04/09/09 - 'Gator Bait

'Gator Bait (1974, 88 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074080/

Well the "five or higher" rating streak was bound to end sometime. This is the movie that broke that streak. Granted, I went in with not much expectations in this "Amazon-esque woman in the wild gets revenge" story. I even went in with low expectations on the attractiveness of the female lead and that was probably the only part that I was surprised with.

This female lead, played by Claudia Jennings, I expected to be only somewhat attractive and to deliver her lines painfully bland or in some other terrible fashion. While she did have limited dialogue, she actually played the part of the wild jungle woman fairly well and was more attractive than I thought she was going to be after a quick Google search.

However, the story and whole movie as a whole was pretty pathetic. We were supposed to care for Jennings character, Desiree, and I guess I sort of did, but not that much. I also didn't know which of the wild other characters I should like the most or the least and just ended up not caring for any of them. The overly dramatic delivery of lines by some actors didn't help this at all (at one point, one of the main male leads delivers a "Nooo!" on par with Darth Vader's in Episode III).

Overall, I gave the movie a 3/10. While the film was watchable in that it was at least coherent, the dragging story and the uninteresting characters all combined for a pretty bland film experience.