Crocodile Island: Edge of the World - DVD Review

[Michael Scott]

Crocodile Island: Edge of the World



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
Chinese pop culture cinema is in a weird place right now. Over the last 10-15 years or so they have gone on a binge of outright copying Western Cinematic films with varying results. Sometimes it’s done well (think The Wandering Earth), and other times it’s just plain cheesy. In the case of Crocodile Island it’s a direct rip off of Kong: Skull Island, just without the budget, the acting, the special effects, OR the fun. It seems to weirdly imitate those 70s Grindhouse flicks mixed with the amazing CGI effects of a 1998 Flight Simulator in what can only be described as “late night SyFy Channel garbage”.

The story is about what you’d expect for a rip-off of Kong: Skull Island. A flight goes way off course into the “Dagger Triangle!” and ends up crash landing due to a pre-historic bird strike on the engines. The surviving members of the crew and the passengers wake up only to discover that the Island they landed on is ruled over by a gigantic sea water crocodile (and depending on how it was rendered in what scene, ranges from looking barely bigger than a human, to the size of Godzilla) who wants to eat and munch on the new human treats that have shown up on his little island.

There’s sub plots with a boorish passenger, a dad and his daughter and her boyfriend, a pregnant fiancee, and all of it revolves around getting off the island alive (supposedly it’s going to take 24 hours for people to find them). However, the action and staging are downright AWFUL. The CGI for the monsters (and planes and boats, and huts) is so bad I honestly thought I was watching a late 90s flight simulator based upon how painful it looked. The monster itself is so over the top and CGI’d into place that you can actually see the outlines where he was pasted into the picture on screen. The Action is downright painful, with the father shooting a sub machine gun that never runs out of bullets (hundreds of rounds between each re-load on a 40 round mag), and the dialog is atrocious.

I’m not sure whether Simon Zhao (directing in his feature length debut) MEANT for this to an Asylum Studios level “mockbuster”, but that’s what it ended up being. That cheap and cheesy film that shows at 2:00 AM on HBO or SyFy that no one will admit to watching, but does so after about 4 beers and a giant plate of hot pockets while lying on the couch in their boxers. Honestly, the film is worth watching at least once just to see HOW bad it really is. This is one of those guilty pleasures where you KNOW the film is utter garbage, but you can’t tear your eyes away because the giant CGI croc is going to eat another damsel in distress while she screams like louder than Willie Scott in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.




Rating:
Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

Nothing but the finest video brought to you circa mid 90s SyFy Channel D grade late night movies. The 480p DVD looks plainly AWFUL for a DVD even, giving us insanely low detail levels, poor contrast and colors, plus some good old fashioned artifacting all over the place. Judging by the 9+ mpbs encode the 87 minute movie has, I’m guessing it was source related, as the entire thing feels like it was shot in the 1970s, with 1990s video recorders. I know I have an 85 inch TV and DVD stuff doesn’t look great on a 4K display of that size, but WOW, this was pretty poor.









Audio:

The audio fares a bit better than the video, but not by a whole lot. The entire thing feels dubbed on a sound stage, with English voice dubs (for the few English speaking characters like the pilots) are soooooooooooooooooo bad that you’d think this was a 1980s Shaw Brothers dub. Voices feels squashed and flattened, with most of the activity staying in the front 3 speakers in the room. The surrounds barely get any activity at all, and the bass is boomy and bloated. The best way of describing it is that it sounds like an old Drive In Grindhouse flick’s audio track. Just in 5.1 Dolby Digital (384 kbps, which could explains the thin feeling of the track)









Extras:

• Theatrical Trailer
• Well Go USA Previews

Final Score: ​

I know this was supposed to emulate some of the 1930s pulp fiction movies mixed with Grindhouse, but Crocodile Island is only good while drunk. However, I was absolutely amazed at HOW bad it really is, AND I had a few beers to take the edge off of it! The DVD specs are just plain awful, the movie itself is devoid of any extras outside of trailers (but I don’t think anyone will miss them), and this is a movie you watch and go “huh, so this is what a Chinese version of Landshark looks like”. Personally, I would just avoid the film unless you’re a glutton for those “so bad it’s good” monster movies. There’s just nothing that that can’t be gotten elsewhere at higher quality

Technical Specifications:

Starring: Gallen Lo, Yinyue Liao, Bingxiang Wang
Directed by: Shixing Xu, Simon Zhao
Written by: Minming Ni
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 MPEG2
Audio: Mandarin: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Well Go USA
Rated: N
Runtime: 86 Minutes
DVD Release Date: November 21st 2023

Recommendation: Skip It

 

[Sonnie]

That has to be the fastest croc I've ever seen... supercroc.

 

[Michael Scott]

That has to be the fastest croc I've ever seen... supercroc.

yup, lightning McQueen in croc form

 

[Epoxy1]

Wow...I can't believe you even requested this for review! Ouch....thanks for taking one for the team.