Click on a picture to enlarge it

Alligators and Crocodiles in Movies   Pearl (2022)   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 a prequel to the movie "X" released earlier the same year (2022). "X" showed Pearl in 1979 as an old woman murdering people, including pushing one woman into a farm pond where an alligator was waiting to eat her. In this movie we see several more scenes with a large alligator in the same farm pond. This movie shows Pearl as a young woman in 1918 when she was a budding young psychopath. Pearl is played by Mia Goth, the same actress who plays Maxine, the young woman who kills Pearl in "X", which is a bit confusing. Goth in old woman makeup also plays the older Pearl in "X". During the opening credits we see Pearl kill a goose with a pitchfork then carry it to a pond where she calls an alligator she has named "Theda" then holds it out for the alligator to jump up and grab. She tells a man later in the movie that she has named her farm animals after movie stars, so Theda is apparently named after Theda Bara the famous silent movie star and sex symbol who was nicknamed "The vamp" because she played femme fatales who destroyed men. We see a poster of her 1917 movie "Cleopatra" at the local movie theater. For the record, Theda can't be the same alligator we saw in "X" since alligators only live 30-50 years and this movie takes place 61 years earlier. Later we see alligator eggs in the pond which shows that they are breeding there, so this one could be a descendant of the first one. Pearl is not happy on the farm: her husband is away in Europe fighting in World War One; the Spanish flu forces everybody to wear masks in public and avoid human contact (this movie was made during the Covid 19 lockdown); food is scarce; she has to care for her father who is wheelchair-bound and uncommunicative which leaves only Pearl and her mother to run the farm; and her strict mother won't let her go to the movies or have any fun. Pearl wants to go to Hollywood and dance in the movies and become a big star, so she decides to get rid of her father. She wheels him to the end of the dock on their pond, explains what she's going to do to him and apologizes, and calls Theda. But before Theda can snatch him, Pearl's mother comes and brings him back to the house. Frustrated by her mother's intervention, Pearl walks around the pond calling for Theda. She discovers a nest full of alligator eggs. She takes one of the eggs to the barn then leaves. She returns right away and picks up the egg. She imagines that a soldier (probably her husband) is returning from the war and as she crushes the egg in her hand, he explodes. Pearl eventually does kill and feed two people to Theda - a projectionist at the movie theater, whose car and body she pushes into the pond, and her sister-in-law, whose head she cuts off and throws to Theda, who catches it in her mouth like a pet dog. Pearl is a horrible person in both movies, but it's hard to hate her since she's such a good friend to alligators.... Just kidding - she's a monster! A third movie "MaXXXine" is in the works. So far there is only this description on IMDB: "Follows Maxine, who was the only survivor of the bloody incidents of X, as she continues her journey towards fame to be an actress in 1980s Los Angeles." Since it will probably take place in Hollywood, I doubt Theda or one of her offspring will show up in the third movie, but you never know.