DVD: Supergator

Ever wonder what happened to Kelly McGillis? Well you can find her among the cast of this TV creature feature from B-movie king Roger Corman. In fact she may be the most frightening thing in this film. Considering she played Tom Cruise’s love interest in Top Gun, it’s a jaw-dropping revelation to see how aged she is. She now looks almost old enough to play the eternally youthful star’s mother. But I digress.

After the obligatory Jaws-style opening we meet the cast, most of whom will be eventually digested by the titular creature; a genetically-engineered alligator. The square-jawed hero and the intrepid female reporter at his side lead this ensemble and follow closely in the tradition of 1950s sci-fi. It’s an entertaining adherence to cliché that endears fans to films like this. Of course there’s always a preliminary narrative excuse to bring man and beast together. In this case it’s an expedition to a Hawaiian island by scientists hoping to predict a volcanic eruption. We have to put up with this charade for longer than is necessary but as the half hour rule designates, the Supergator soon starts to make its presence felt.

Much of the first half hour is taken up with pointless exposition about the noble expedition and the introduction of the rest of the ensemble. Some time is also wasted watching a couple of girls jump around in bikinis. Then it’s down to business, time for the computer generated creature to leap out of the water and pursue the bimbos. One makes a weak effort to defend herself with a stick.

Two more pretty girls (one of whom is seen drinking Gatorade) and some young dudes are then introduced to further highlight how weak the story and script are. Padding out the screen time and upping the body count, which is after all what is important in a film like this. We also get Professor McGillis explaining why she’s cloned the Supergator. To be honest, it’s hard to pay attention to the dialogue.

Every once in a while the second of the bikini girls is seen running around. The director obviously can’t get enough of this big breasted beauty as we cut back to see her almost as frequently as the monster during this second act. She crosses paths first with the female tourists in short shorts, who fails to heed her warnings, and eventually with one of the other unnecessary characters. He prolongs her life purely to add a few more sexy shots between the scenes of carnage. This pink bikini girl must go down in history as one of the most pointless movie characters ever.

It soon becomes apparent that this is going to be one of those films where the main characters and their ultimate nemesis will not encounter each other until the final act. You wait and wait for the scientists to come face to face with the resurrected creature and we get scene after scene of bogus plotting. Nobody cares about their quest, it’s the gator we paid to see, and with the sex appeal digested the film enters a lull. After a handful of unremarkable kills, all shot in close-up or taking place off screen, we finally get to the main course as the Supergator threatens the volcanologists.

55 minutes in and it’s a race against time. With the volcano ready to explode and the Supergator ready for dinner our intrepid heroes go their separate ways to pad out the running time even more. The local resort is under threat now. “Lava flow and a monster killer gator headed their way, they won’t believe it!” says the hunter of the group. But while momentarily amusing in dialogue like this, the dual threat – a common feature of the monster movie – fails to satisfy as it’s only ever a distraction. Experience has taught us that we won’t be seeing this second threat realised and sure enough soon it’s disregarded completely as we move to a lengthy and action-packed conclusion.

Roger Corman is the king of exploitation. He reused dinosaur puppets from Carnosaur to make two sequels and then recycled the monster footage from those films to make yet another feature, Raptor. With this in mind it should come as no surprise that this film is merely an extension of an earlier flick of his called DinoCroc. Corman’s thinking is that if you’ve created the design of a creature for one film why not tweak it for a few more dollars to crank out another movie?

Never one to buck a trend, Corman has contributed his fair share of shelf and schedule fillers. The proliferation of CGI creature features in recent years came about as a direct result of films like Jurassic Park and they all follow a basic slasher movie formula. DinoCroc, SuperCroc (unrelated), Crocodile, Frankenfish, Curse of the Komodo, Lake Placid 2 et al each exploit the novelty value of their titles and offer viewers little else.

In this film there are plenty of scenes of computer-enhanced carnage and puppet mauling in close up, so those that like this kind of thing certainly get their money’s worth. Supergator is among the best of this low-brow subgenre thanks to the amusing pink bikini girl, the sheer number of gratuitous kills and the action-packed finale.     Richard Hawes