KILLER CROCODILE 2 (1990) **

A real estate developer is building a new resort in the same Caribbean swamp where the killer crocodile once roamed.  He promises all the toxic waste has been removed from the area, but a reporter (Debra Karr) is wary of his claims, so she teams up with the hero of the first movie (Richard Anthony Crenna) to find out the truth.  Before long, the now fully grown spawn of the original killer crocodile is on the loose and chowing down on would-be tourists. 

Even though this sequel has a shorter running time than the original, it feels even longer.  That’s because it’s chockfull of boring scenes that go nowhere and only get in the way of the killer croc doing his thing.  It also stinks that it takes half the running time for Crenna to show up.  I’m not saying he’s a great actor or anything.  What I am saying is that Karr will grate on the nerves for the first half of the picture.  When they finally get together, things improve somewhat.  The romantic banter between the two is terrible (The African Queen this is not), but Karr’s seduction scene is so patently ridiculous that it’s worth an extra Half Star in my book.  

This first chunk of the flick feels like a bunch of padding in search of a movie.  Flashbacks to the original also help to eat up a lot of screen time.  While many of the attack scenes lack the fun of the first film, the scene where the killer croc chomps down on some Catholic schoolboys is pretty funny. 

If you can get through the gratuitously padded first half, you’ll be rewarded with some seriously silly shenanigans.  The finale almost singlehandedly saves it.  The way director Giannetto De Rossi (the man who created the special effects for the crocodile in both the original and the sequel) cuts back and forth between shots of Crenna on top of the giant rubber croc to shots of an action figure attached to a bath toy crocodile is hilarious.  Oh, and if you thought your jaw dropped during the killer croc’s demise in the first movie, wait till you get a load of its death in this one.

I can’t say Killer Crocodile 2 is a “better” movie than the original.  It’s really slipshod in just about every department.  However, that last twenty minutes is something special.  I can’t really recommend either of them, but if you took the best parts from each film and edited them together into one hour-long YouTube video, you’d definitely have a classic on your hands.