Rating: C+
Dir: Christopher Ray
Star: LaRonn Marzett, Ray Acevedo, Vanesa Tamayo, Bruce Peoples
a.k.a. Attack of the Meth Gator
According to the “trivia” section on the IMDb, “The film was in development way before Cocaine Bear was announced.” So, what held it up? I mean, with all respect, this is an Asylum production. They are not exactly a studio renowned for taking a long time over their projects. The first official word appears to have been this Tweet of the poster in February last year, the day Cocaine Bear was released. So, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, and with filming finishing shortly after that, I’m calling the IMDb trivia section full of shit, and applying the mockbuster tag. That it took almost a year to appear is… unfortunate, allowing any hype they could have ridden to evaporate.
In the film’s defense, the inspiration here is a little different. In 2019, Tennessee police warned people not to flush their drugs down the toilet, because it “could create meth-gators”. Though I seem to recall an episode of The New Avengers in which a growth serum got into the sewers and led to a giant rat. Here, it’s already pretty big: the drug it ingests just makes it hyper-aggressive. There is some discussion of side-effects, which would have been interesting. A tweaking alligator is hard to imagine: hanging around a gas station, scratching itself and aggressively demanding money for bus-fare. In the film’s favour, it certainly doesn’t hang around. Three minutes in, and the reptile is already off its face, eating both meth manufacturers and cops.
The boring bits are, as you would expect, due to the humans. These include local law-enforcement, Sheriff Williams (Peoples); his DEA agent son Dante (Marzett); Dante’s ex Anna (Tamayo); and the genre required animal expert, Bithlo (Acevedo). These characters faff around the local swamps and cross swords with the town’s mayor, who refuses to let anything as trivial as a drug-enraged monster alligator interfere with the town’s upcoming festival. Yeah, it’s drawing inspiration from Jaws as well, and it feels like Lake Placid is another influence, though the dialogue here is thoroughly bland in comparison. Naturally, the beast proves remarkably hard to kill, requiring a rocket launcher and a shit-ton of fireworks before the end. Or not. Maybe we’ll get a sequel. Probably entitled Crack-odile.
Anyway, when the creature is featuring, this is fun. The effects are variable, to be sure, but the makers know enough about the genre to have fun with it. For example, it leaps out of the water to snare a camera drone, an obvious nod to all the shark/helicopter moments. And zip-lining over the animal’s territory? Yeah, that’s never going to end well. We likely reach peak ‘gator when it chases a victim up a cel tower, then climbs up it behind him, causing it to topple over under its weight (top). I laughed like a drain at that. If the execution isn’t up to the script’s imagination, at least there IS some imagination. That alone makes it better than certain Asylum films we could mention.