Police officer Murphy is shot down while confronting a criminal gang, but his body is found by a brood of crocodiles living in Detroit’s sewer system. They nurse him back to health, let him partake of their radioactive flesh, which helps him grow back the lost limbs, and eventually he reemerges into the public eye as the hybrid man-croc vigilante Robocroc.
This is NOT the plot of Robocroc, not that the actual one has anything to do with the movie spoofed in the title. It would took to much time and effort, and this is just not the way these post-Sharkenado low budget killer animal flicks do it. It must be stupid, but within the itsby bitsy budgets, which overtime seem to have gotten smaller and smaller, closer and closer to the “Polonia-sphere”.
So it also means this has more in common with Metal Gear Rising Revengeance than Robocop, as the plot involves a missile launch that goes awry, with the ejected part landing in a zoo, nanomachines coming out of it and into a female crocodile named Stella that happened to be nearby the capsule’s crash site, and these slowly turn her into a cyborg bent on eating his way through the special forces called into the enclosure, then escaping the facility to feed on random people fishing in a lagoon, stopping on dry land to feast on people guilty of driving quad bikes, and finally going for the big feast of a nearby aqua park full of teens partying.
Also, the lion in the zoo is called Berlusconi, and no, there’s no follow-up joke to this “set-up”.
I would lament the fact of the crocodile not actually becoming a robotic version of himself, but more of a cyborg, but then again, by the end all the organic shit it had were magically “nanomachined” into metal parts, so whatever, it’s technically what the title says it is, so that’s ok.
On the more positive side of things, i’m surprised they actually had the money to shoot into an actual zoo, with the actual animals (or footage of the actual animals that would realistically be there), which is more i can say of Aquarium of The Dead.
And despite starting off with the combo of a Birdemic attack and the superfast digital cyborg croc being little more than a shitty looking blur, but thankfully the schizoid editing settles down very fast, and decides to not bother with that shit 10 minutes in, so aside from the intro you can see the crocodile in all its crappy CG shame very well for the rest of movie.
Speaking of which, the “robotening” of the animal just actually means he gets a Terminator-esque interface, and extra hunting abilities, like the scanners for food and lock-on for targets. That’s it.
There are some note-worthy bad effects, like the obvious fake signs plastered the real ones in the zoo, so bad you won’t be sure how much exactly it’s the fault of the obvious cheap ass digital composition, but looks incredibly fake nonetheless, same as the establishing shots of the aqua park.
Don’t expect anything from the kills, because that’s exactly what you’ll get from them, nothing, as you just see someone being attacked or dragged… only to immediatly cut away, maybe just have the actors cough up fake blood, or have the crocodile drag them underwater, then have the water turn bloody on that spot. Watch out for “corpses” on screen that you can clearly see inhale and exhale.
Acting is notably, aggressively awful, even for a TV movie, with the exception of Corin Nemec (of course the odds of him showing up in a movie like this were pretty good) as the lead and Steven Hartley as the generic army colonel, but the biggest problem is that Robocroc it’s just a boring slog.
It’s not “hair ripping” levels of bad, but it’s incredibly subpar and mostly boring, with an excessively dry and joyless overall direction. I do hope that Roboshark it’s more entertaining than this, or at least it’s more watchable and less of a trudgery to see through from beginning to end.
Wise Cafe (International) 