Monsters of God review – a messy feud between rival reptile smugglers gets the Tiger King treatment

<p>Director Eric Goode has found two enemies to rival Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin in his new documentary about the animal trade’s underworld</p><p>Through the fear and general miasma of the Covid pandemic, TV brought people together like never before. Among the most-watched series of 2020 was of course Tiger King, Netflix’s hit about an improbably twisty feud between a gay, polyamorous big-cat breeder and convicted felon, and the conservationist rival whom he accused of murder (more specifically, of feeding her missing husband to the tigers in her sanctuary – which she denies). It was the perfect hit for quarantine: bold and ridiculous enough to get everyone talking, and with precisely no bearing on the grief and awfulness that was all around.<br><br>
Producer and co-director Eric Goode has made a smattering of Tiger King follow-ups since then, as well as another series, Chimp Crazy, about the self-described Dolly Parton of the primate world. His latest project – a co-production between his own outfit, Goode Films, HBO, and A24 – continues the theme, focusing this time on the reptile trade and taking its lead from the 2008 book The Lizard King by journalist Bryan Christy. It’s stuffed full of wild stories and even wilder characters: there are canny smugglers, underworld crime gangs, and even legitimate zoos that are said to have turned a blind eye to the provenance of their big, scaly friends. The series is centred on the US – although clearly the supply chain is global – and the two men who kickstarted the illegal trade: Hank Molt and copycat trader Tommy Crutchfield. Like Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin before them, there is no love lost between Crutchfield and Molt, and no odd biographical detail too trivial to skip over. Hank, says Tommy, “will turn anything good into bad”, while Hank reckons that Tommy is “one of the angriest and most bitter people I’ve ever met”. Along the way we learn that Hank used to be a mayonnaise salesman, an