O’Neill who has made a career in the visual effects field on such films as Spiders (2000), Feast (2005), Pulse (2006) and Piranha (2010), to name a few.

Written by Dan Acre with Francis Doel and John Huckert this film tells of a corporation who discovers the DNA of an dinosaur ancestor of the Africa crocodile.  They use the DNA to resurrect the dinocroc and it escapes the lab wreaking havoc on the nearby community.  County dog catcher Diane Harper (Jane Longenecker) and Tom Banning (Matthew Borlenghi) get entangled in the search for the escaped creature when Tom’s brother goes missing and now he must try to find his brother before it is too late.  In order to safeguard their experiment  the scientists who created the creature send in a crocodile expert by the name of Dick Sydney (Costas Mandylor).

The film has a few choice moments and is entertaining in parts but like most films of this kind it offers little new and feels like a retread of better films.  At least Longenecker and Borlenghi have a good enough rapport with one another to keep the romantic sub plot moving forward and Mandylor adds a welcomed dose of comedy just when needed.  As is par for the course the CGI is barely manageable but there are enough kills in the film to at least keep the body count high enough for entertainment value.

This is a film that only the diehard lovers of low budget sci-fi horror will bother to enjoy.

Film Review: CROCZILLA (2012)

The Chinese have now entered the giant killer monster race with Croczilla (2012), the latest in giant crocodile films.  What makes this film different is that the said crocodile is giant because natural causes instead of biological weapons or toxic spills or something similar.  The giant crocodile is named Amao who has lived its life relatively uninterrupted in a zoo that is slowly going out of business.  The only person who sees Amao as an animal to behold is a small boy by the name of Xiao who has just learned that Amao and the rest of the crocodiles at the zoo have been sold to a ruthless gangster who plans on serving up the crocodiles as a meal to his high priced clients but Amao escapes captivity and wanders throughout countryside.

Amao makes small meals out of the random people who come across his path but he also makes a meal out of one woman’s purse containing $1 million and when word gets out that there is a dangerous animal out there worth a million dollar some people flee while others go on a search and destroy mission.  Now Xiao and his father must find Amao before the whole countryside is thrown into chaos.

This may all sound like the makings of a good giant killer animal film but it really isn’t.  The film is badly written with a tone that borders on slapstick from the awkward scenes with naked young boys skinny dipping to the woman with $1 million verses giant crocodile antics.  There is also no logic to why Amao kills some people while leaving others alone and the gangster that plans to feed Amao to his high paying clients is among the most ridiculous ever portrayed.  The film has very little going for it and comes off as a subpar sci-fi disaster.  This is one of those films that you can completely pass up.