Rating: *
Review Date: 9/10/18
Director: Ted Kingsbrook (Godfrey Ho)
"If you really cared about me, you'd be a crocodile, too."
Wow... This film completely defies explanation, but I'll give it my best shot. Jack's former girlfriend/wife Maria has somehow turned into a giant crocodile and ruthlessly attacks innocent villagers, who fight back by throwing coconuts at her. She's extremely jealous of Jack's new wife and mistress, and while jealousy drives some of her actions, she's also under the control of Mr. Cooper, the king of Sea World. Cooper is in league with a blonde sorceress named Monica, and they intend to bring their respective crocodiles and vampires together for world domination (or something). When Jack's new wife is kidnapped and raped by an evil crocodile, he works with a Buddhist priest to forge a magical weapon and takes the fight back to Cooper's underwater realm. Meanwhile, special agent Bruce Thompson is attacking Monica's fortress and fighting hordes of zombies and hopping vampires. Jack manages to defeat the strongest crocodile warriors, while a sympathetic crocodile returns Jack's wife to the surface. But Jack won't get to enjoy her company anymore because he made a deal with the priest to devote his life to Buddhism. In another part of the world, Monica flees her castle while Bruce looks confused. The end.
Mix-and-match maniac Godfrey Ho is at it again, and this hack job is a doozy. At least 75% of the film was lifted from the Thai crocodile movie "Kraithong 2" (1985), while the zombie and vampire bits come from some unfinished horror film. As you would expect, the continuity is disastrous and the film is impossible to follow. But that also accounts for some of its charm. Just how incompetent can a film be? The first fifteen minutes are utterly incomprehensible, but once you get past that, it more or less finds a groove and stays in it. The film opens with a couple minutes of ridiculous chanting as a woman screams "Magic crystal, make it clear!" over and over and over. That's almost enough to make you turn it off right there. Then we see Monica waving her hands over a crystal ball along with quick flashes of glowing skulls and other mystical relics. Next, the film cuts to a scene of some guys being chased by some other guys, and they shoot at each other with machine guns and lob a few hand grenades. Huh? This has nothing to do with anything else in the film. This craziness is followed by scenes of a Thai village getting attacked by crocodiles and innocent villagers being gruesomely slaughtered. Another quick cut takes us to a spooky castle where a guy is attacked by a flying skull and proceeds to vomit maggots. Why? Who knows? He's evidently a friend of Monica, and she shows up in time to save him before her hopping vampires can kill him. Then we're back in the Thai village where Maria the crocodile continues her rampage and Jack talks her into going back home. This is where we learn the tragic love story between them, and while Jack promises to eternally love her in the afterlife, his actions tell a different story since he's too busy with his new wife and mistress to pay her much attention in the present.
Nearly an hour of the film is dedicated to watching a giant rubber crocodile kill and maim dozens of villagers. Arms and legs are torn off, people fall head first into waiting jaws, a water buffalo's head gets ripped off in the water and sprays blood all over the place, a baby is snatched out of a mother's arms, a levitating priest meets his doom while trying to trap the ravenous beast, old men are knocked out of boats, fleeing women are dragged out of trees, and the crocodiles can even fly. It's totally bizarre and outrageous. The remaining scenes with the zombies and vampires are absurd, and while they try to incorporate some Hong Kong styled kung fu and Taoist mysticism, the results fall woefully short. It's unclear why these two films were spliced together, since "Kraithong 2" was already a complete film and would have made more sense if it were left intact. The English dubbing is also laughably bad and the dialog is deliriously unreal. And yet, despite all of its awfulness, I felt strongly compelled to keep watching this train wreck of a film until the very end. The abrupt ending with absolutely no closure is also a defining trademark of Godfrey Ho's work, and is good for some forehead-slapping laughs. That said, this movie is for genre enthusiasts and curiosity seekers only.
Some other great lines include:
"I try hard to kill, but Jack always talks me out of it."
"The spirit of Monica's vampires and my crocodiles will be one."
"You must be Donald, the traitor crocodile."