Monsters of God Review: Tiger King Creator's Reptile Feud Series
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- Monsters of God is a new documentary series co-produced by Goode Films, HBO, and A24, based on Bryan Christy's 2008 book The Lizard King, and tracing the illegal US reptile trade through the feud between smugglers Hank Molt and Tommy Crutchfield.
- Eric Goode, who previously produced Netflix's Tiger King and the series Chimp Crazy, continues his focus on the exotic animal trade with a story centered on canny smugglers, underworld crime gangs, and zoos said to have ignored provenance questions.
- Tommy Crutchfield claimed he supplied cobras to the makers of a Hollywood blockbuster and sold tortoises to Michael Jackson, and bred distinctive white albino alligators that he sold for £175,000 each, while rival Hank Molt once buried a stash of animals alive in New Jersey's Pine Barrens to evade police.
- Anson Wong, a notorious Malaysian dealer, dominates the final episode, which examines how smuggling pushed the ploughshare tortoise to near-extinction in the wild — a note of cautious optimism the reviewer says replaces the lurid ending of Tiger King.
- The review finds that the first episode's gruesome, revenge-fuelled climax is the high point, with the remaining four instalments losing narrative focus as tangents — including a federal agent who wore a gorilla costume in a sting — crowd out the core smuggling story.
Why it matters: Goode's track record makes his wildlife-trade projects commercially bankable — Tiger King became a lockdown phenomenon and Chimp Crazy followed — so HBO and A24's bet on a five-episode deep dive into reptile smuggling, rather than a tight two-parter, suggests they're prioritising the lurid character drama over the conservation stakes the final episode tries to rebalance.
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