Search - Crocodile 2: Death Swamp on DVD

Now that's a croc!

Chadwick H. Saxelid | Concord, CA United States | 09/09/2002

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Although director Gary Jones (Mosquitoes, Spiders - am I sensing a trend here?) does put together a few nice scenes, he is hampered by a script that is simply braindead. A group of unsubtle thugs rob a bank (it's a pretty hilarious sequence, what with the cops running into a shoot out wearing zero body armor), hijack a storm tossed plane (whipping guns out of their boots!?!), and crash in a swamp. Said thugs then gather the survivors together to carry their loot and ventilate an uppity crocodile after it attacks someone. Too bad said croc is only a wee lass and its 30 foot mother shows up a short time later. Mom is not pleased to find her baby dead and goes on the rampage...Oh, yeah...and the boyfriend hires Martin Kove (at least its a paycheck bud) to search for his girlfriend since no one else seems interested in looking for a downed passenger airliner. The thugs bicker in Tarantino fashion (i.e. they use profanity WAY too much) while the croc picks people off one by one. This makes the first movie look like a horror classic."

Fly Air Acapulco...crocodile free since 2001.

cookieman108 | Inside the jar... | 02/18/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I wasn't overly concerned about watching Crocodile 2: Death Swamp (2001) without having seen the original film titled Crocodile (2000), directed by Tobe Hooper, as if my experience with shoddy movies has taught me anything, it's that sequels to shoddy movies are often so only in terms of the title, and rarely have much, if anything, to do with the previous film...co-written by Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch, both of whom were involved in the original film, and directed by Gary Jones, who worked on such television series as "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and "Xena: Warrior Princess", Crocodile 2 features Heidi Lenhart ("Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills", Red Meat), Paul Walker look-a-like Chuck Walczak (Flush), and Martin Kove (The Last House on the Left, Death Race 2000), probably best known for his role in the The Karate Kid films as the psychotic Cobra Kai Sensei John Kreese. Also appearing is Jon Sklaroff (Three Kings), Darryl Theirse (The Jerky Boys), David Valcin ("Two of a Kind"), James Parks (Kill Bill: Vol. 1), Steve Moreno (Followers), and Dan Martin (Sleepwalkers, Bloodfist IV: Die Trying), as Jerry, the pilot.

The movie begins with a bank robbery perpetrated by a group of foul mouthed masked men, who don't seem that particularly bright since they seem to be calling each other by their real names. Some dough is stolen, and the men make a bloody escape. Next we see Mia (Lenhart), a pretty, skinny brunette with a butch haircut standing in front of an airport in California, dressed as a flight attendant, opening a present from her boyfriend Zach (Walczak), who's waiting for her in Mexico. The present is an engraved cigarette lighter, which seems odd as it doesn't appear that she smokes, but I'm sure it will play a pivotal role later on in the story. Turns out the flight she's working, which is headed to Mexico, is also the one the robbers we saw at the beginning are traveling on, disguised as musicians, the loot they've stolen hidden in musical instrument cases. Once in Mexican airspace, the flight encounters some bad weather, is forced to turn around, but the robbers, pulling out concealed weapons (?!), hi-jack the plane, accidentally damage the controls, causing it to crash in a Mexican swamp known as `El Pantano del Diablo', which I think means `the devil's pants' (my Spanish isn't that great). Anyway, after the crash, the coach section's a complete wash (figures), but those in the first class section including Mia, another attendant, a brainy kid named Brian (Moreno), a stupido lawyer named Justin (Valcin), and three of the four robbers all miraculously survive. The bank robbers, who are on some sort of schedule, use the survivors as pack mules to carry the money laden instrument cases, after shooting up a large crocodile that just ate the captain. Turns out the dead croc had family, in that of a much larger croc that took the death personally, and is now stalking the pinheaded bunch now wading through the swamps in search of civilization. Meanwhile, back in the real world, Zack, learning of the plane crash, hires a local tracker with an alcohol problem (he can't get enough) named Roland (Kove) to help find Mia, which they do, along with the gun wielding men and the large, vindictive croc. Will any of them make it out alive? Who knows? Who cares?

I think this film, which was shot in India, set a record in terms of the usage of a profanity that rhymes with truck (begins with the letter "F"), or some variation (the combination of said word with the word `mother' preceding it was used quite often). I counted about 892 instances, but I might be off by a couple, as by the end my brain was in profane mode overload. In the future, perhaps someone could supply the writers an expletive thesaurus, as usage of the same two profanities in a movie, particularly this one, is tiresome, idiotic, and just plain lazy. Mix it up a little...there are plenty of juicy words out there, why limit yourself so? I learned quite a few things during the course of this film like...

1. Security at the Orange County/John Wayne Airport is ridiculously lax, enough so to sneak guns onto a plane.
2. Mexican swamps are oozing with methane gas (and giant crocs)
3. Mexican swamps are conspicuously free of any other usual animal or insect wildlife one would normally expect to see in swamps (except for giant crocs).
4. The airlines (at least Air Acapulco) take their time initiating search and rescue operations when one of their aircraft goes down.
5. Planes used by Air Acapulco are relatively free of any of the normal electronics one would expect to see in a cockpit, you know, the stuff that helps fly the plane.
6. Some guns, particularly those used by the characters in this film, never need reloading, no matter how many consecutive rounds are fired.
7. Never taunt a crocodile from a high vantage point as it will leap from the water and eat you up good.
8. Mexican swamp water isn't like normal water in that if you find yourself submerged in it, only after a few minutes removed you're completely dry.
9. Heidi Lenhart looks awesome in a bikini.

As far as the performers, Heidi Lenhart and Martin Kove seem to be doing the best they can with the rotten material, while the others, including Chuck Walczak, Jon Sklaroff, and Darryl Theirse (the last two playing the main bad guys high on their own machismo) all seem perfectly suited for this dredge, given their apparent lack of acting abilities (Walczak is particularly awful, and that's no mean feat in this film). There's a decent amount of gore, as the mainly CGI croc rips its way through the cast, but the story and the characters are so mired in stupidity it's often difficult to stand more than ten minutes at a time of this feature without rolling your eyes into the back of your head. The level of idiocy does maintain a certain level throughout, but then goes way over the top during the final sequences at the end in a lame attempt to provide a spectacular finale. The directing is so-so, as Jones keeps things moving at a good pace, which is perhaps a credit to the man given the unoriginal material he had to work with here. The crocodile effects (including both CGI and animatronics), supervised by someone named Mehboob `Boom-Boom' Endai, actually looked half decent (for a film that looks like a straight to video release), and they was certainly more interesting to watch than the often annoying, barely there characters, many of whom seem present if only to serve as Hors d' Oeuvres for the toothy menace stalking them. All in all this feature is pretty rotten, with few redeeming aspects that is unless you enjoy gun-toting, idiotic characters spewing forth profanities and being harassed by an angry, vindictive somewhat phony looking reptile for an hour and twenty minutes...capped off with Heidi Lenhart in a bikini (that's about the extend of the skin here).

The picture quality, presented in widescreen (1.78:1) anamorphic, does look good on this DVD, and the 5.1 Dolby Digital audio comes through clean, for the most part (there were one or two scenes where it seemed to drop out momentarily). The only extras, besides English and Spanish subtitles, are a few trailers including one for this film, along with those for Octopus 2 (2001), and Crocodile (2000).

Cookieman108
"

Oh brother!

Jeffrey Leach | Omaha, NE USA | 01/01/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I am assuming that "Crocodile 2: Death Swamp" is a sequel of sorts to Tobe Hooper's "Crocodile." So many films about killer crocodiles have come out in the last thirty years that one loses track of which ones go where after awhile. The recent resurgence in popularity of killer monster films has seen a slew of new croc flicks, along with films about angry octopi, malevolent squid, cranky dinosaurs, oversized snakes, and that venerable standby, sharks. You can bet your bottom dollar that some Hollywood hack has made a film about a creature attacking humans if the animal in question has teeth, fangs, tentacles, paws, or antlers. In short, if the beastie in question slithers or crawls through the jungle, swims in the ocean, or soars through the air you can expect to see a monstrous version of that creature appearing on a DVD near you soon. I'm surprised I haven't seen more of these films considering all of the low budget crud I routinely watch. Off the top of my head, I recall seeing "Shark Attack 3," "Crocodile," "Blood Surf," and this film. Out of those four, three of them deal with giant rubber or CGI crocodiles feasting on groups of dimwits and miscreants. Needless to say, all four are quite cheesy.

"Crocodile 2: Death Swamp" (at least you know what you're getting into with a title like that) isn't half bad until the end, when something so ridiculous occurs that you can't help but roar with laughter. It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out the plot, either. A group of bank robbers attempts to escape the authorities by transporting their ill-gotten gains south of the border via an airplane bound for Mexico. An incident onboard requires the plane to head back to the United States, so the criminals flip out and promptly hijack the plane. Of course, after the obligatory scenes in which the robbers terrorize the passengers, the aircraft goes down in a Mexican swamp. Most of the passengers and crew perish in the disaster, but the few that survive soon find themselves at the mercy of the remaining hijackers. I see no reason to bore you with a complete cast list, so I shall only mention a few of the more "important" characters. The leader of the gang is a foulmouthed thug named Max (Darryl Theirse). Then there is another goon named Sol (Jon Sklaroff). The most important survivor is a flight attendant named Mia (Heidi Noelle Lenhart). There are others, of course, but they serve the purpose of providing cannon fodder for the crocodile soon to emerge on the scene.

Anyway, after staggering out of the wrecked plane, Max and Sol insist that Mia and the passengers carry their bags of money. They also shoot a baby crocodile, an action that leads to the coming slaughter, namely the mother of the slain crocodile turning up to seek revenge. A subplot, the only one in fact, involves Mia's boyfriend Zach (Chuck Walczak) trying to figure out why her plane never returned to the airport. He quickly enlists the services of an alcoholic tracker and helicopter pilot named Roland (Martin Kove paying his credit card bill) to head out into the swamp in search of the unlucky Mia. Meanwhile, the robbers and their hostages engage in a dangerous game of cat and mouse. At one point, Mia and her fellow sufferers manage to escape into the swamp with predictable results: the croc emerges, scarfs down one of the passengers, and the robbers recapture them. There's some bunkum about Max trying to reach a place with the money, but it's only an excuse to make the characters slog through the muck so the crocodile can tear them to shreds. "Crocodile 2" grinds to a conclusion after a showdown between the croc, the robbers, Mia, and Zach and Roland occurs in some abandoned building. Just when you think it's all over, the beast lunges out of the water and pulls Roland's helicopter out of the air! Ridiculous!

In spite of itself, "Crocodile 2: Death Swamp" is a lot of fun. There are a few niggling problems and plot inconsistencies to deal with, i.e. figuring out how the robbers managed to get guns on the plane, but these difficulties won't bog down the film unless you let them. Heidi Noelle Lenhart isn't too bad an actress in the lead role of Mia, and she's cute enough to maintain interest long after the endless trekking through the swamp slows the film down. The only recognizable name in the cast, Martin Kove, essentially phones in his performance. As for the crocodile, it's less cheesy than you would think, and far less cheesy than the one in "Blood Surf." Heck, even the plane crash looks good for a low budget clunker. The ridiculous scene involving the crocodile pulling the helicopter out of the air is classic, a scene so gut busting hilarious that I ought to give the film an extra star just for the sheer nerve it took to throw this into the script. It's right up there with the shark that growls as it chomps down on a victim in "Shark Attack 3."

Despite its obvious low budget and many mindless attributes, I feel somehow mean spirited condemning this film. Maybe the spirit of the holidays is making me feel more generous than normal, but I'll recommend "Crocodile 2" to those viewers who know and appreciate cheese when they see it. Alas, the world is less of a place due to the lack of a commentary track or behind the scenes features on the disc. We only get trailers for "Crocodile," "Crocodile 2," and "Octopus 2" as extras. A movie that makes you laugh this hard in spots can't be all that bad, can it?
"

A suspenful sequel

J. P. Suhr | Austin, TX United States | 04/23/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A few years after Crocodile ended the dreaded flat dog returns. In crocodile to some bank robbers hickjack a plane which crashes into the swamp. The survivers are held hostage. Shortly after crash one of the crew is attack and killed by a small crocodile. Which is killed by the robbers. All hell breeks lose. The crocodile killed was Flat Dogs baby. She return an goes on a kill streak again. Lots of gore and violence a little bit more fight back.All the robbers are devoured. Unlike the first one the second one has a good ending. This time Flat dog is killed blown to pieces. I saw the censored television version of it on scifi. Better than the original. If you like this movie I also recomend Crocodile, Alligator, Alligator II the Mutation ,Blood Surf, and lake Placid. This movie is R rated this movie is not for litte kids."