User Reviews

A photographer and model are flown to a new resort hotel in the middle of the jungle to shoot some publicity photos. The hotel is owned by a ruthless developer who appears to have little regard for the environment or the people surrounding his paradise. He has hired many members of a local tribe to work for him in his hotel. But what the developer hasn't counted on is that the land Paradise House sits on is sacred to the tribe. It's the home of their giant alligator god, Kroona. After the model goes missing, the photographer finds it difficult to convince anyone that something is wrong. Has the model become another sacrifice to Kroona?

The Big Alligator River is a mish-mash of ideas from a lot of other movies. The most obvious influence comes from Jaws. Martino admits on the DVD that Jaws was the inspiration behind this movie. The scenes of kicking legs in the water being stalked by a POV shot or of a large unseen creature attacking a boat or of the alligator's inevitable demise are almost direct rip-offs of Jaws. Among the other influences I noticed was King Kong. A woman being tied sacrificially to a wooden raft is very reminiscent of Fay Wray's plight.

As for the alligator, it hardly comes across as realistic. Instead, it looks almost like a stiff rubber child's toy. Victims must remain virtually immobile if the alligator is to get his mouth around their bodies. In recent reviews I've read of Jaws, I've noticed more and more complaints about how "fake" the shark looks. I would advise anyone who feels this way to steer clear of Kroona from The Big Alligator River.

Beyond the bad special effects, The Big Alligator River features a less than stellar storyline (it drags in many places), generally poor acting (there are exceptions of course), and just plain silly dialogue. But given these weaknesses I can't bring myself to rate this movie any lower. I had too much fun with it and will eventually watch it again. Despite the flaws, I found it to be good cheesy fun. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's mine.

On the positive side, The Big Alligator River has one of the best, most enjoyable set-pieces I've seen in a while. The scene where many of the hotel guests are trapped in the water between the alligator on one side and a group of natives throwing flaming spears at anyone attempting to escape on the other side is remarkably effective. Pick your poison – being chomped by an alligator or being shish-kabobed by the natives. It's the definite highlight of the movie for me.

It should be painfully obvious that nothing can beat "Jaws" at it's own game, but there were quite a few movies that tried to cash in on it's formula. "The Great Alligator" is no exception, although this one stands it's own just fine. Directed by Sergio Martino, it does lead one to have higher hopes however, as his gialli "Torso", "Your Vice..." and "Strange Vice..." are influential masterpieces of the genre.

An angry god of a native tribe materializes himself as a giant alligator and starts picking off tourists that have angered him on his island. Simple, but effective. Martino does a good job of showcasing the locale, and with certain cuts and effects creates the hazy, slightly surreal and jovial tone that one would feel while vacationing in such an oasis. Barbara Bach is a welcome addition to feast the eyes on, but sadly does not get naked. Of course, you have your typical two faced character protecting his money, but he reaches a just demise. The scene with the natives on shore and the alligator in the water is awesome as the tourists are caught in between, many of them being killed (and I do mean MANY).

I won't spoil the ending, but I will say it also takes quite a bit from "Jaws". Some people on here have mentioned how "cheesy" the gator looks, but if you are watching this you can't be expecting much, can you? I think he looks just fine, and the scenes where it shows just his eyeball are legitimately a little chilling. Overall, "The Great Alligator" is a fun watch, boasting a high body count, beautiful scenery and entertaining minor characters.

OK - the Cons first: The obligatory '70's alligator (all right, correction - caiman) with nonmoving limbs is made the worse for scale miniature underwater shots (with the full length of reptile comparative to the size of the boat) utilizing a toy alligator being swirled around the toy boat in broadly lit water - even for nighttime shots!

Unlike most primitives-killing-exploitative-Westerners films, the superstitious natives going bat**** and start massacring the vacationers seems unjustified this time. No one really abused the natives - exploited, yes, but far from abusive treatment. After all it was one of the natives (canoodling with a spoiled supermodel during a taboo full moon) that brought the curse of the River Demon on them, right?

The vacationers are easily annoying (with the notable exception of the token old-soul/mildly blasphemous-little-girl-who-takes-a-shine-to-the-heroes that you often see in 70's Euroflicks), but far from from deserving violent death - unless they were your next door neighbors, mind you. A couple actually get killed being heroic - notable in that none of them fill the role of sidekick. There are only two straight villains in the entire film, so the demises feel more arbitrary than cathartic.

The sequence where the giant caiman crunches down and scarfs thirty tourists in under five minutes will probably strike you as unintentionally hilarious.

The point at which the natives decide not to wipe the surviving Westerners and practically saying "hey, you aren't so bad after all, sorry about that fuss last night" - because they blew up the monster lizard - has you shaking your head as the corny music kicks in. You know, the local military dictatorship will wipe out the village for ****ing with the tourist trade after the credits roll...

The Pros: Barbara Bach. Barbara Bach. Barbara Bach. Barbara Bach. You ALL know WHY you're interested in this film in the first place, right? I thought so. If you're a Bach completist, get the DVD reissued by NoShame films earlier this year (digitally remastered with no real extras to speak of, aside from the director bemoaning the current state of international film distribution).

The hero isn't half bad, being far from an idiot (always a plus in B films) and the cynical little kid provides most of the comic relief.

Worth a look, but get it cheaply!

I've seen a lot of Jaws rip-offs and killer crocodile/alligator films over the years, and can safely say that The Great Alligator is one of the lamest (even worse than Tobe Hooper's Crocodile). Not only is it wholly unoriginal, liberally pilfering ideas from Spielberg's film, but it's also extremely boring, a shame, because director Sergio Martino can usually be relied upon to deliver a reasonably entertaining time.

Martino's film is set in an unspecified tropical country, which one might assume to be in Africa based on the tribes-people and hippos, although some of the wild-life—orangutans, king cobras—suggest further east. Of course, alligators are only indigenous to the U.S. and China, so your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, in the middle of an unspoilt area rich with fauna, businessman Joshua (Mel Ferrer) has set up a luxury tourist resort, Paradise House, which promises to bring its guests closer to nature. Unfortunately, with the titular killer reptile on the loose (be it crocodile or alligator… both species are mentioned), the guests get much closer to nature than they wish for.

It takes a long time before we get to see the 'great alligator', which the locals believe to be a vengeful god come to punish the white folk, but when we do it's a massive disappointment (or in the case of some of the shots, a miniature disappointment), the models inanimate and totally unconvincing. Martino should have compensated for his crappy croc (or alligator) effects with loads of splatter, but the film is relatively gore free, with just a little blood in the water and a few of the guests impaled by flaming spears when the natives go on the rampage.

As if a crap croc (or alligator) and almost zero gore wasn't bad enough, the film also suffers from annoying characters. The hero, top photographer Daniel Nessel (Claudio Cassinelli), is extremely irritating, continuously snapping away randomly at whatever he can, never once taking time to alter the settings on his camera, take light readings, or adjust the focus. Snap, snap, snap he goes, using up what must be a whole suitcase of film on nothing in particular. When he's not snapping away, he's putting the moves on hotel manager Alice (Barbara Bach), whose raison d'être is to be woman in peril, offered as a sacrifice to the river god by the natives. Bach is beautiful but wooden. Worst of all are the guests, a slutty mother and her annoying ginger daughter, a guy who thinks it's funny to pretend that he has drowned, and lots of people who dance badly to terrible music.

Martino ends this train-wreck of a movie with what is one of the most unintentionally funny moments in Italian exploitation: having massacred most of the guests who haven't been eaten by the croc (or alligator), the savage natives see that their river god has been blown to smithereens by Daniel, and decide to call off the killing, smiling cheerily at the remaining visitors as though nothing has happened. It's enough to give Italian schlock a bad name.

Mama mia! I'm still trying to catch my breath after just viewing this edge-of-your-seat action/ horror flick from Italian B-Movie auteur Sergio Martino.

Where to begin. This masterpiece starts off with a photographer(nicely played by Claudio Cassanelli) and his fashion model arriving by helicopter at an island resort - with the remit of taking some promotional pictures for the island. Cassanelli barely has time to adjust to the (lack of) pace, before he is quickly introduced to the resort's owner (Mel Ferrer) and his assistant (Barbara Bach) who whisk him off on a tour of the resort, and we are soon presented with the island's selling point... alligators! Before long, a live animal is being fed whole to the snapping reptiles in the resort's alligator farm - a briskly edited scene; and duly carried out by the resort's alligator wrangler( Romano Puppo). A curt exchange between Cassanelli and Puppo eventuates and we now know where this film is heading. We are then subjected to a few obligatory scenes of Cassanelli taking location snaps with the model which add nothing to the film other than showcasing the actress' inability to strike more than two poses.

Twenty minutes or so later, we finally clap eyes on the 'Great (rubber) Alligator' attacking a boat mercilessly. Luckily for viewers though, the hapless model is the unfortunate passenger and along with a member of the Island's local tribe; both make a reasonable snack for the crocadilian. So much for their passionless liaison on a nearby island. The boat eventually washes up on the shore - with neatly contoured 'teeth marks', leading a suspicious Cassanelli and Bach to spring into action and set about discovering the mystery of the abandoned boat and the perfect teeth marks.

Now the carnage begins...

The film really gathers pace, and we are inundated with boggy, barely visible underwater scenes; unspectacular set-pieces; bit-part actors coming to grizzly ends; poor dialogue; an alligator that's as rigid as the board it's made with, and a cameo from exploitation's favourite pimp/ gym instructor Bobby Rhodes!

Eventually, the film comes to a head; with celebrations aboard a movable raft ala Castellari's "Last Jaws" being torpedoed by the lifeless alligator and left stranded in the middle of a lake; for numerous extras to form an orderly queue and jump off the raft to get picked off at will by the alligator. Exactly what happens to Puppo and Rhodes in the remainder film is a mystery...or maybe I just missed that bit.

I may sound dismissive of this gem, but in actual fact I quite enjoyed it. All the points I have made about this flick in my eyes are good things and If like me, you are a big fan of Italian B-movies and a fan of Sergio Martino, then I'm pretty certain you'll enjoy this too. It's certainly not in the class of other exploitation monster films: Devil Fish, Last Shark etc. But a good effort all the same.

Also, The location of the film is set on a costly looking island, somewhere tropical, and no doubt the outlay for the flights, hotels and booze, far exceeded the expense of the film's entire production.

I really do fail to see the actual surplus value of this movie. It's not bad enough to be hilarious. There's no sleaze or gratuitous nudity (although there was plenty of opportunity). There's no gore. There's no suspense in the first hour of the movie 'cause there's way to much scenes of tourist having a party and natives playing funky tribal music. That last part was actually funny on many occasions: You see these natives hitting congas and 'jembés' and that's indeed what you hear (badly synchronized) on the soundtrack. But they also added this funky bass-line on the soundtrack. So, where was the bass-player? At one point the natives get angry and start killing the tourists. Why all of the sudden? It's supposed to be because the evil white men build this tourist complex, which according to their myth awakened the wrath of the river-alligator-god (I actually missed the explanation for that one). But the natives did help for several months to build the tourist complex, so why the sudden angriness? And how in the hell did they manage to push the helicopter in the water??? It's all silly and pointless. This movie also features the skinniest Afro-American model I've ever seen.

At one point our heroic leading couple visits this cave where a weird, crazy old man lives. The only point to that scene is that they make the "shocking" discovery that the killer-crocodile is actually an alligator. Crocodile or alligator, what's the difference? It's big, it's made out of plastic and it eats people. All the same to me. The alligator is a rather silly creation. It's very stiff & motionless and doesn't even flap its feet when it swims. The eyes don't even move when they're shot in close-up. I guess they didn't know 'animatronics' back then in Italy during 1979. There's also a lot of pointless inter-cut shots of the local wildlife. I suspect it's stock footage.

Like, I said, the first hour was pretty lame and the only reason I didn't switch off the movie was because my cat was asleep on my lap and I didn't want to wake the sweet thing. But the last half hour of the movie did get better. We finally get to see some action when the alligator swims through a horde of panicking people snapping its teeth and munching on them. The most entertaining (and at the same time funny) scene is when Alice and Daniel drive a van over a bridge and it collapses. We're looking at a matchbox-version of the van falling in the river here. Funny. But nicely shot. In fact there are several other nice traveling camera-moves. Surprisingly for this type of flick. I was gonna point out some stupid details concerning the end of the movie, but I don't wanna spoil it completely, in case you do decide to watch this movie. My advice is to stay away from it. If you wanna see a decent alligator movie, then see Lewis Teague's ALLIGATOR. I admit, that one isn't Italian and isn't a JAWS rip-off, but it certainly is more fun. And if you're interested in other movies made by director Sergio Martino, then I strongly recommend the highly entertaining 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK. That one's an over-the-top rip-off of every possible existing post-apocalyptic-future-of-doom-movie. "Italians" and "rip-offs", two words that go together very well.