The opening sequence of this movie grabbed my attention: a good looking woman gets fully-frontal naked at the shore of a swamp lake and goes for a swim. She then is bitten in half by what we think is an alligator. From there (or starting there, actually) it moves into a pretty standard monster film. A group of six friends on their way to New Orleans stop in a small Bayou outpost for gas and beer, and learn about the legend of “Lockjaw,” the half man-half gator thing that prowls the local swap. They are given a map by the store owner (Sid Haig) to the house where the creature lived when he was human, and they go for a drunken, sexy, scary adventure.
*Spoiler Alert* Unlike my premonition that the gator man would turn out to be either just a giant sized gator or a human knife-wielding maniac, the “Creature” actually is a half man-half alligator. But the story does not stop there. Two of the friends are brother/sister, who lured the other four to the spot so that the "thing", who is actually the family’s patriarch, can mate with one of the females to keep the family going.
Sex, blood, alcohol, pot, incest and heroism; this movie doesn't aim to be much more than your typical monster in the bush horror film. This is both a strength and a weakness. Sometimes it’s good when a movie maker knows what they have on their hands so that they can budget the film accordingly. There have been several movies, such as Faust, Queen of the Damned, or other big-budget horror films that took the “Phantom Menace” approach and forwent story for effects.
Creature does what it can do with its financing, and it works well with the final product. The story is pretty basic until you get to the family dynamic of the plot, that’s where it get interesting. The cast performance is what you would expect: Sid Haig is awesome, everyone else is good enough.
It’s kind of cheesy at times, but a decent little horror film. Check it out if you like monster flicks.
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