Snakehead Terror/DinoCroc

There's nothing like a low-budget horror movie to distract me when I should be doing something else, and Star Movies fiendishly showed these two offerings on successive evenings. I will treat them together as they are essentially the same movie, both from the category known back home as straight-to-video, or here as straight-to-your-cable-tv-aren't-you-lucky?

In both films the idyllic harmony of a lakeside town is shattered by a sudden spate of partially-eaten corpses washing up on the shore. Yet with tourism crucial to the local economy, the town's chief of police comes under strong pressure from the mayor to keep the lake open (does this sound familiar at all?) We get excellent public announcements along the lines of, "We don't have any proof of what caused these mangled torsos... so we feel it's safe to say it's nothing." And in both it's the chief's derided but demure daughter who finally saves the day. In fact I am not entirely convinced that the two are not actually the same footage combined with different visual effects.

Snakehead Terror in particular compares favourably to the superbly silly Piranha 2: The Spawning. The Snakeheads are fish which grow monstrous and belligerent due to local scientists dumping human growth hormone in the lake. (Oh you scientists, all you ever do is meddle meddle meddle!) I'm not quite sure what gives rise to the DinoCroc as I missed the start, but it was probably a massive dose of E-numbers from a freak Kia-Ora spill or something like that.

The Snakeheads are a great and versatile baddie, eventually proving themselves equally adept on land or in the water, with the old-fashioned virtues of a professional approach, teamwork and going for the jugular. DinoCroc on the other hand inevitably disappoints because it feels like a bit of a boring hybrid from the start really. After all, what is a dinosaur anyway but a crocodile that can stand up? A better combination might have been the DinaMole - not only a subterranean flesh-eating abomination but also a natty play on words. "Look what they've done to my damn lawn! One of these days I ought to- aaaaaargh! Euuurgh! Oh God! Waaaaaargh!" Or how about being carried off and devoured by an army of rampaging DinoMites?

What is nice about both films is that while they are both full of cliches as bloated as the victims' remains, there are also some very refreshing moments where they break with convention. For example, genre custom dictates that after an early initial attack, there should not be another for a good half an hour, to allow for setting the scene, introducing the characters and maybe a false alarm or two. Nobody has told this to the Snakeheads however, who happily chow down a new victim on every single occasion that anyone so much as looks at the water. Admittedly this makes for a considerable drop-off in tension, but the director has correctly apprehended that what his target audience most want to see is two-dimensional characters being chewed to a bloody pulp by foul wriggling beasties from the deep, and on this level Snakehead Terror truly delivers. DinoCroc for his part gobbles up a child which, while not an absolute taboo, is still generally not considered overly sporting. It is actually genuinely fairly difficult as well to tell which of the characters are going to make it to the end, as they have not entirely obeyed the usual moral compass commensurate with such offerings (Making sarcastic or bullying remarks = dead. Having illicit nookie = dead. Being a scientist = horribly and lingeringly dead). The police chief in DinoCroc clearly didn't reach his position in life by asking people's opinion - blessed with the enviable luxury of actually having an international crocodile expert on hand, he responds with "Will someone get Dr Croc out of here?" Five minutes later, he re-enlists said doctor's aid with "I lost five of my best men just now. So what's your big plan?" In the face of such gross incompetence, conventional narrative requires that he offer his badge to the mayor and his head to the monster, but here it seems enough that he has learnt his lesson and lives to the end of the film a wiser and chastened individual.