Croc!
Frightfest, Reviews, Sequels, and Bad Producers.
The Gang at the Media Wall.
Well, a year ago if you’d said that my first feature film would be at Frightfest - the UK’s biggest and oldest horror film festival - I would’ve said you were mad. Okay, maybe not ‘mad’, but daydreaming just a little bit.
And yet last week it happened. At a very late 22:40 on a Thursday (the kind of time that makes it pretty unlikely anyone you know will attend), “Croc!” got its World Premiere.
Most of the cast turned up, and at 19:30 we had some photos against the ‘Media Wall’ - the one with all the logos int he background. “What were you wearing?!” I hear you shout. Well, it wasn’t Vera Wang or Galliano I’m afraid, but it was a green crocodilian t-shirt that I found in the murky depths of my wardrobe. It might’ve looked good, had I not been carrying the extra weight of the hundreds of bottles of wine i consumed during lockdown. After that, we went for some drinks. After all, we had 3 hours to kill…
When the time came, I had a brief Q&A with their perennial host Ian Rattray, and told the audience what to expect. I hadn’t even seen the finished film, so I assumed there weren’t too many changes from the cut I saw (although it was a whole 5 mins shorter). “Croc!” isn’t cerebral ‘elevated’ horror; in fact, quite the opposite. One shouldn’t expect too much from a micro-budget film about a crocodile gatecrashing a wedding in the middle of Hampshire. However, the audience seemed to enjoy it, and there were plenty of laughs … albeit perhaps for the wrong reasons.
We got a round of applause at the end, which was gratifying. Then afterwards, some of us headed to the infamous Phoenix Artists Club, where I was instantly approached by a very tall attractive lady who’s in Neil Marshall’s [Dog Soldiers] next film, and the rest of the night is a blur…
Once the fog had cleared, I went to an invite-only party in Ruby Blue, which isn’t the nicest venue, but perfect for people-watching 2 floors above Leicester Square. By pure serendipity I managed to get a ticket to Liam Regan’s “Eating Miss Campbell”, which is an outrageously fun, gory Troma-esque fare with a smattering of politics (and boobs) thrown in. Very enjoyable, and recommended.
Then on Saturday I attended a ‘Directors Lunch’, up the top floor of the Radisson. Very schmanzy and a hell of a view. Neil Marshall was there, but I didn’t disturb him as he looked like he just wanted some peace — much as I wanted to tell him that I watched Dog Soldiers and the DVD extras during the writing of Croc!.
Reviews etc.
And then after the heady heights of the previous few days… came the critic reviews.
Y’know, given the film’s limitations, I was braced for some bad reviews, so it came as no surprise. The movie was made for about £5,000 and was filmed in 6 days! Six. You couldn’t even get to Everest Base Camp in 6 days. BUT, what’s kind of annoying is the fact that my name is on IMDb as both writer & director. Which people might see and think: ‘Every decision in this film was down to him’. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
In reality, it was a mere fraction of that. The distributor (ITN) and the producer (Scott Jeffrey - he of the upcoming Winnie the Pooh film) had a big say in everything, from initial ideas to the final cut (which I never saw ‘til the premiere). For starters, I was given the ridiculous premise by the powers above me. And while we did create a few reasons for the crocodile being where it was - an 1800s animal collector, a military research facility… - that was never shot, no doubt for budgetary reasons.
And then almost every damn criticism in the reviews was something that I had absolutely no say about:
- The showing of the whole beast in the very first scene - I wrote it to show very subtle glimpses of the croc, but that got changed;
- The ‘unrelated’ sex scene, which I was told to include, for, y’know, sexy reasons;
- Characters dying in the same way every time - this was partly down to the limitations of the no-frills VFX. And while I did try to mix it up with a ‘less is more’ approach, I got overruled;
- The car not starting - I deliberately wrote this so it DIDN’T have that tired old cliché of the car failing to start at the least favourable moment, but that got changed by You-Know-Who with a flippant “Oh the car just doesn’t start’';
- The sudden addition of another crocodile - there had only ever been one hungry monster, yet part-way through the wedding sceneScott told one of the girls to shout “There’s two of them!”, even though I was right next to him, with total disregard for any later consequences that might have;
- Opening doors and climbing stairs - As with the car not starting, I never wrote a bit where the Croc could open a door (especially a locked and bolted one) by some kind of witchcraft, but that got changed during the shoot, again while I was present; as for climbing stairs, which a couple of critics pointed out: Crocs and alligators are in fact able to climb stairs, trees and fences, and there is video evidence of such.
- The ending - which got changed without me being consulted, and ended up with Chrissie very tamely throwing an extension cable (not a toaster, which would’ve made more sense) into the pool, and was overall not very well done.
- The poster! - which resembles the 1978 film Piranha, but has almost no relation to this film whatsoever. Nobody goes swimming, nobody at any point thinks “Oh I’ll just innocently go play in this river, what’s the worst that could happen?”. I came up with the tagline ‘It’s a Nice Day for a Bite Wedding’ (which Liam Regan loved), but that sadly didn’t get used in any publicity at all. Maybe I’ll find someone to do an ‘unofficial’ poster…
You might say I’m whingeing because it hasn’t scored over 6 on IMDb. (Probably not even over 3.) But, imagine if a company launched a new car, which you had apparently designed and made… and then that car was reported to have loads of problems, which you weren’t to blame for at all.
Lil bit unfair really.
Anyway. “It is what it is”, as they say (much as I hate that expression).
That said, the comparisons to Sharknado are actually welcome… :)
Sequels
During Frightfest, I may have mentioned that there might be sequels, or even prequels, to Croc!. The situation is this: I would love to make another creature feature - whether it’s crocodiles or velociraptors or giant ants. However, any film I make won’t be a direct sequel/prequel, because I won’t ever work with Scott or any of his production companies again. And here’s why…
Bad Producers
Just thinking about writing this part makes my teeth grind…
Rant Alert
Call it a rant, call it “airing my dirty laundry”, or it might even be seen as a warning.
If you want to hear about how NOT to make films, and how NOT to treat people, then read on …
I’d previously written a film for Scott Jeffrey called ‘Beneath the Surface’. A sub-par ‘shark’ film that had very little shark action (and a similarly tiny budget). After that, he and his partner Rhys asked if I’d like to write some kind of creature feature, perhaps with a crocodile. I naturally said Yes. After a bit of back-and-forth, this became ‘Crocodile Vengeance’, what would later become ‘Croc!’.
I’d suggested I’d like to direct a feature, and sent them my reel and a link to ‘Viola’. They approved. So I was down to both write and direct this. Awesome!
I’d never directed a feature film, so this situation appealed to me because I wouldn’t be producing it, or financing it, and it would only be 6 days. 6 long days in which to discover if I had the tenacity and strength to direct a feature film.
Scott assured me that he and Rhys [who was predominantly on the VFX side] would be very supportive. I was essentially a ‘Director for Hire’, there to do the grunt work for them on what was an impossibly short shoot schedule. That was cool, I was down with that. And he said reassuring things like “For these 6 days we wanna be your best friends, we wanna have a good time…”, and assured me that if they thought I needed a certain shot, or something done a different way, they “Won’t say it in front of everyone, we’ll say it to you on your own…”, i.e. tap me on the shoulder and suggest it.
But the reality was very, very different.
From the outset, Scott clearly got some bee in his bonnet that I wasn’t able to direct, and wasn’t in control of the shoot. This was garbage, as myself and Jack [Mundy, DoP] were well in control and Jack himself had shot/directed plenty of their films, so he knew exactly what he was doing. I think the issues arose when we were filming the ‘unrelated’ sex scene, for which Scott moaned he didn’t know how it would edit. (For reference, this scene was meant to be shot in an office in London or elsewhere, but got shifted to the main location (the only location!) for budget reasons.) I explained that this is what I’d re-written for him, after he’d changed the location, and that it worked fine. I then overheard him whinging to Rhys that I was arguing with him all the time. Yet, this wasn’t a case of arguing, it was me saying “We already agreed this in pre-production, and it works fine, what’s your problem?”.
And then, it went from bad to worse.
The schedule was tight. But it seemed - the further we went on - that every delay was down to me. Not the impossible schedule, or the fact we had to shoot a wedding scene in 3 hours (which should’ve been given a day), but down to ME, and my lack of control. So come Day 2, when we shot the wedding scene, I was constantly being asked “Okay Paul where are we, have you shot this yet, have you shot this yet…?” which wasn’t helpful at all. Constantly telling me that there were people waiting for their shot wasn’t benefiting anyone. And yet, he and Rhys put on some ‘Old Person’ masks and proceeded to take almost an hour being filmed from all different angles, when most of it didn’t make the edit because they blatantly looked like people in ‘old person’ masks.
It was something I strongly wanted to appeal against, but I felt powerless.
After the wedding scene, there’s a shot with Antonia (Amy) running to a car. This is the scene that Scott specifically said should be like ‘The T-Rex scene from Jurassic Park’. Y’know, the one where the water wobbles. He came and told me that I have “20 minutes to shoot this scene”. So I got to it.
BUT a few minutes later he came over, butted in and just took over.
Didn’t tap me on the shoulder, didn’t take me to one side.
And ultimately he then took 40 minutes for what he’d told me was meant to be 20 mins. I was just stood watching, essentially a glorified script consultant. (Not that he cared about the script anyway.) I realise he’s made an awful lot of these sort of films, but he can’t just wade in and take over. It shows a huge lack of respect. It also undermined my authority, meaning some of the cast would question me, and turn to Scott for verification.
It was one of the worst experiences of my life.
I was very close to walking, a couple of times! But I wanted to hang in there, wanted to finish it, wanted my name on the film.
And it got worse.
The final day, we were scheduled to shoot ‘til about 4am. At about 6:30pm we finished daylight shooting, and had some time for a break. Richard, the 1AD, then came up to me and suggested - since all the rest of the scenes were VFX heavy - that I could go home. Of course, I wanted to stay until the end. But then he came back a few minutes later and told me that Scott wanted me to vacate my room for the next director [they were filming 2 movies back to back]. I didn’t want to, partly because I was due to see a friend in Brighton the next day, and partly because I wanted to do the finale of my own film! And then Scott sent a message to the Cast group chat, asking someone to find me and get me to leave the room.
I’ve never felt so unwanted.
He even got the Cast to do his dirty work, when I’d been right next to him outside just a few minutes before.
So I threw my things in the car and left.
I’ve really no idea why he felt the need to do that. We definitely didn’t see eye-to-eye, had different ideas of how to direct the film; but his lack of respect for my ability, and for the script, were simply abhorrent. It is little surprise to me that his productions seem to have a high turnover of directors and DPs. This is not how you produce a film, and not how you treat crew.
I might also add that he didn’t even feed us. Used Covid as an excuse… when in fact we’d all taken tests, were all living in the same house, sharing the kitchen, and not wearing masks anywhere. I’ve never worked on a film where we’ve not been fed; and I always feed everyone well on films I produce. There wasn’t even a runner making cups of tea. When you’re outside all day in the cold, a cuppa and a biscuit go a loong way.
Anyway, rant over. Thankfully that’s behind me, and I’m now onto bigger and better things.
And maybe another crocodile film in the near future…