Croc!

“What’s a crocodile doing round ‘ere?” asks best man Ben (Stephen Staley).

“I don’t know, Ben. That doesn’t matter,” says groom Charlie (George Nettleton).

It’s a simple, perfect reasonably exchange which does away entirely with the need for lengthy prologues or dubious science. Instead we get a short prologue in which a couple go camping and bump into the monstrous animal (with, for a change, a man wandering round topless and falling over at just the wrong moment) to set the scene, and then we’re straight into the main story. This involves Charlie’s wedding at a rented stately home in the English countryside, where the crocodile is already resident and, not having been invited, decides to gatecrash the ceremony in style.

The event is organised by Dylan (Mark Haldor), the father of the bride and, as it happens, a former ranger. He left his profession behind after his wife was killed by poachers (also the rationale for him jumping into a hot tub with a letting agent half his age when the film has barely begun), but he is still highly skilled and more than ready to come out of retirement to defend his beloved daughter Lisa (Sian Altman) on her big day. He’s already done his best to protect her from disappointment by having firm words with Charlie, who has responded politely as one does, but who nevertheless gets intimate with bridesmaid Georgie (Beatrice Fletcher) in the old abandoned outbuilding the night before the big event. You know, the sort of old abandoned outbuilding where giant hungry animals like to hang out.

The rest pretty much pans out as you’d expect in a film which is also known as Crocodile Vengeance. Everybody is glamorously dressed and there’s a lot of screaming and running about. Crocodiles can actually sprint as fast as a human over short distances – people not realising this is one of the key reasons why they continue to be successful in hunting human prey – but this one doesn’t need to exert itself as wedding guests keep seeing it and then standing there gaping uselessly until it crawls over and eats them.

There is, of course, no phone reception in the area, and the Wi-Fi is down. There are also hardly any grown-ups left after the crocodile’s first serious snacking session. The flustered young friends (they are in their twenties but it’s pretty clear that their mums still do their laundry, if you see what I mean) turn to the priest for advice as if he’s some kind of crocodile expert. The actual crocodile expert is distracted by a mid life crisis and the (admittedly rather prominent) cleavage of one of Lisa’s friends. Taking matters into their own hands, young women in chiffon dresses hatch a plan involving fire. This could go much, much more badly wrong than it does – please do not try fighting crocodiles this way at home.

Cheap and cheerful as the whole thing is, it’s surprisingly watchable, with decent pacing and plenty of monster action. The final showdown manages to be quite spectacular. There’s gore, nudity and innuendo, the men learn lessons or get their come-uppance, and speeches about the importance of respecting wild animals appear on cue to remind us that attending weddings is not commonplace crocodile behaviour. Charlie is right – we don’t really need to know why it’s there any more than we really needed to know why those snakes were on that plane that time. The action is what matters, and in its slapdash way, Croc! delivers.