Shudder Saturday: Little Bites (2024)

This isn't the first feature film from writer-director Spider One (aka Michael David Cummings, brother of Robert Bartleh Cummings, who you may know best as Rob Zombie), but it's the first feature from him that I've managed to see. That's no comment on the quality of his work. It's just my busy schedule. And, after this, I'm keen to check out his previous films, Allegoria and Bury The Bride (both also featuring his partner, Krsy Fox, in a lead role, as is the case here).

There's quite a simple plot here, but it's one loaded with plenty to dig into. Fox plays Mindy Vogel, a woman who appears to be in the middle of a bit of a crisis. Her young daughter, Alice (Elizabeth Phoenix Caro), has been living with Mindy's mother (Bonnie Aarons), but it's clear that Mindy wants to be capable enough in the role of mother to have her daughter back home with her. That's made difficult, however, by a monster that also resides with Mindy, and the monster uses Mindy as his main food supply. 

Small in scale but pleasantly full of ambition, Little Bites is another fine genre film that makes use of the tropes to examine and subvert something much more grounded. This time around it's what mothers will do to keep their children safe, but there's also some intriguing hints at how easy it is to stretch out holes in the safety nets of society, and how much more difficult things can be when you don't have the full, or any, support of close family members.

Fox is excellent in the main role, managing to be both weak and strong, held captive by a beast she chooses to placate in an ongoing attempt to keep her daughter as safe as possible. Jon Sklaroff cuts an impressive figure as that monster, helped by some excellent makeup work and an audio mix that allows his voice to cut through almost everything else onscreen. Despite not having too much screentime, both Caro and Aarons do well, and there's room for a couple of cameos from horror legends Barbara Crampton and Heather Langenkamp, who are both used brilliantly instead of, as can sometimes occur, just being asked to show their faces so that their names can be added to the cast list and used in the marketing.

This really surprised me with how much it seemed to layer throughout it. I had an idea of what I was getting into from seeing a very brief plot summary, but the monster at the heart of it is only really half of the equation. The other half, arguably the more interesting half, is the responsibility of parenthood. It's about the sacrifices made to keep children safe, it's about the toll that can be taken on your mental health as you keep gritting your teeth and doing what simply has to be done, and it's about knowing the right time to allow youngsters to be informed and see the full picture.

The ending is a slight disappointment, enough to knock a point or two off my final rating of the film, but I certainly recommend Little Bites to horror movie fans who don't mind a slow burn.

7/10

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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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