Prime Time: Crocodile 2: Death Swamp (2002)

While the first Crocodile movie decided to take a fairly typical approach of putting a group of young adults in peril, Crocodile 2: Death Swamp (a film I first saw many years ago under the title Crocodile 2: Death Roll) decides to change things up a bit. The victims here are a group of armed robbers and some stranded airplane crew and passengers/hostages. So you can have all of your crocodile carnage, but you also get the kind of posturing and evil baddies who wouldn't look out of place in an '80s exploitation movie.

Heidi Lenhart plays Mia, a flight attendant looking forward to getting home and reuniting with her boyfriend, Zach (Chuck Walczak). That plan is thrown into disarray when a group of criminals on the plane cause a ruckus, to put it mildly, resulting in the plane crashing into a large area of swampland. And that large area of swampland contains one large crocodile. Zach hires a tracker, Roland (Martin Kove), to go looking for Mia, the criminals keep trying to just look out for themselves, and everyone soon realises that they need to be looking out for a killer crocodile.

While writers Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch are back on board for this schlocky sequel, it's Gary Jones in the director's chair this time around. Having previously delivered both Mosquito and Spiders, Jones has good form when it comes to mixing animal monsters with human killers. It's a shame that this film lacks the humour of some of his other work, seeming to instead wallow in clichés and moments that are unintentionally hilarious (no, considering the quality of the acting on display here, I'm not going to believe anyone that tells me it is all deliberate, although a better cast might have managed to lift the material).

Lenhart isn't a bad female lead, despite having to utter one of the worst "send off" lines I have ever heard. Darryl Theirse also isn't too bad, playing the leader of the criminals. Then you have Kove, who actually DOES feel as if he gets a grip on the material better than anyone else. His grizzled and savvy tracker is the most fun character in the film, and Kove plays him in a near-permanent state of hungover and tired nonchalance. Walczak isn't great in his role, but it's easy to forget everyone else onscreen when you watch the scenery-chewing turn from Jon Sklaroff (playing a scuzzy criminal named Sol), who is arguably the worst performer onscreen.

If you liked the first movie then I'd still think twice before recommending this one to you. It's not as much fun, it's not as well made, and the crocodile feels like less of a constant threat, even when everyone eventually finds themselves stuck in the swampland area that is basically croc's dining room. It's enjoyable for the way it veers erratically between creature feature and sleazy crime flick, but it doesn't ever satisfy as one or the other.

4/10

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VFW (2019)

Joe Begos has, whether you like them or not, built up an interesting body of work, working within genre boundaries to create specific examples of movies that clearly influenced him. Almost Human got him a good amount of love from the start, The Mind's Eye is referred to by many people as a Scanners sequel that you never knew you wanted, but definitely deserved, and Bliss was a wild ride into the realm of vampirism. Now we have VFW, a siege movie that uses some great genre names in a scenario that is pure exploitation gold.

Society seems quite crumbly, to say the least. Lawlessness abounds, and the streets seem more perilous than ever, thanks to the overwhelming number of criminals and addicts taking over certain areas. The latest drug that the addicts want to get their hands on is known as Hype. None of this ever really affects the veterans who run and populate a small bar in the middle of a potentially dangerous area. Stephen Lang is the bar owner, and it is his birthday, and his main friends and patrons are played by George Wendt, David Patrick Kelly, William Sadler, Martin Kove, and Fred Williamson. They're about to be affected by the situation though, caught up in the middle of things when a young woman runs into the bar with a bag full of stolen hype and some violent baddies right at her back. A merciless dealer will do whatever it takes to get his product back, and he has a multitude of addicts ready to do his bidding in exchange for some free samples.

VFW is what I would best describe as a bruising beast of a film. Begos, working from a script by Max Brallier and Matthew McArdle (their first feature), is clearly in his element, the simple premise allowing him to showcase the cast and move things along at a cracking clip to throw viewers into some scenes of gleefully-depicted violence and bloody carnage. The first act sets everything up with wit and brevity: the camaraderie between the veteran soldiers (VFW stands for Veterans of Foreign Wars, in case you didn't know . . . I didn't), their welcoming of a young returning soldier (Sean, played by Tom Williamson), and the ruthlessness of the big baddie (Boz, played by Travis Hammer). And then comes the fighting. And the death. And the many pointy and heavy things being used to squish body parts. And that just keeps on going all the way up to the last scenes.

There are some times when the low lighting and quick editing of the violence makes this a bit harder to keep track of than I would have liked, but it also helps to keep everything feeling pleasingly down 'n' dirty. I really liked Bliss, but it's hard to see beyond the sheer visceral thrills and fun of this to rank it as anything other than the best thing that Begos has done to date.

A lot of that comes from the cast, no doubt. Every single one of the older tough guys gives the kind of performance that has you immediately wanting to revisit many past gems in their filmographies. Lang seems to have cornered the market over the past decade or so on elderly badasses (despite certain '80s action stars trying to show they can still deliver the kind of thrills they gave us decades ago), Williamson has never lost his cool, Sadler gets most of the best lines, and Kove, Wendt, and Kelly are great fun. Thankfully, the younger cast members aren't left hanging. Sierra McCormick is likably plucky as "Lizard", the woman who starts the ball rolling on the small war, and Williamson earns respect from his elders as he holds his own in the heat of the battle. On the other side, Hammer is a very entertaining villain, someone who won't be negotiated with and has complete confidence in the odds of his victory, and Dora Madison (who featured in Bliss, which also had Wendt in there, as well as Graham Skipper and Josh Ethier, who both have roles in this) is enjoyably badass in the role of Gutter, a character who could have easily crossed over into this movie world from the cinematic madness of Neil Marshall's Doomsday.

If you're a genre fan who also loves a good siege movie (and we can all name many classics off the top of our heads) then I really can't imagine you disliking VFW. The premise, the pacing, the cast, the improvised weaponry, the sheer level of badassery barely contained in each scene. (Rio) Bravo to Begos, and I look forward to whatever he gives us next.

9/10

Order it here.

The Last House On The Left (1972)

Some films feel like you MUST see them. That's doubly true when you're a horror fan. In fact, it's triple (triply??) true when you're a British horror fan who spent a number of years hearing about infamous titles that were removed from public consumption by an over-zealous BBFC. Yes, I'm on about those video nasties again, but I'm not just on about the situation here in the UK. I'm on about those moments that lead to conversations, that lead to you becoming friends with more and more horror fans, discovering the huge global community of people who have all been given the same funny looks and had the same judgements made about them as they enthusiastically rented some piece of nastiness from their local video store. Those moments lead to you hearing about, or discussing, key films. You get the undisputed classics, you get the enduring favourites, and you get films that wallow in their infamy for a short period of time, often just before their power starts to fade away.

The Last House On The Left is a film in that latter category. It is the kind of film you will most likely have a vivid memory of seeing for the first time, perhaps even something that you can deliver as an anecdote (but a different kind of anecdote from one like being taken as a child to see E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial and remembering how many other children were as wet-eyed and snot-nosed as you were while the parents wondered what they had done to upset Steven Spielberg so).

Having said that, I don't have any anecdote to put here. I saw this film as I was making my way through a lot of the horror movies I had never been able to find in my pre-internet days. This was one of the better video nasties, I knew that much as soon as I'd watched it, but it wasn't up there with the very best. Yet it stays with you. It's a film that feels dangerous in a way a lot of the others don't. It sticks to you. If some movies feel like a cosy blanket, The Last House On The Left is a layer of dust and debris that cakes your skin after a day spent in a harsh environment, the kind of thing that won't wash off without applying the kind of force to your scrubbing that will hurt.

Written and directed by Wes Craven, his feature debut, this is a savage reworking of The Virgin Spring. A young woman (Sandra Peabody) and her friend (Lucy Grantham) head to the city. They meet some bad people. Terrible things happen to them. The bad people end up at the home of the parents of the young woman (ma and pa played by Cynthia Carr and Richard Towers). Those are the plot points that you'll probably already know. I'm not going to say any more.

Craven was an angry young man when he made this film. He wanted to create something brutal and shocking, but also wanted to make it bearable (which he attempts to do with the biggest mis-step of the film, scenes involving a pair of bumbling police officers, one of whom is played by a young Martin Kove). It's a film that he would look over many years later with a critical eye, acknowledging the negative aspects while still admiring what he achieved.

And he's right to feel that way. While not quite as powerful or intense as it may have been when first released, this is a brutal piece of work, open to multiple interpretations by different viewers, from a warning about the dangers of drugs to an exploration of common nightmares to a commentary on the Vietnam War. It's also one hell of a calling card for Craven, putting out there the mastery of horror elements and obsession with the thin line between civility and barbarism that he would display repeatedly over the next few decades.

There have been major essays written about this movie. Much more than I could ever say, and in a clearer and more intelligent way. I'll just say that it's a film that you can never unsee. David Hess gives the most memorable performance of his career, playing the loathsome Krug (a role that would see him typecast that way in a few other movies), he's ably supported by Jeramie Rain, Marc Sheffler, and Fred J. Lincoln, all of them effectively nasty in a way that makes any viewer want to see them get their just desserts by the time the end credits roll.

Craven may now view this as something he would have approached differently, but horror fans can be glad that he rushed headlong into a boundary-pushing slice of exploitation nastiness that easily holds up alongside anything else we've had under that umbrella. You may not enjoy it, you may not rush to rewatch it, but it's an essential horror film, and one of a number of touchstones in the career of someone who gave us such a wide variety of scares.

8/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.