ZOMBIE CROC

This spectacular film was released just this year -- February 9th, 2016 -- and WHAT A WOWSER IT IS.  I have never seen anything quite like it, and NEITHER HAVE YOU.  It combines the best features of a stupid movie about Voodoo, a stupid comedy about rednecks, a B horror picture, and A SOLID FISH CONSPIRACY RECRUITING FILM.

The movie stars Brittney Scalf, Apryl Crowell, Crystal Howell, Lafnmn Jones, and Ken Peebles -- and a ZOMBIE CROC!  I'd love to tell you who played which, but the movie for some reason is not yet listed at IMDb and I only know for sure that the protagonist, a female sheriff's deputy, is played by Crystal Howell, and Papa Chicken (THE STAR OF THE SHOW) is played by Ken Peebles.

PLOT SUMMARY:  A remarkably inept sheriff's deputy (Howell) is called to the scene of a suspicious incident while she's trying to learn to hit what she aims at with her police-issued sidearm.  The man who called it in proves to be one of the local drunks, and he's already boozy at 10:30 in the morning when she arrives.  After pointing out irritably that one of his previous calls for help involved a unicorn sighting, she goes out to see whether the screaming he says he heard has any basis in fact -- and runs into her partner, Roscoe, who's hyperventilating after having found a lot of body parts in the leaves nearby.  In the course of the investigation that follows, the deputy encounters Papa Chicken, a sort of straw man or stand-in for the real recruiter in this film: the ZOMBIE CROC.  We soon learn that his recruiting technique involves puffing magic dust in the faces of his recruits, which sends them on psychedelic mind trips into another dimension.  The deputy is led to the edge of the water by a ghostly little boy in a straw hat; he keeps warning her that "It's gonna get us!" but it is only later that she learns that "it" is a ZOMBIE CROC. 

CLIFFIE'S NOTES ON THIS REALLY ODD FILM:

>> They keep saying very specifically that the menace recruiter in this story is a Crocodile, not an Alligator, even though the story takes place in  bayou country where there are plenty of 'gators and very few other members of the order of Crocodilians.  They underline this point by having a guy show up who explains that he's been hunting Alligators AND Crocodiles in these parts for 20 years.  Umm, okay.

>> They keep saying that the Crocodile is 35 feet long.  But once you see the creature's head -- a fearsomely jointed papier-mâché puppet -- you realize it couldn't be much more than about a 10-footer.  To be fair, the head does look more like that of an Australian saltwater croc than that of the Alligators found in our Conspiracy Zone.

>> You are going to LOVE the POV shots of screaming, terrified victims recruits glimpsed through the incredibly long, sharp teeth of the recruiter, as if the operative's eyes were in the back of her throat.  Cool!

>> You are also going to love the way this particular Crocodile locomotes.  Throughout the film the sheriff's deputy fails to notice when someone is coming up behind her, crunching loudly through the ankle-deep autumn leaves that are everywhere in every scene.  (In one scene, the guy crunching through the leaves is Papa Chicken, preparing to brain her with a shovel.)  But this particular Crocodile moves SOUNDLESSLY through those same leaves.  We learn why during the party scene, when we get a glimpse of the creature's tail, suspended a couple of feet above the ground -- and then later, when the sales pitch comes, the croc descends from above on a screaming woman sitting in a lawn chair.  WOW!  THIS CROC CAN FLY!

>> I'm puzzled at the role of the Crocodile hunter, who apparently has the instrument needed to end all attempts by the croc to eat, I mean recruit, the rednecks.  But he never uses it himself and is strikingly passive-aggressive in passing that information on to someone who does want to use it.  WHOSE SIDE IS HE ON?  Ours, I suspect, but..?

>> I'm far more puzzled at the role of the scientific team in the proceedings.  Who called them in?  What are they trying to accomplish?  And where do they think they are?  The leader of the expedition, a blonde twentysomething research scientist, wears a pith helmet and safari jacket, and she's the only one who can communicate with her assistant, a guy in a dashiki and beanie who only seems to speak some unidentified African language.  They're more useless than the two sheriff's deputies, or the sheriff himself, who's dead drunk throughout the story.

>> What I want you to notice is that the only one on two legs who really appears to know what's going on is Papa Chicken.  I think that tells us everything we need to know about who this movie is trying to speak to.  US!

See it.  I can't believe you won't like it.