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Alligators and Crocodiles in Movies   Death Curse of Tartu (1966)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This is about archeologists who go to an area in the Florida Everglades that is cursed by a long-dead Native American medicine man named Tartu. Tartu vowed that if anyone disturbed his sacred burial grounds he would come back from the dead and turn into a wild animal to kill them, and he keeps his vow. The story and acting are nothing special, but there is some good animal photography with nice shots of snakes and alligators. After turning into a shark and a couple of snakes to kill some of the explorers, Tartu changes into a large alligator to chase and kill the last student, a woman named Cindy (Myra Gomez Kemp). She falls on the ground and the gator crawls up to her but she gets up and runs away screaming. She's a good screamer so she does it a lot. It should be easy for her to outrun an alligator on land, even falling as much as she does, so Tartu must be using some kind of speed magic because she just can't get away from it. The gator keeps chasing her across the ground then follows her into the water when she tries swimming away. (Not a good idea in alligator country.) She gets back on land then climbs a tree to get away from the beast. Inexplicably, even after the leader of her expedition comes and shoots at the alligator, she falls down form the tree and dies and the gator gets away. There are some really nice open-mouthed shots of the alligator. It looked menacing, but all I could see was a tame swamp puppy looking for a handout or maybe wanting to chase a stick. You can see the snake scenes here.