THE GREAT ALLIGATOR (1979)

As far as JAWS ripoffs goes this ones pretty shitty, but shitty in just the right places to make it a fun film to watch...especially with friends.

Somewhere way off on the banks of a South America river, a land developer has spent $3 million on a secluded tourist resort called "Paradise Hotel". He's hired a photographer to take a bunch of pictures of the guests enjoying themselves. Things are going good until this huge alligator shows up and starts eating people. At first, it's just a few people and just like Chief Brody warning the mayor in JAWS the photographer warns the owner, but he's so financially invested that he refuses to believe this crazy story. The buildup is a little slow, but once things got started I was very entertained and laughed a lot at the low-budget special effects, the kickass bone-crunching sound effects, the surprising plot twist concerning the local tribes plan to make the alligator go away and the funky music score.

Overall, it wasn't a anything special, but I was thoroughly entertained. It would have been nice if there'd been some hot female guests that decided to get naked. Also some really good gore shots of the alligator chomping down on people would have been awesome.

Fans of JAWS-ripoffs should definitely check it out.

GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW (1959)

One morning I woke up a few hours earlier than normal.  I flipped on the TV right as the opening credits were coming on for some movie called GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW. I was confused by the bizarre title, and the actions onscreen were so silly that in my sleepy state I almost thought that it was maybe an extremely vivid dream. But it wasn't, so right then and there (with my handsome eyelids so heavy I could barely keep them up) I fell in love with this goofy pile of crap.

If you don't have a similar experience you might not enjoy this film quite as much as I did, but you should at least give it a try. The story (which has the depth of a Scooby-Doo mystery) is about some teenage hot-rodders who lose their car club’s garage, so in the last half of the movie they set up shop in an old haunted house. Between those two events you have some soda shop dancing/singing, non-stop beatnik lingo, an all-girl slumber party, a dance party, and a shit talking parrot. Finally we get to the haunted house and it’s your standard rotating fireplace/spooky sounds variety, so the gang decides to have a rock n' roll party! The End.

I can't really put my finger on why I like this film so much, but I think it’s the combination of innocence and wackiness.  I do wish there had been more racing though. Besides the one brief race at the very beginning, you barely even see a car in motion the rest of the movie!

The entire cast had really good chemistry together, but outside of Dorothy Neumann nobody ever went on to do too much of anything. Dorothy ended up (according to IMDb) having over 140 acting credits in everything from SORRY, WRONG NUMBER and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS to an episode of "Tales from the Crypt".