Dinocroc Vs Supergator (2010)
- Andrew Smith
- 12 hours ago
- 5 min read
"See the awesome battle of the beasts"
Plot
A genetics lab in Hawaii has been injecting crocodiles and alligators with a new growth serum which they hope will benefit mankind's inevitable future food shortages. However the two test monsters escape from the facility and go on a rampage. A highly skilled hunter is called in to deal with the situation but after exhausting all of his methods, he realises that the only thing left to do is allow the monsters to fight each other to the death.
Review
Another of those almighty 'monster versus monster' films that have sprung up of late, it's no surprise to find out that Dinocroc Vs Supergator is no better nor worse than any of them. Taking the title creates from the separate Dinocroc and, er, Supergator films and pitting them against each other in a totally unrelated standalone film is hardly going to be a cinematic goldmine. Low and behold, the film is little more than another sorry excuse for CGI carnage with the same predictability as the sun rising and setting every day. When legendary B-movie maestros Jim Wynorski, Fred Olen Ray and Roger Corman get their heads together like they did here, the results should be a lot trashier, sleazier and entertaining than Dinocroc Vs Supergator. This is filmmaking with minimal creativity, minimal effort and minimum reward at the end.
Dinocroc Vs Supergator is a film which is all about the beginning and the ending and little in between. Talk about an opening, Dinocroc Vs Supergator has the monsters breaking out of the facility within the opening minutes. Who needs back story or any explanation of what is going on when a blonde scientist badly butchers the English language by telling her co-workers to escape right before two giant monsters burst their way out of captivity? Said monsters then make short work of many extras before escaping into the jungle. Then we're bombarded with overly serious music to give everything some extra significance and contrived dialogue to makes things sound a lot more complicated than they are. It's the sort of film which feels the need to say things like "we found them in Sector Two" (not actual quote but I don't want to have to re-watch to find what the army guy said) which has no relevance to the audience whatsoever because we haven't the foggiest clue what is going on and who these people are. The dialogue is just empty syllables filling the air and it actively breaks the illusion because we know these characters are just bluffing.
Then we come to the ending which is otherwise the norm for this sort of film apart from the fact that it's the only time during the entire course of the film where the two monsters actually fight each other! They finally start duking it out with only five minutes left of the running time, so you know it's going to be a short fight. Even so, the fight is hardly shown as its intercut with footage of the human characters conjuring up an ultimate plan to defeat both monsters. So, in all, you'll get maybe thirty seconds of fight time. I don't know about you, but when I see a film called Dinocroc Vs Supergator, I want to see a fight between the unstoppable force and immovable object! I want it loud and ridiculous and full of trashy spectacle. But this is the ultimate bait and switch move as having to sit through eighty minutes of nonsense to see a thirty-second fight of recycled animation isn’t exactly delivering the goods and is a frustrating experience. For the bulk of its running time, Dinocroc Vs Supergator feels like two separate films running side by side before the producers got to the end and realised they need to justify the title by having them scrap.
The monsters are well fed but as is always the case nowadays, the attack scenes are done using CGI which looks rather ropey at best. Most of the attack scenes consist of the same thing where someone stands too close, or in, a large body of water and then are promptly devoured by one of the title monsters. There is a nice Jurassic Park-style moment in which a couple of characters on an escaping jeep are pursued by one of the monsters but most of the CGI scenes look to be the same footage over and over again. In fact, it's hard to tell which monster is supposed to which given that crocodiles and alligators look fairly similar anyway. I don't suppose it matters much when they eat bikini-clad honeys (sadly this is Sci-Fi Channel material therefore the women remain clothed) but knowing which, if any, monster to root for during the finale would be nice. Who do I want to see win? Which one is the ‘good’ monster? Am I Team Dinocroc or Team Supergator?
Even the human food they're constantly fed consists of nothing substantial – like fast food for the monsters. They're introduced early in a scene for the singular literal purpose of popping up on the little conveyor belt, getting knocked down by a CGI monster, and clearing the screen so the next scene can start - cardboard ducks at a carnival shooting gallery. Most of these characters don't have internal lives, they don't have arcs, and they certainly don't contribute to the plot – they’re just point A to point B fodder; their entire existence is predicated on providing a quick kill scene just to ensure the viewer hasn't fallen asleep. Those who get more screen time are equally as uninteresting. David Carradine stars in one of his last roles before his death and it's not the sort of film you'd want to be remembered for. When a low-budget production hires a legacy actor like Carradine, they aren't actually paying for a master class performance. They're paying for the right to put his name in bold letters on the DVD cover and once his signature is down, they don’t even care what type of performance he puts in as any value they needed from him was purely down to his name and legacy. He doesn't even chew the scenery as the slimy mogul behind the experiments; he just looks bored. Amy Rasimas is the token blonde who, rather inappropriately for a Fish and Game warden, wears some teeny shorts and has her top unbuttoned down to the chest. It provides blatant eye candy to the audience but if all Fish and Game wardens dressed like this, they'd be unable to do their job for the attention they’d be getting.
Final Verdict
With a feeble one-sided fight right at the end of the film, Dinocroc Vs Supergator isn't just bad 2010s filmmaking. This is the exact same psychology used in TikToks and YouTube videos today. You know the ones that promise some massive payoff right at the beginning like, "You won't believe what happens next." And then they force you to watch ten minutes of agonizing filler just to get the algorithm's watch time up, only to reveal nothing exciting happens at the very end. The film is using the attention economy playbook and holds the audience hostage for a microscopic payoff at the end. Disappointing, even though I hardly expected a Godzilla-style rumble match.
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Dinocroc Vs Supergator Director(s): Jim Wynorski Writer(s): Jim Wynorski, Michael MacLean Actor(s): David Carradine, Rib Hillis, Amy Holt, John Callahan, Corey Landis, James C. Burns, Delia Sheppard, Jeff Rector Duration: 87 mins |  |
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