Sick Product of a Sick System

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Must See Movie...

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

I mean hey, this movie had a very low budget, and I have to hand it to them, they did quite well with what they had. However, I wouldn't say that makes this a good movie. The plot isn't so bad, but it leaves many assumptions to be made. Not to mention when a cop sees a meteor crash into a lake, you'd expect him to say or do more than come over the radio and just be like "a giant fire ball just crashed into the lake I guess, we should call the forest rangers". I mean, nonchalant much? The best part of the film of course is the monster, stop motion all the way in 1977? You're kidding! It's extremely obvious in many parts of the film that the cameras and equipment used are not professional equipment, and the plot tends to switch between a menacing monster, and two drunks who get into mischief. Overall the film had a lot of potential, but it could have been so much better.

The main attraction in the Crown International creature feature "The Crater Lake Monster" is its stop motion animation by David Allen, who was one of the experts in the field. As for the rest, it's reasonably engaging stuff, with likable characters and a passable story. Although the movie runs only 84 minutes long, it is overextended somewhat, with some digressions - especially comedic digressions - that don't really add anything to the story. For example, more than a little too much time is spent with comedy relief characters Arnie (Glen Roberts) and Mitch (Mark Siegel). But the effects are fun, and there is some atmosphere to enjoy.A meteor crashes to Earth, landing in Crater Lake in Oregon. The now extremely hot water acts as an incubator for a dinosaur egg, a leftover from a long ago time. The monster, a plesiosaur, hatches and is soon feasting on local people and cows. It's up to intrepid county sheriff Steve Hanson (Richard Cardella, who also wrote the story and screenplay with producer / director William R. Stromberg) to figure things out and also determine how best to slay the beast.Strombergs' movie is never as much fun as it could be, because sometimes it's just not that interesting unless the monster is slithering around. (An amphibious dinosaur, it has flippers rather than feet.) But it's still amusing to watch, and the writers add such things as a subplot with a liquor store robber who is pursued by Steve, just to spice things up a little. The music (composed without credit by Will Zens) sounds like stuff you'd hear in a schlock picture from decades past. The on location shooting in rural California is effective. And the acting is absolutely nothing great but suitable for the material. Also co-starring is Bob Hyman as the local M.D. who is one of the voices who expectedly try to persuade our hero to let the monster be taken alive. And while too much time may be devoted to Arnie and Mitch, they're still somewhat endearing and not fatally annoying.Worth a look if you love creature features of all kinds of budgets.Six out of 10.

My bad, and all that, but for some reason, I had long assumed "The Crater Lake Monster" was a product of the late 1950s--a black-and-white cousin of such other films dealing with thawed-out critters returning to harass modern man as "The Monster That Challenged the World" (1957) and "The Monster of Piedras Blancas" (1959). Of course, I was incorrect in that surmise, and the picture in question turns out to be from the year 1977, and filmed in beautiful supersaturated color, to boot. Still, this film's heart seems to be very much with the great sci-fi pictures that had been produced two decades earlier. A minor and modest entertainment at best, it yet succeeds as a pastiche of its '50s antecedents, and indeed, had it been filmed in B&W and featured some vintage automobiles, might have been able to fool many other folks as to its year of birth.In the film, coscreenwriter Richard Cardella plays Sheriff Steve Hanson, who is in charge of the peaceful, picturesque little town of Crater Lake, somewhere between L.A. and Las Vegas. The plummeting of a sparkling meteorite into the local lake spells big trouble for Hanson, the townsfolk and some visiting tourists, however, as the superhot chunk of space junk soon warms up the lake's waters and acts as an incubator of sorts for a plesiosaur egg that had long lain dormant in its icy depths. And before long, a fully grown plesiosaur--think of the head and body of a brontosaurus, but substitute seallike flippers for the legs--with a decidedly nasty disposition and a hunger for meat is seen waddling and chomping its way through the area! It would seem as if Hanson, along with the town's doc, a visiting archaeologist and his girlfriend, and the area's two doofus boat renters, Arnie and Mitch, will have their hands very full, eliminating--and perhaps even capturing--the prehistoric menace...."A beast more terrifying than your most frightening nightmare," the original trailer for "The Crater Lake Monster" proclaimed, and while this amusing bit of hyperbole is of course patent nonsense, the film's creature nonetheless is a most pleasing creation. Brought to life via Harryhausen-like stop-motion animation courtesy of David W. Allen, the plesiosaur is fairly awesome to behold, and to the film's credit, we do not have to wait more than 15 minutes before getting our initial glimpse. (I always got impatient, when I was a kid, if a film withheld that first look for too long, and I suppose I haven't changed much!) The creature looks most impressive every time we see it, even when director/coscreenwriter William R. Stromberg gives us a long shot of the lake, with only the monster's head and neck briefly emerging from it. Indeed, the entire film LOOKS just fine, with rich colors and lovely scenery (the picture makes nice use of its Huntington Lake and Palomar Mountain, California, locales), shown to good advantage on its current Rhino DVD incarnation. As for the film's acting...well, I'm not saying that the Academy egregiously overlooked anybody here, but the thesping is nonetheless better than you might expect. Cardella, in the lead role, is especially good as the befuddled, tough, scared but dependably capable sheriff; indeed, an unexpectedly charismatic portrayal from this relatively unknown actor. Anyway, those are the film's not inconsiderable virtues, which are, unfortunately, counterbalanced by a goodly share of drawbacks.It's hard to put a finger on any one reason, but "Crater Lake Monster" exudes that indefinable sense of an amateur effort, albeit a very skilled one, and featuring those excellent FX. As detailed on a certain Wiki site, the film had a troubled production vis-a-vis financing, and I suppose that all involved did the best they could under the circumstances. The picture features some blatantly goofy humor, thanks to those cracker-barrel numskulls Mitch and Arnie (we get to see the two argue constantly, fight, toss each other in the lake, get drunk, stumble around in the woods, etc.), but these scenes also allow us to get to know the characters better, and thus to actually worry about them when they are in peril. What is worse than the inane humor is the ease with which the plesiosaur is ultimately dispatched; a horribly rushed, unbelievable and anticlimactic denouement that should leave very few viewers satisfied. And then there is the matter of time elapsed in the film. We are told at one point that it had been six months since the meteorite plunged into Crater Lake, although there is absolutely no way for the viewer to have realized this; indeed, all the occurrences in the film seem to transpire over the duration of around 72 hours. So yes, the film most certainly is a minor effort, and a mixed bag at best, but still most undeserving of the lowest "BOMB" rating that the wet blankets at "Maltin's Movie Guide" have chosen to bestow on it. The film is especially perfect for the kiddies and those with an abiding love for 1950s monster fare, not to mention those who are suckers for stop-motion FX. In all, a nice try, from a group of filmmakers whose heart was certainly in the right place....

A giant plesiosaur, akin to the Loch Ness Monster, appears in Crater Lake in Northern California, near Susanville (not to be confused with the much more famous Crater Lake in Oregon). As people are attacked by the monster, the Sheriff (Richard Cardella) investigates along with a group of scientists in order to stop the creature.What we have here is awesome stop-motion, a terrible script and a very low budget. I know that some who were involved in this have blamed the producers and the editor and everyone else that can be blamed. And that is fair... but really, this is a story about a dinosaur using stop-motion. What did you expect? While not as terrible as you might think, it probably is not much better than you might think. In fact, it falls into the category of cult b-movie cheese.