The premise sounds promising, even if it's sure to end up mostly just being an ordinary creature feature. Early exposition is rather hokey. Far worse is the racist language of European colonizers; worse still is the exploitative writing that fetishizes and infantilizes non-white people of the global south, and treats them as playthings. There's also the fact that Sri Lanka is kind of standing in for Amorphous Tropical Country, but sure, okay, I guess that's the least of the issues to greet us in the first fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, while these are the most severe issues to trouble 'The great alligator river,' they are not the only ones, and what could have been a fun blend of horror and adventure just turns into a bland, rather limp exercise in unconvincing, poorly shot violence and poorly conceived ill-doings.
I actually quite like Stelvio Cipriani's flavorful original score, and some of the music here rather adds tension and atmosphere; I quite dislike the questionable pacing, where by the time the picture is more than half over a reptile has barely been seen at all, and in general less happens over eighty-eight minutes than you'd think. The filming locations are beautiful, and the sets, costume design, hair and makeup, and props are splendid; given far weaker treatment are the expected themes of corruption, the indifference of the wealthy and powerful, and above all environmental destruction and encroachment on the lands and beliefs of indigenous people. Actually, the writing at large is very meager: characters fall into one of a few different archetypes without any meaningful expansion (the hero, the damsel in distress, the innocent, the harbinger, the bad corporate guy and his lackey, the ignorant nobodies just waiting to be destroyed, and the offended community); scenes as written similarly tend to boil down to the most basic and uninteresting forms of a few different flavors; the narrative is nothing more than the "paint by numbers" conglomeration of these scenes and characters. Worse still is that instead of the vibrant suggestion of the premise, or the nuanced exploration of "civilization" spoiling wilderness and disrespecting indigenous people, or even just a "nature run amok" creature feature, the plot mostly comes across as dubious, nonspecific "natives versus white people."
If not for Cipriani's score, I'm unsure if Sergio Martino's direction or Giancarlo Ferrando's cinematography bear the strength to make any of the proceedings matter. True, there is much to like here in terms of stunts, practical effects, and action sequences - even if the direction, cinematography, and editing treat them poorly - but it all more or less comes across as random violence and death for its own sake. What we effectively have here is a slasher, substituting a reptile and native villagers for a masked killer, and a remote tropical setting for an upstate camp or suburbia. I see what 'The great alligator river' could have been, and most of the footage that was already shot could have been used to create the movie in its ideal form. Sadly, what it could have been is not what it is, and what we get is just a generic, middling, flimsy assemblage of ideas and action scenes. There are worse ways to spend your time, but unless you're a huge fan of someone involved or have some other major impetus for watching, there's just not much reason to check this out.
I actually quite like Stelvio Cipriani's flavorful original score, and some of the music here rather adds tension and atmosphere; I quite dislike the questionable pacing, where by the time the picture is more than half over a reptile has barely been seen at all, and in general less happens over eighty-eight minutes than you'd think. The filming locations are beautiful, and the sets, costume design, hair and makeup, and props are splendid; given far weaker treatment are the expected themes of corruption, the indifference of the wealthy and powerful, and above all environmental destruction and encroachment on the lands and beliefs of indigenous people. Actually, the writing at large is very meager: characters fall into one of a few different archetypes without any meaningful expansion (the hero, the damsel in distress, the innocent, the harbinger, the bad corporate guy and his lackey, the ignorant nobodies just waiting to be destroyed, and the offended community); scenes as written similarly tend to boil down to the most basic and uninteresting forms of a few different flavors; the narrative is nothing more than the "paint by numbers" conglomeration of these scenes and characters. Worse still is that instead of the vibrant suggestion of the premise, or the nuanced exploration of "civilization" spoiling wilderness and disrespecting indigenous people, or even just a "nature run amok" creature feature, the plot mostly comes across as dubious, nonspecific "natives versus white people."
If not for Cipriani's score, I'm unsure if Sergio Martino's direction or Giancarlo Ferrando's cinematography bear the strength to make any of the proceedings matter. True, there is much to like here in terms of stunts, practical effects, and action sequences - even if the direction, cinematography, and editing treat them poorly - but it all more or less comes across as random violence and death for its own sake. What we effectively have here is a slasher, substituting a reptile and native villagers for a masked killer, and a remote tropical setting for an upstate camp or suburbia. I see what 'The great alligator river' could have been, and most of the footage that was already shot could have been used to create the movie in its ideal form. Sadly, what it could have been is not what it is, and what we get is just a generic, middling, flimsy assemblage of ideas and action scenes. There are worse ways to spend your time, but unless you're a huge fan of someone involved or have some other major impetus for watching, there's just not much reason to check this out.