HubrisWeen 2015, Day 5: Eaten Alive (1977)

I cannot recall when or how I first learned of this film's existence, It may have been seeing it on a video store shelf or reading about it in a book on horror movies, though I'm guessing it was more of the former. What I do know is that when I was around 14, I began reading reviews of it online in the early days of internet review sites. I may have read Stomp Tokyo's review of it first, I can't be sure.

What I can be sure of is that I was overcome by a desire, not to see this film but to write a screenplay using its basic concept but doing it right. See, back then I had big dreams of being a movie director that would be dashed by the time I finally made it to film school--but that is neither here nor there--and every single review I encountered of this film said how awful it was or how it was an especially disappointing follow-up to Tobe Hooper's debut film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So I felt the concept deserved a second chance.

I mean, homicidal maniac keeps a hotel in the Louisiana bayou with a pet crocodile and feeds his guests to them after--and sometimes before--he kills them? That's a slice of fried gold right there and it was apparently wasted.

Of course, I'm sure reading the script that I cranked out back then nowadays, I'd probably find my own work was not much better, After all, starting from the position of "I can do that better than you" is not usually the best way to go about something creatively. Still, I am proud of a few sequences I included and maybe someday I might revisit it, like many of my story ideas.

Now, you might notice that I didn't mention watching the film in there. That's because, prior to Tim of Checkpoint Telstar graciously providing me with a copy, I had never gotten around to watching it. Either by choice or circumstance, I had never, ever seen the movie I had written a remake of.

Though, based on some of the misguided Hollywood remakes of the last 20-odd years, that would put me in good company.

The film opens by telling you it's a "Virgo International Pictures" production and the more highbrow a movie's production company sounds ("VIP"), the worse you can expect it to be. The electronic blooping soundtrack does not exactly bolster my confidence, either. Apparently Tobe Hooper is partially responsible for the soundtrack, as well, so he's definitely no John Carpenter. The credits roll over footage of a full moon and then fade into a close-up of a tacky round belt buckle of the sort favored by shitkickers the world over.

The belt buckle comes undone while a blonde woman named Clara (Roberta Collins) is superimposed over this with a look of frozen indifference. The owner of the belt buckle announces that, "Name's Buck. I'm rarin' to fuck." I imagine he practices that line in the mirror before he visits every brothel. Yes, Clara is a sex worker and she's having some obvious second thoughts about her chosen profession, or at least she's re-thought it ever since baby-faced Buck (Robert Englund!) showed up. Buck implying that he wants to try to enter the establishment from the rear is clearly the last straw, and him trying to force the issue sends her across the room brandishing a chair like a lion tamer.

"This is called the 'Freddy's Revenge.' "

When he tries to throw her back on the bed, she screams for the madam, Miss Hattie (Carolyn Jones, better known as the original Morticia Adams, under some not exactly stellar old age makeup). Miss Hattie kindly escorts Buck out, offering him two of her best girls instead for no extra charge. When he's gone, she turns on Clara and gets mean. If the girl isn't going to work for her keep, she's going be out on her ass. The friendly housekeeper, Ruby (Betty Cole) consoles Clara on the front porch and gives her some money for the road. Ruby also tells her there's a hotel down the road called the Starlight, which will do her just fine--so long as she does not tell the owner she's from Miss Hattie's.

By this time the wigs, the make-up, the costumes, and the obvious sets should be making any viewer feel like they're watching a recording of a stage play--but Clara's trek through the woods just seals it. The woods are so patently a set you expect to see stagehands dressed as trees walking by in the background. She comes to the Starlight Hotel presently and it is a dingy looking dump. There's a fenced in area next to the front and she hears something grumbling and splashing behind the fence but the smoke machine won't let her see what it is. (To the foley artist's credit, it does actually sound like a crocodilian) She sees someone moving inside the hotel and wanders in the open door.

She rings the bell and the proprieter, Judd (Neville Braand) limps out from his office, putting on his badly repaired glasses. He hands her the pen to sign in, making sure to stare down her cleavage as he does so. He notices her looking out the door at the pen and he informs her that, "That ain't no ordinary gator. That's a croc," before explaining that gators can only move fast in the water but a croc can outrun a horse. Yep, that's a crock, all right.

To be fair, a crocodile can conceivably outun a horse for a very short burst of speed, but they can't possibly match a horse for actual speed--and an alligator can move at exactly the same speed, anyways!

While showing her to her room, Judd relates a charming story of how his croc got out of its pen one day and chased down a "n***er mule" and bit it in half. He laughs at the memory of the two halves of the mule writhing around...and then suddenly asks if Clara is one of Miss Hattie's girls. He turns...more threatening and tries to tear her clothes off.  He calls her a whore and the two end up tumbling down the stairs. She gets up first but has broken her ankle and has to try to crawl away. Unfortunately she only makes it to the porch because Judd recovers much quicker and happens to have a large rake handy, which he uses to aerate her torso.

Afterwards he gets a look on his face like he just a teenager who just wrecked the family car after taking it without permission. He drags the still wheezing Clara down the porch and then throws her over the railing into the crocodile pen. You'd think he'd maybe want a bit more of a barrier between a croc that has chased down a mule than a flimsy wooden railing, but what do I know? As expected the sound effects confirm the crocodile happily disposes of her corpse.

The next shot is a monkey picking at the floor of its cage in boredom, so I guess Judd just has a thing for exotic pets. In his bedroom--which naturally has a fully made-up mannequin in one corner--Judd sits on the bed singing a song to himself while scrawling on a notepad and reading a magazine. He's trying on different glasses as he reads, so presumably these glasses came from previous guests who got an extended stay in the croc's stomach. The monkey looks bored and the crocodile keeps floating to the surface in shots that I assume are meant to be sinister. I have no idea how the monkey and the crocodile relate to each other in the scene so I have no reason to care, even if I liked monkeys enough to be sad that the croc wanted to eat it.

Just then, a car pulls up with an arguing family in it. The parents are having the cliche argument about directions and travel plans, while the little girl is just concerned that her little yap dog named Snoopy has jumped out of the car. The girl, Angie (Kyle Richards), chases Snoopy while mother Faye (Marilyn Burns!) and father Roy (William Finley, the Phantom of the Paradise, himself!) keep arguing. Judd limps out to greet them, Roy asks to use the restroom, which Judd directs him to. Faye asks Judd how far away Tyler is, which Judd advises is maybe an hour away.

And then Buck pulls up, to Judd's great annoyance. Buck is inquiring about a room, but Judd in no certain terms wants him off his property. Buck hands him a wad of cash before leaving, which only solves Judd's resolve slightly. While Angie plays on the porch and pokes the monkey with a stick, her mother watches the water in the pen nervously, and Judd mutters about how he won't have all this coming and going in his hotel, Apparently the monkey died of boredom, which upsets Angie greatly. Judd is somewhat unconcerned about his dead monkey.

Though if Angie was upset about the monkey, you can imagine how she feels when she sees Snoopy squeeze himself through a hole in the fence while barking his foool head off. Before Angie's horrified eyes, as she tries to grab Snoopy, a really bad alligator puppet attacks Snoopy. It's a quick glimpse, but there are so many things wrong with this puppet: A) It's clearly an alligator, B) its lower jaw is firmly locked in place while its upper jaw flaps open to swallow the dog, and C) it's maybe five feet long, tops. I mean, its head is smaller than the yap dog it's eating.

Now, a five foot alligator could certainly mess up your day, but it's not exactly going to be biting any mules in two.

To make matters worse, as the parents grab their crying daughter and Judd hurries them inside, we see the puppet again holding a struggling Snoopy in its jaws. This shot lingers longer and, again, the alligator puppet is clearly indicating an animal five feet long at most. Judd ushers them to a room, unable to stop babbling about how the old croc will eat anything and doesn't know any better. Inside the room, Roy lays Angie on the bed while Faye tries to calm her down. Roy sits in a corner, clearly trying to hold himself together as well.

Judd walks away from the room, seemingly more upset about the accidental death of a dog than he was about murdering a woman in cold blood earlier. Of course, that kind of disproportionate remorse is not uncommon even in neurotypical individuals. Roy and Faye snipe at each other, while Roy has a positive meltdown. He literally makes a fist towards Faye's head while clinching his teeth and letting air escape through those teeth like he's trying to crush her skull with his mind. Downstairs, Judd wanders around turning on lamps and dusting while listening to the sounds of Angie crying and her parents arguing. He's also listening to country music in case that noise wasn't objectionable enough.

And then another car pulls up. Jesus, this place seemed to be stuffed somewhere in the bayou earlier but now it's getting more traffic than rest stop with a fast food joint. The car's driver, Harvey Wood (Mel Ferrer!) gets out while his passenger, Libby (Crystin Sinclaire) stays put and watches him go with an odd glare on her face. Harvey asks to rent a room for himself and one for Libby, who is his daughter. He shows Judd a picture of Clara and Judd recoils, telling him to go to "the local prostitution house for that." That turns out to be a mistake because Harvey won't stop grilling Judd over whether he's seen the girl in the photograph and how he can get to the brothel. Clara is his other daughter, naturally.

Libby calms her father down--who then hilariously calls Judd "old-timer" despite him being clearly older than Judd--before she apologizes to Judd and explains it's been a rough day. Libby unloads their bags, which Judd helpfully takes inside but goes with Harvey when he insists on going into town to investigate the brothel. Back upstairs, Faye puts her cigarette out in an ashtray and Roy chuckles, "Why don't you grind your cigarette out in my eye?" What the hell are these two on?! Jesus, I've seen my parents have more sensible arguments than this on road trips.

Faye then takes her wig off, which means the movie is now deliberately messing with my ability to tell which wigs are bad on purpose. Roy's meltdown crescendos into him pretending that Faye has gouged his eye out and he's trying to find it on the floor. Faye has had enough by this point, but then Roy starts barking (!) and Faye breaks down crying and asking if he wants her to throw herself to the alligators. After pretending to be an alligator, this somehow inspires Roy to march authoritatively out of the room and down the stairs. Judd tries to stop Roy when he sees that the man is fetching his shotgun from his car's trunk and loading it with shells. Judd pleads with the man that it's no common gator in the pen but a croc from Africa. Judd goes on about how he got the crocodile from someone named Frank Buck and nobody has any idea how old the croc might be because "they don't never die!"

Sadly, that's somewhat less than true.

Judd begins overacting and ranting about "get me the uniform" while Roy overacts about how the dangerous animal has to be killed and throws stuff into the pen before firing wildly into the water. Upstairs, Angie freaks out but Faye just tells her, "Daddy's off to slay the dragon." (Did I mention that I called my remake "Dragonkeeper" instead of actually by this film's title?) At any rate, the dragon slaying is stopped when Judd runs up and buries a scythe in Roy's back. And then in Roy's chest. Roy shoots Judd in the foot before collapsing on the railing and dropping the shotgun into the water. Judd cackles and is about to finish Roy off when a bad crocodile puppet smashes through the railing (told you it wasn't safe) and grabs Roy in its jaws. You'll notice even in the quick shots of it that this puppet is a good three times the size of the one that ate Snoopy and is a little more vaguely crocodile-shaped. Of course, we're used to size-changing crocodiles around these parts.

"Mmm. Ham."

Even Judd looks terrified and runs off as Roy is dragged under the water. Meanwhile, Faye assures Angie that "Daddy took care of everything." Judd, for his part, limps back into his room and eats some white powder from a packet. Given he says, "Happy C make me feel better already," I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is cocaine. Oh, and his leg that was shot? It's a wooden leg. Hence his limp.

Well, now that Angie has fallen asleep, Faye decides to go take a bath. She stands at the stair railing and calls for Roy to bring up her suitcase, but when she sees Judd he just tells her that her husband will be up in a minute and scurries off. We watch Faye undress in real time, intercut with Judd bringing everyone's luggage up. It quickly begins to feel like the world's most lethargic burlesque routine.

Except when she gets to the point of shutting the water off and wetting her feet--while oddly still wearing most of her clothes--Judd barges into the bathroom. He rants about, "I know he seen it," before wrapping her in the shower curtain and tying her up while he slaps at her head. The screaming wakes Angie, who runs in to the bathroom to see her mom being attacked and runs outside. Judd pursues the little girl but is utterly unable to hit her with his scythe. She flees into the crawlspace under the porch, so he just locks her in. Faye gets free and runs downstairs screaming for her daughter and husband--but Judd chases her back up the stairs. Her pleas for mercy don't sway the madman.

When next we see Faye, Judd is sitting in her room hooting at her--while she is tied to the bed with tape over her mouth. Judd babbles about how he abided by the rules and regulations, but they didn't and they came for his uniform. Meanwhile, Angie finds one path to freedom is blocked by the crocodile and then gets cornered by rats. No one is currently available to answer her screams, though.

Harvey and Libby are meeting with Sheriff Martin (Stuart Whitman), meanwhile, and Harvey is antagonizing Martin about allowing Miss Hattie's to keep running. Libby calms the situation down and eventually convinces the sheriff to take them to Miss Hattie's to find out if Clara is still there. Back at the Starlight, Judd has decided to crawl under the porch after Angie, which seems like it would be an exercise in frustration for an old man with one leg.

Martin, Harvey, and Libby go to see Miss Hattie in her office. When she's shown the photograph of Clara she responds that she's never seen her before in such an obviously false manner, it's amazing that none of the characters pick up on it. Then she finds out they're staying at Judd's and she explains some fo Judd's backstory. He used to be a regular, but all he wanted to do was look at the girls and babble, so she eventually had to run him off because he was scaring them. She then says that Judd thinks his "big ol' gator" is really a crocodile from Africa that will never die unless it's killed and that it was the croc/gator that bit his leg off.

While I find the implication that Judd has decided an ordinary alligator is an exotic, immortal crocodile from Africa--and the uncertainty of its true nature does afford the filmmakers a bit of leeway in not having to actually make their cheap prop look like a crocodile or an alligator, specifically--having the beast be the one that cost Judd his leg doesn't really make much sense. The implication so far has been that he was a veteran who went off the deep end after being wounded in combat, so blaming the leg on the croc doesn't make any damn sense from that perspective.

The group excuses themselves from Miss Hattie's company. Meanwhile Judd, who hilariously brought his scythe along under the house, chases Angie around the crawlspace--but he's interrupted by Martin arriving with the Woods. Harvey is dropped off, while Martin and Libby head back into town for some food. Harvey is just entering the hotel when he hears Angie screaming. He goes to investigate the entrance to the crawlspace--and Judd rushes up from the porch and buries his scythe in Harvey's throat. Then, rather hilariously, Harvey stumbles towards Judd with the scythe stuck in his throat while Judd backs away in a panic.

"Sir, I believe you dropped this."

Judd then begins hopping around, laughing and clapping as Harvey collapses with his legs dangling in the croc pen. Judd goes to retrieve his scythe just as the croc grabs Harvey's legs. This leads to madman and beast having a darkly hilarious tug-of-war with the still-living Harvey. The croc wins, but Judd gets his scythe back. He then rants and raves to himself, in a bit that suggests he just might hear the croc talking to him. And for all Judd is an obvious loon from frame one, Neville Brand plays him to the hilt. It's easily one of the best performances in the film.

Granted, that's not saying much.

At a delightful local bar where we are introduced to one of the locals saying to his friend, "Colored, hell, God damn n***er if you ask me," in a hur, hur voice, Martin and Libby walk past our old pal Buck. Buck is playing pool with his date, Lynette (Janus Blythe), who is being ogled by every creep in the joint as she bends over to take her shot. Buck's friend, Marlo (David Carson), a spastic greasy sort you might call a hipster these days, tries to pick a fight with one of the creeps. Despite looking rather like Stephen King and avoiding confrontation, the creep almost kicks Marlo's ass but decides not to when Buck reminds Marlo that it's his turn at pool.

Martin apologizes to Libby for not being able to do more to help, while they discuss her sister. Martin orders coffee while Libby orders a chicken-fried steak (damn it, now I want some), and the waitress lets Martin know that Buck is causing trouble. Martin just tells her to let Buck know he's being watched, and after she leaves Libby reveals that the mad dash to find Clara began because their father is very ill and wanted to see his daughter one last time before the end. Well, I suppose he did at least get to be reunited with his daughter in a crocodile's stomach.

Martin tells Buck and Lynette to move out, which Buck throws a tantrum over but does eventaully leave--threatening a nerdy guy on his way out. Buck decides he and Lynette should go to the Starlight to fornicate. Judd is furious and jumps up and down, angrily telling them to "git, git, git", but Buck just grabs the room key himself while Lynette flirts with Judd (!) because she knows he just acts mean to hide that he's an old softie. Buck tells Judd that if he doesn't let them have a room, he'll come back and shove a stick of dynamite up the crocodile's butt--and then the lustful couple adjourns to their chamber. Judd is left to go back to grumbling and mopping up blood,

Martin drops Libby off at her car, while assuring her that Clara will turn up. Meanwhile, Faye tries to struggle out of her restraints; Buck and Lynette get naked (Buck wants to come in through the back door with her, too, which she is also not down for); Angie screams for help; and Judd cranks up the country music radio to try and muffle the sounds of his prisoners. However, even Buck can't hellp noticing something odd is afoot and he throws some pants on to go yell at Judd. Buck hears Angie and goes to investigate.

Unfortunately, Buck is kind of an idiot and does so by leaning over the porch into the croc pen. Judd walks up behind Buck, but somehow the muttering and ramblings combined with a terrified girl's crying don't clue Buck in--and into the water he goes. Buck hollers threats at Judd, while Judd laughs, "That old croc'll eat anything. Even old Buck!" And what do you know, he's right!

Man, those Dream Warriors really learned how to beat Freddy at his own game.

Lynette throws on a shirt to go investigate Buck's screaming, while Judd laughs maniacally as Buck is...what's the phrase? Devoured Conscious? Chewed Awake? No, no, that's right: Masticated Breathing! Lynette comes down to the porch and Judd chases her into the woods, wielding his scythe. Unfortunately for Judd, a passing motorist happens upon her and thus she is driven to safety while he gets himself lost in the woods.

Libby meanwhile, arrives to a seemingly empty hotel where the radio is now blaring what sounds like a polka in Spanish. She goes into her room and--sigh--gets undressed in real time. Although, perhaps to make up for rendering a striptease boring the last time, we find out after Libby unbuttons her dress that the only thing she was wearing under it was a pair of panties. It shows an interesting shift in the preconceptions of horror films that Libby reads as the "final girl" but she's one of the three women who get naked in the film.

Judd walks back to the hotel, worn out from his trek through the woods. However, he gets a wonderfully grinchy idea and decides to try and cut a hole in the fence between the crawlspace and the croc pen. However, the croc decides this means that it's time to try and eat its master so Judd is forced to pound it on the head with the scythe to keep it at bay. Libby is brushing her hair and generally wandering around topless when Judd finally succeeds in cutting open the fencing. The croc crawls through the hole--and we get a nice close-up of its tail that reveals it is far too round for a croc's tail.

Angie screams as she hides from the croc and Libby hears, but she also hears Faye and goes to find the  poor woman tied up. Libby unties her as Angie manages to elude the croc and climb out of the hole and up the outside fence of the pen. Libby and Faye run down the stairs, only for Judd to intercept them. He chases them into Libby's room and slices Faye good with the scythe but then stumbles and nearly goes out the window. Libby abandons Faye, fleeing outside, but she does try to rescue Angie from the top of the fence. Unfortunately, Angie has lost her balance and hangs precariously over the water, where the croc is waiting.

Judd throws Faye off the stairs and then runs outside and tries to knock Angie off the fence. He didn't bank on Faye recovering enough to push him over the railing. The croc decides it would rather go for the larger meal within easy reach and grabs Judd by the head to drag him into the water. Martin pulls up then in time to be no use at all, aside from comforting our survivors. And then Judd's wooden leg bobs to the surface of the water. The End, as that dreadful electronic score pounds on.

"You ungrateful suitcase! Who brought you up out of that New York sewer, huh?"

When your feature debut is considered to be one of the films that revolutionized the horror genre, it's going to raise the stakes for your follow-up a lot higher than is really fair. So the fact that Tobe Hooper was making this film as his follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did the film no favors. It would have to have been amazing to not be seen as a disappointment, and boy is this film not amazing.

However, I have to say the extremely negative popular opinion of this film is exceptionally harsh. Yes, it is technically a killer crocodilian film--though, despite its release date and concept, there's almost nothing in this film that suggests it was intended to cash in on Jaws in any way---and we know how bad those can be. Most of the acting is hilariously dreadful in a variety of ways, particularly William Finley's truly inexplicable performance as Roy. And, as I said before, the entire film feels exceptionally cheap like an off-Broadway cast reunion show on PBS with a killer crocodile in the middle of it.

In spite of all that, I can't say I actually disliked this film. While Neville Brand's Judd is an obvious out-and-out maniac, in a way that makes him far less effective a villain than a seemingly harmless young man like Norman Bates, he's still an enjoyable villain. I mean, it's hard not to identify with the guy who doesn't want his pet killed because some bozo couldn't keep a better eye on the family dog--so he's a very briefly sympathetic villain. And the scene of Angie trying to elude the croc in the crawlspace is genuinely well-done and effective. The effects for the croc actually even get pretty good for a bit!

Ah, yes, I need to definitely rant a while on the crocodile. Or the alligator. Or the allodile. It's fitting that the movie can't decide if the beast is a crocodile or an alligator, because the effects folks sure as hell couldn't. The puppet that eats Snoopy, as I said, is very clearly an alligator--in addition to being way too small. The puppet used for the rest of the film is harder to pin down. I won't get super nerdy and say something like, "The osteoderm pattern on its back clearly is that of an alligator," because the people making the puppet obviously wouldn't know the difference. This thing looks like a rubber alligator toy. You can't honestly say what it's supposed to be because it doesn't actually look like either one.



The height of scientific realism.

The shape of the head is too rounded for a crocodile, but too long and narrow for an alligator. The teeth are all basically a uniform size and length, which doesn't describe either animal's dentition. You can call it a crocodile or call it an alligator and you're technically right either way. It's also pretty clearly a stiff prop that can only open its mouth--probably with the lower jaw locked in place while the upper jaw flops open, like the smaller puppet, but the large prop at least covers that a bit better--and is obviously just being thrust forward by some enthusastic stagehands. It kind of renders a lot of the tension inert when your monster is so clearly an inanimate prop.

It's really a shame they didn't spring for a more realistic prop, since it actually gets a fair amount of screentime. (Obviously, I'd have preferred even more screentime because I love crocodilians, but I'll take what I can get) I mean, I don't know how much of the budget went towards the prop allodiles, but it clearly wasn't enough and it doesn't appear to have been spent on sets or make-up. The only make-up effect more involved than some fake blood is Harvey's death scene and the old age make-up on Miss Hattie is truly unfortunate. She looks like a zombie that was given lines by mistaken.

As a horror film, this isn't exceptionally effective. I certainly can't imagine anyone seeing this and having nightmares about a one-legged man feeding them to a rubber crocodile, and there's definitely a reason I've never encountered a cult around this film--certainly not one anything close to the one for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and even Lifeforce has more of a following. (Not that surprising, though) This is not a very good film and there's no geting around that.

However, I still can't say I dislike it. The central premise is great, there are some memorable (if not horribly effective) set pieces, and while it starts slow the movie gets off to a roaring clip at about 30 minutes in and is rarely dull from then on. So while it may not be a good movie, I have to say that is actually a fun one.

Though, given the way this feels like a stage play, I was clearly wrong for not trying to write a musical version instead of a remake. Somebody find me a composer!

Today's review, brought to you be the letter E! Hit the banner for the other Celluloid Zeroes' reviews for E!

HubrisWeen 2015, Day 4: Demon of Paradise (1987)

I have a definite fondness for Jaws rip-offs and my favorite Universal Monster is The Creature From The Black Lagoon. So you can imagine that any combination of these two elements is likely to get my attention. (Like Shallow Water, obviously) It's rather a shame--and quite a surprise, really--that there's so few films that do combine these two great flavors.

Sure, there's Humanoids From The Deep, but what else truly qualifies? Zaat and Octaman? Hardly, they both came before Jaws, so they can't be accused of having the good taste to rip it off.

You might think, based on the poster art, that Demon of Paradise is another example of an oddly rare breed. Well, that's debatable. You see, the artwork is sort of dishonest. There's no fish man in this movie, but it's something much rarer:

This is a movie about an amphibious lizard man.

Now, if you're anything like me, then--as cool as that fish man in the poster art is and as unlikely as it may be that the film's monster can live up to that poster--you've suddenly perked up and become even more interested in this film. Of course, find any random review of it on the web and you'll decide your excitement is misplaced. The critical consensus on this film seems to be about as positive as an Adam Sandler film.

Well, fie on the popular opinion. I love this stupid movie.

We open in "Kihono, Hawaii," but of course, like Up From the Depths this is really the Philippines. Out on a boat, some ne'er-do-wells are doing an exchange of dynamite for money. Once the sellers have departed, the jerks still in the boat start tossing dynamite into the lake. There's talk of getting out of there before the sheriff arrives, but he's already on his way--Sheriff Keefer (William Steis), who oddly spends the whole film wearing a slouch hat with the brim folded up on both sides, is riding at the bow of a fan boat with several deputies.

He's the least of their worries, though. As one jerk lights a bundle of dynamite, some scaly clawed hands grab the boat and shake it. The doofus drops the dynamite right by the box of sticks and KA-BOOM! Keefer arrives on the scene after the flames have died down, concludes the dynamite fishers have blown themselves up--and decides that's enough investigating and steers back for home. He therefore does not see the scaly head that rises from the water and watches him go.

The dynamite smugglers, meanwhile, are having a bit of a squabble. There's four of them and two of them, Snake (David Light) and Blue (Joe Mari Avellana), get to stay in a crummy little hut on the water packing sticks of dynamite, while the other two, Langley (Nick Nicholson) and Shelton (Henry Strzalkowski), get to lounge around the local resort. The two who hang out at the resort claim they do so to meet buyers but it remains a sore spot you aren't going to care about.

Meanwhile, Keefer stops by a local native village to make sure they turn in any dynamite fishers. The village chief (Angel Buenaventura) knows that none of his people are guilty of such a thing, but their catch of late has ben terrible--and he blames it on Akua. As you may have guessed, Akua is a legendary water monster that is not so legendary after all. The chief believes the tribe needs to appease Akua before it's too late. One of the tribe's fishermen (Ramon D'Salva) scoffs at the backwards thinking of the chief and heads out with his son, Koby (Hero Bautista) to go fishing.

The chief is not the only person who thinks Akua might be real. Keefer goes to visit Annie (Kathryn Witt), a herpetologist staying in a nearby hut. we know she's a herpteologist because she tells us, but the movie doesn't entirely bear that out. For one thing, she has a stuffed pangolin in her office and when Keefer starts toying with it and saying that he thought girls were supposed to be afraid of lizards, she takes it from him while talking about saving lizards from her sister's cat. The whole time it's clear that both characters in the scene think the pangolin is a lizard.

At any rate, she's not convinced that Akua doesn't have some basis in fact. What exactly she thinks Akua might be is not addressed yet, but naturally she has the right idea. For the fisherman who earlier scoffed at Akua's existence catches something in his net--and when he hauls it up he discovers it's one pissed off lizard man.

"This is not the kind of fishnets I ordered!"

Akua's first act upon surfacing is not to try and kill the fisherman and Koby, however. The beast turns and swims away as fast as it can, dragging the canoe behind. The fisherman wraps the net around a pole on the canoe and makes Koby jump to safety--but he already knows his foot is tangled in the net's rope and he goes down with the canoe.

Word gets back to Keefer, but on his way to investigate he discovers that it also got back to Ike Baskerville (Frederick Bailey, the film's screenwriter), the obnoxious comic relief local reporter who chases after Keefer's car in his junker while waving a hand-written "Press" sign out the window. Ike's car is practically on fire when the two vehicles pull up to the dock beside the resort owned by Cahill (Laura Banks). Cahill wants the smoking piece of shit moved, but after a token attempt to extinguish it, Keefer heads on to the dock and Ike follows despite the deputies' best efforts.

In the fan boat ride to the native village, Ike tells Keefer he won their bet--he's found out Keefer's story. Keefer was a sheriff in Reno, Nevada but couldn't catch a psycho killer there and resigned in disgrace. Ike gloats to the deputies in the boat while Keefer sulks. Look, I realize this was pre-internet and all, but that doesn't seem like it would be that hard a story for somebody to dig up. Don't get smug, Ike.

They also observe on their way the resort's only real guests, a model named Gabby (Leslie Scarborough, here credited as Leslie Huntly) and her photographer, Ted (Paul Holmes), taking photos by the water. As you may have guessed, they're setting up Chekov's T&A here.

At the village, Keefer is shown the body of the fisherman. He's been clawed up pretty good, and the chief declares the wounds to be from the claws of Akua. According to the chief, Koby said the creature was headed up the river to the lake. Attempting to interview Koby doesn't get very far because Ike tries to wedge himself in by taking photos and practically drooling over the story. In fact, when they get back to the resort Ike immediately gets on the phone to some tabloid with the story. When asked if he has proof, he scoffs that he doesn't have any proof because Akua doesn't really exist and the art department can surely print up a picture of Godzilla instead. Sure, if they want to get sued but good.

When the tabloid quibbles over the $75 he wants, Cahill appears and hangs up the phone. See, she has a counter proposal for Ike. What if they work together to use Akua to their mutual advantage? As Cahill sees it, Akua is basically Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster rolled into one and they can use the creature to bring in the tourists she has so lacked of late. Sadly, this does not mean Werner Herzog will show up later, but on the other hand there is not going to be a Japanese country band. And on the other side of the resort, Langley and Shelton discuss that they are going to cut the other two mooks out of an upcoming deal on more dynamite from the Mob. I was not aware that the dynamite trade was such a big deal for organized crime, but okay.

Meanwhile, the medical examiner is only able to tell Keefer and Annie that the fisherman was lacerated before death and the weapon was crude, but that's all he can say for sure. He did find a bit of bone or a claw that he turns over to Annie for analysis, with Keefer's blessing. Returning to Annie's bungalow, the two find that all the natives are getting the hell out of dodge. Where they are going is anybody's guess, but Annie has a hypothesis about what they're running from. In her hut she leafs through a book of images of ancient art and then shows Keefer the page featuring a hulking lizard man drawn in comic book style.

"It's a carnivorous lizard man of the Triassic Age, about 200 million years ago," Annie explains. Well, obviously, everyone knows that. Kudos to them for getting the time period of the Triassic right, even if it was a Period not an Age, and I very much doubt there were humanoid lizards running around. She further elaborates that, "It's also the missing step-stone between reptiles and early primates."

I'm sorry, that loud boom you just heard was my head just exploding from the stupid of that line.

She declares that the creature is nocturnal and that night would be the best time to search for it. Keefer is not convinced the creature even exists, but he trusts her judgment. Meanwhile, Shelton gets the call that the Mob's shipment is on its way. As they head out to pick it up, Langley whistles lwedly at Gabby and she responds with the immortal, "Take a hike, spaz-ass." Watch out, David Mamet.

Have I mentioned the huge American flag Keefer flies on his fan boat? Because it's not fooling anybody. Investigating the wreckage of the fisherman's canoe (why hadn't they done that already?), Annie finds a claw buried in the wood, while a POV cam watches from the water. She takes it back to her lab and sees that it matches the smaller fragment from the corpse. How does that work, exactly? It broke off part of a claw in the fisherman and then broke off the rest in his boat?

Elsewhere on the lake, Blue gets fed up and goes to the resort to talk to Shelton and Langley about the fact that their dynamite needs to be sold pronto. Snake asks him to pick up a 6-pack, while he sits there fishing. Snake gets a bite so big it breaks his pole, and a few more minutes of film are used up.

Keefer and Annie go to tell Cahill (currently bullshitting with Ike) that she may want to consider keeping her guests off the lake until they confirm if Akua is real or not. Cahill refuses to close the beaches, of course, insisting she obviously would not have offered a reward for the creature if she thought it was real. So that goes nowhere. Even Keefer is beginning to think Akua is a hoax, but Annie is determined to find Akua and will camp out on the lake until she does.

Meanwhile, Blue overhears Gabby complain to Ted that she's bored and wants some coke to sniff. Ted points out she used it all. After her brattiness and complaining about the green beer annoys Ted into leaving, Blue tells her he's got lots of nose candy for her. She goes for it incredibly eagerly and next thing you know she's following Blue's jeep in her car. Blue leads her into the shack and offers her what looks like an urn (?) full of cocaine, Snake is not happy about the new arrival because he keeps hearing something sloshing around in the water outside their shack and it's got him on edge.

Blue decides to go party with Gabby, but is interrupted when Snake sees a scaly head disappear next to some dry ice fog and calls for his companion to come look. The head reappears and this time Blue sees it, too. With both men distracted, Gabby takes the whole container of coke and sneaks away to her car. Of course, Blue and Snake are distracted from their rage at being ripped off when they see that Akua is now waving at them from the water. Snake rudely responds to this by shooting at Akua with a shotgun.

"Oh, hey guys, new to the neighborhood? I brought you a gift basket."

This rudeness is repaid when Blue rushes into the shack to grab something from the box of dynamite and knocks over an oil lamp (!) which immediately sets the floor ablaze. Snake and Blue notice the fire licking at the boxes of dynamite just in time to widen their eyes and then the shack massively explodes. Akua watches this from the water with a look of bewilderment. I mean, you can't honestly blame him for that, after all.

The next day, Keefer and his deputies find the wreckage and declare it must have been the factory of the dynamite smugglers. They also find their boat and Keefer orders his men to find out who owns it.

Wouldn't you know it, though, word of a lizard man travels fast because a bus full of tourists is being greeted at the resort by Cahill and Ike in a gorilla suit. Cahill informs the tourists that they'll be having a "Beast Egg Hunt" tomorrow and the winner gets a free vacation.  She also waves off one tourist's questions about killings, while Ike introduces himself to a woman named Luisa (Liza Baumann) by offering her a plastic banana. This oddly works. Shelton and Langley are about nervous about all the new people at the hotel, but they hope it just means they'll stick out less.

Sadly, Bigfoot Goes Hawaiian bankrupted the studio that year.

Keefer confronts Cahill about the danger of the crowds, but she just pulls the "my taxes pay your salary" routine and tells him he should station an officer around the resort to protect her guests. Annie, meanwhile, goes scuba diving and finds a human skull under a...potted plant? It comes to nothing so I have no idea what the point even was, other than padding.

Keefer meets up with Annie outside her tent and the two take a moonlit stroll, while talking about how reproduction for Akua would work. After establishing it takes two, just like humans, Annie awkwardly says, "I always wanted to kiss a man in a cowboy hat." But since none are around, she kisses the man in a slouch hat. A splash interrupts them, suggesting even Akua doesn't buy this sudden romance. Then Ike and Luisa jump out of the bushes and Ike reacts to Keefer drawing a gun on him by basically calling him a buzzkill. He and Luisa turn and walk back into the bushes, while Keefer offers to buy Annie a drink.

Ike and Luisa hop in the nearest boat. As they get hot and heavy, they fail to notice that Akua has appeared nearby with dry ice fog and a Klieg light behind him, The beast knocks the oar off the boat, which gets their attention. Then Akua slashes Ike's face with his claws (way to make us root for the monster) while waving at Luisa, who dives into the lake. Akua tips the boat over to dump Ike in and then swims after Luisa, who is pulled under the water without a sound. Keefer and Annie heard the screams and come out to investigate.

Stupid hipster monsters and their vape pens.

Keefer sees the oar floating out in the lake and wades hip deep to retrieve it, only for a barely living Ike to grab him by the arm. Keefer drags him ashore, where we get entirely too good a look at his "wounds" as he dies. Annie also does one of the most hilariously awkward "look away in horror and then look back" takes you will ever see.

Cahill, as you may have guessed, is still refusing to acknowledge that she needs to close her resort. In fact, when Ted interrupts her argument with Keefer and Annie to ask if something happened on the lake the previous night, Cahill dismisses it as "a boating accident." Har har, At any rate, short of a court order Cahill refuses to close down and after Annie warns her that Akua can come on land if it chooses, Cahill orders her off the property. Keefer is powerless to do anything and Annie is frustrated with him, which leads to some dialogue between the two would-be lovers that brings a whole new shine to trying too hard. Dig the wordplay on "cold-blooded," Daddio.

Cahill, meanwhile, advises her guests that Akua came ashore in the night and laid eggs on the property. She tasks them with rounding them up, and whoever finds the big Akua egg wins a free vacation--but Akua may be lurking anywhere! As Cahill watches from the deck, commenting on the hunt with a megaphone, "Akua" turns out to be a guy in swim trunks and a monster mask who does a hula dance after his obligatory, "Rar!"

Finally, one tourist finds the jumbo prize "egg" when he digs near some leaves and a rubber crocodile head pops out at him, with a ball in its mouth. I'm honestly not sure if the hands holding the croc head are intentional or a goof. The fact that the tourist noticeably does not have a mustache in his close-up but does have one in every other scene, is definitely a goof, however.

Gabby is watching from a boat on the lake while Ted takes photos of her, When he tells her to ignore it and instead concentrate and "feel the lens," she snaps at him to, "Feel this!" And then she lifts up her shirt to show him her breasts. This may be the only time I have ever seen "flashing someone your breasts" used in the same way as giving them the finger. And, after a joke about whether she would ever be accepted as a "serious actress," Gabby peels off her top and dives into the lake instead of posing for more shots. Ted shoots her anyway, not bothering to tell her why he briefly froze after seeing something pass underneath her. Luckily for her, it was either a false alarm or Akua wasn't hungry.

Meanwhile, Annie discovers an obvious doll on her next dive that I think is supposed to be Luisa. I'm not sure why Akua just drowned and stashed her, but it's not like he's really been eating his victims so far. Maybe he intended to mate with her and only discovered too late that she couldn't breathe under water. Although, it is rather interesting that in spite of my comment there this is one of the few gill man-type stories where the creature shows no inclination towards trying to mate with human women. Rather than report this to Keefer, Annie just goes back to her tent and stares at the water for...hours, apparently.

Back at the "Kihono Community Center", whose hand-painted sign is just sad, Keefer gets the confirmation that Shelton and Langley, whom he noticed looking suspicious earlier, are dynamite smugglers. He gives the word to bring them in. At night, Keefer heads to the resort as Cahill presents the paid vacation to the schlub who found the egg. Langley and Shelton have just picked up their order of dynamite from the Mob contact as Keefer arrives and a shootout results. Langley and Shelton run into Gabby and Ted, and Langley grabs Gabby while Shelton shoots Ted dead. The cops corner the smugglers by their boat as Gabby bites Shelton and runs away. Langley shoots at the cops from the boat, but Keefer fires back and his shotgun apparently hits the backpack full of dynamite because Langley and the boat explode instantly.

Akua watches this from the water. Shelton has recaptured Gabby and is running down the beach with her. He decides they should go into the lake to escape as the cops close in. Bad idea. Shelton is dragged under the water and then Akua looms up for all the cops to see, menacing Gabby with his trademark paw wave before Keefer drives him off with a couple shotgun blasts.

Apparently a real Akua is bad for business, because Cahill watches helplessly as her patrons all board the bus home in the morning. Keefer has traded his slouch hat in for a dark baseball cap as he delivers a close order to Cahill, advising that the National Guard will mobilize in a few days and maybe she can resume business then. As he heads out hunting, Annie joins them and begs them to try not to kill the beast. She offers him a tranquilizer dose, but he can't make any promises.

Hilariously, Keefer's plan is to sit in his fan boat with three deputies, one of whom is tasked with hammering on a pipe in the water to attract the creature. It works and Akua starts off by spinning their boat around and then preventing them from starting the fan by grabbing the blade. (How it knew to do that is beyond me) As Keefer and the others take pot shots at it, one deputy falls into the water. When another tries to grab him, Akua surfaces and drags both of them under.

Annie arrives in her speed boat just as Akua decides to flip the fan boat over. She actually manages to save both Keefer and the remaining deputy, since apparently Akua is more bothered by bright light than shotgun blasts. When they get back to dock, the ever-sensitive Cahill loudly asks if Keefer can do anything right since he failed to kill the beast. Man, Jaws rip-offs really love to make their Mayor Vaughn stand-ins as assholish as possible.

The next day, the National Guard arrives. They choose to just sit around watching as Keefer tosses bundles of dynamite out of a helicopter. We've come full circle, eh? Hilariously, this is all set to music that wants so badly to be Goblin's soundtrack to Dawn of the Dead that the movie might as well have its composer credited as "Nilbog." Of course, we see Akua moving below the helicopter but the characters can't notice this until the chopper lands so Keefer can switch places with some nobody. After that is accomplished, the helicopter sees Akua and hovers about ten feet above him, Show of hands, who can see where this is going?

Well, you probably didn't guess how hilariously inept it would be. In obviously reversed footage, Akua leaps out of the water. His paws grab the landing strut and, in a long shot, we see an obvious Akua doll drag an obvious toy helicopter into the water. They don't even bother to foley in a properly loud splash. Once in the water, one guy swims away from a full-scale mock-up of the helicopter that then explodes into paltry flames. Words cannot fully describe the hilarious awfulness of this sequence. It is worth the price of the DVD alone.

Darkman 4: Swim, Darkman, Swim!

That night, a rainstorm blows in. The national guard colonel (Joe Zucchero) advises that they are pulling out, but he's leaving a token force behind in case. The colonel believes that the creature was killed in the explosion. When Annie counters that the corpse should have floated to the surface, the colonel declares that there must have been nothing left of it. Annie, however, stands in the rain and casts a significant look at the lake.

A few hours later, the rain having passed, one of the remaining guardsmen tells Keefer that since there's been no further sign that they'll pull out in the morning, too. Annie makes some coffee for the troops, like a typical female movie scientist, and begrudgingly offers some to Cahill, who seems to be finally feeling some guilt over risking people's lives. (Although, to be fair, can she really be blamed for any of the deaths since only one of them was a guest at her resort?)

As some of the guardsmen enjoy coffee next to that leaf-covered pit where the rubber crocodile head earlier burst forth. And now the real Akua does the same, and hilariously he has stored a klieg light in the pit with him. We get entirely too many good looks at Akua during the following sequence as lightning illuminates his leisurely rampage through the guard camp. To be fair, the head is not bad--it looks like a scaly werewolf with a crown of rubbery horns--but the body, while covered with some nicely done scales, is baggy and kind of formless. It's also covered in stringy "sea weed" that reminds me of nothing so much as the Salt Vampire from "The Man Trap" episode of Star Trek. The single row of plates running down the back to the tail it drags behind it just further compliments the "would be impressive as a Halloween costume" aesthetic.

Akua fails to get any of the guardsmen as everyone retreats back to the resort, discovering as they go that Akua is bulletproof. Everyone barricades the doors--but not so much the windows---and those with guns take potshots at Akua when it tries to break in. Unfortunately, it somehow gets underneath them and smashes up through the floor to drag Cahill to her death. Everyone flees out into the night again and hilariously one of the guardsmen yells for everyone to scatter. That seems to me to be the worst strategy, but you do you.

Somehow they all end up next to some stone ruins that look like the ones in Blood Surf a bit and then prepare to fire on the approaching Akua to make a last stand. Somehow, Akua grabs one guardsmen and drags him off into the jungle.

Satisfied for the night, Akua waits until the morning to return. However, seeing the sun rising over the trees, Akua realizes that it's a cheap monster suit and should not be out in direct sunlight. It flees and Annie points out that in daylight they have the advantage and there will be no greater time to get the beast. They follow its trail--I guess it's wounded, maybe--to a cave behind a waterfall. Inside, they split up into two teams. Annie, going with Keefer, brings her tranquilizer gun to the ready, apparently believing it's still possible to capture it.

Annie spots the beast and calmly aims at the creature. Keefer sees her doing this and decides it's his cue to fire his shotgun a foot from her ear (!) instead of letting her take the shot. She still does, though, and nails Akua with a dart to the gums. Like Anaconda, though, the beast just yanks the dart out--but this movie is actually less stupid, because the beast succumbs to the drug and falls over. Annie convinces everyone else not to shoot while she goes to investigate the creature, which is literally steaming. Is this thing supposed to be radioactive?!

Surprise! It was playing possum! Keefer and Annie scramble back as everyone else wastes their ammo shooting it. Hilariously, one guy gets fed up with shooting it and pulls his knife on the creature instead. He gets backhanded to death for his efforts. Annie fires a second dart and hits the creature in the gums again, but everyone else just keeps shooting. Notice several shots of "Annie" reacting to the guns going off beside her head.

Akua runs outside to stand beside the pool in front of the waterfall. Apparently sunlight no longer bothers it, but it is acting vaguely groggy--which is not really any different from its usual behavior. The guardsmen all take positions to shoot it some more. Then they start tossing grenades and, in one memorable shot, the explosion causes the poor suit actor to nearly trip over his tail.

"Can't we just hug it out?"

Finally, one guardsmen gets the idea to all throw their grenades at the same time. Somehow this explodes poor Akua's upper torso. This is a somewhat underwhelming way to kill off your lizard man, I might add.

Keefer then remarks that that's the end of it. Annie smirks sardonically and asks, "You ever pull the tail off a lizard?" So...what, Akua's remains are gonna wriggle around and gross everybody out? They didn't blow off its tail, they obliterated its vital organs! Yet, apparently we're supposed to infer this means that Akua is related to Reptilicus as we watch a chunk of bloody reptile flesh wash out into the lake. The End?

Oh, sorry, accidentally included a shot of Donald Trump.

Let's get one thing absolutely straight: Demon of Paradise is not a good movie. In virtually any respect you want to look at it, this is a bad movie. It wears its low budget on its sleeve, it pads the plot out with subplots that add up to nothing, and for about 90% of the movie its titular monster does nothing but wave at people and tip over boats.

And yet, damn it all, I adore this awful movie.

For one thing, maybe I'm just weird, but unlike most reviewers who tend to loathe this film I never found it boring. There are definite slow spots and the plot has about as much forward momentum as Last Year at Marienbad, but somehow the film never becomes dull to me. There may not be much happening, but there is always something happening and that something usually manages to be utterly stupid.

Take for instance the film's obligatory bit of topless female flesh. Gabby the model ends up doffing her top and going for a swim anyway, so there is absolutely no logical reason for the scene where she flashes Ted the photographer. Especially since she is obviously doing so to express annoyance. Find me one woman anywhere on Earth who has ever flashed her breasts at a guy to indicate that she is irritated with him, and I'll eat a trilby.

Then there's the herpetologist who thinks pangolins are lizards, that Triassic reptiles evolved into primitive primates, and that if you pull the tail off a lizard it grows a new lizard. If most of our heroine's scientific dialogue doesn't either make you cackle or boil your brain, then you're made of sterner stuff than I.

Of course, the acting in the film is awful, as well, but I doubt even Helen Mirren could pull off the material these actors were given. The writing is terrible, the direction is often delightfully incompetent, and outside of some cool explosions the special effects are the sarcastic kind of special. It all mixes together into something without any legitimate redeeming qualities, and I love it so. This film is absolute cheese.

If you have no patience and don't love a good, bad, or good-bad rubber monster suit: this movie is not for you. If you expect your monster movies to be any good at all, this movie is not for you. However, if you love a film that has no clue what it's doing and features a monster you feel sorry for because it's just so poorly executed, this is your movie.

At the very least, it's way more enjoyable than Up From The Depths. Not that that's hard.

Today's review brought to you by the letter D! Hit the banner above to see what the other Celluloid Zeroes chose for D!

HubrisWeen 2015, Day 3: The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

You may or may not realize it, but most of the movies I reviewed for Friday Fakeosaurus February had something in common besides the fact they contain bogus species of dinosaurs. That something is a "movie" called Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies, a VHS tape that I wore out as a kid.

I say "movie" because, despite an opening that posits it as some sort of documentary on dinosaurs in film and then goes on to feature some cool behind the scenes footage of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, including a pin-up photoshoot with Caroline Munro, everything afterward is nothing more than a parade of trailers for movies about dinosaurs. Of course, the "movie" advises you early on that its definition of a "dinosaur" is so general as to include any large monster. Hence trailers for The Land That Time Forgot; The Valley of Gwangi; The Giant Behemoth; and One Million Years B.C. play alongside Tarantula; The Giant Gila Monster; The Giant Claw; and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

I loved it, naturally. It was basically a list of movies that I needed to see. Of course, over twenty years since, I still haven't crossed Journey to the Beginning of Time and Valley of the Dragons off the list, and I only saw King Dinosaur via Mystery Science Theater 3000--and that's almost cheating.

Of course, obviously not every movie included in Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies was actually worth the effort--however minimal--I took to track it down. Some wore their poor quality on their sleeves. Even before I read reviews, there wasn't much chance of me going into The Loch Ness Horror expecting a good movie. Yet, some trailers definitely did their job--including the trailer for a film that promised a Jaws cash-in with a Plesiosaur-like creature taking the place of the shark.

There was no way I could have anticipated what the actual movie had to offer.

To begin with, the film opens with the mark of anti-quality: the logo for Crown International Pictures. Their logo looks a lot like that of Imperial Toys, and it's fitting because they seem to make the cinema equivalent of off-brand cheap plastic toys. If you see this logo before a film, you should gird your loins.

Dr. Richard Calkins (Bob Hyman) is enjoying a pipe outside of his mountain cabin, when his colleague Dan Turner (Richard Garrison) drives up an excitedly tells him to come quick: he and Susan Patterson (Kacey Cobb) have made a discovery that he has to see. Calkins begrudgingly agrees to come along but complains that Dan and Susan never make any discoveries in the middle of the day, which is about our only clue this is meant to be taking place at night. though it is pitch black when they get to the mine where Susan is waiting for them.

Dan is excited because they've broken into a new tunnel that he believes will prove all the legends of the area are true. In this tunnel is a cave painting that he and Susan believe to be several thousand years old. (And as movie cave paintings go, I've certainly seen less believable ones) The painting depicts what appears to be a shooting star flying over what is clearly a plesiosaur as several men on the shore await its approach with spears. Dan and Calkins agree that this is proof that dinosaurs survived all the way into the age of man, even though it's really only proof that aquatic reptiles did since there's not actually a dinosaur in the painting.

The painting proves prophetic, for just then a cartoon meteorite streaks over the mountains as Sheriff Steve Hansen (Richard Cardella) watches. It crashes into the lake and Steve radios it in. Meanwhile, Dan, Susan, and Calkins have to rush out of the mine as an earthquake strikes--apparently as a result of the meteorite strike. They make it out just in time as the mine collapses and the find of the century is lost.

Cut to the next morning as Steve pulls up to a local diner. Inside, the comic relief rednecks, Arnie Chabot (Glenn Roberts) and Mitch Kowalski (Mark Siegel), are ogling the waitress (Susy Claycomb) as she serves them coffee. And subtle they are not. Steve is there to get his thermos refilled with coffee, but Calkins calls him over. Apparently, Steve is going to be taking Dan and Susan out on the lake to dive for the meteorite. Calkins understands, saying that "for a paleontologist it's better than finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow." Uh, do you understand what a paleontologist does, doc?

Steve ends up talking Calkins into coming along, and the film oddly focuses on the waitress for way too long after they leave. At the boat, Dan and Susan express concern that with the mine collapsed their funding might get pulled, but Dan feels sure if they can recover the meteorite they'll have "two rare finds in 24 hours" and the university will have to let them keep working. Well, yeah, except one of those finds is not that rare and the actually rare one is buried under tons of rock without so much as a photograph of it.

Steve and Calkins stay up top while the young pair dive to the bottom of the lake. Steve apparently doesn't understand what Susan sees in Dan, but Calkins doesn't comment on what an odd comment that is to make. At any rate, Calkins suggests that if Dan can recover those cave paintings a lot of theories will have to be rethought. Dan and Susan come up, reporting that the bottom of the lake was too hot, at least 90 degrees (Fahrenheit or Celsius?) all over, and the meteorite could take weeks to be cool enough to recover.

There's an odd shot of a prop egg at the bottom of what is unmistakably a fish tank, and then we see a backpacker walking through the woods around the lake. He sets his pack down and pulls a handgun out of it, briefly pausing when he hears a low growling somewhere behind him. We cut to a quick shot of a prop plesiosaur head under the surface of the lake, and then a POV shot emerges from the lake and rapidly advances on the man's position. He turns and, apparently forgetting he just loaded a gun, screams at the sight of--a stop-motion Plesiosaurus roaring at him! He stumbles back over his pack and we cut away, but it's safe to assume that he's been eaten.

Of course, we can infer that a huge amount of time must have passed between when we saw the egg and when this guy got nommed by what can only be interpreted as a full-grown Plesiosaurus. And the stop-motion effects are by Dave Allen, so at least they're good. So good that a significant portion of them were featured in the trailer I saw as a kid. Rightly so, I'd say.

"Ach, laddie! I could use a spot o' help. I cannae seem to find me way back to the Loch."

Obviously, a short time later a man out recording wildlife sounds hears a growling sound and turns to look at the lake via his binoculars. There he sees the prop head of the Plesiosaurus floating in the lake. It's...not nearly as convincing as the stop-motion. I'd even argue that the Plesiosaurus in Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds is more convincing.

The guy calls Steve to report the sighting, but Steve is more interested in counting how many flies he can swat and writes the guy off as a cook. Incidentally, he's checking off dead flies on a sheet of paper that has a section marked "Me" and one marked "Flies", so now I have to wonder by what criteria the flies win because there are check marks in that section! Meanwhile, the stoop-motion beastie menaces some cows. Steve takes a call about missing cattle at the Ferguson Ranch more seriously. It turns out to just be a missing bull, but Steve isn't sure if he believes Mr. Ferguson's hunch that it's cattle rustlers.

Meanwhile, a man we'll much later discover is senator Jack Fuller (Marv Eliot) arrives at the dock with his fishing gear. He rents a rowboat from Arnie and Mitch, who insist on him paying $20 which he objects to but doesn't have much choice. Arnie just warns Fuller to have the boat back by 6 as he rows out. Mitch asks Arnie why he didn't tell Fuller that there hasn't been any fish caught in the lake for 2 months and Arnie scoffs that he isn't about to go broke on principles.

A nicely atmospheric mist rolls in around the boat as Fuller fishes, but the attempt to replicate it in the following shots that were clearly filmed in a tank are not so successful. It's also pitch black all of a sudden, though the water where we see the Plesiosaur lurking is much lighter. The beast strikes by knocking Fuller out of the boat, which largely involves him helpfully standing up (!) so he can fall out more easily. Rather than try to climb back into the boat, Fuller looks around dumbly until he sees the Plesiosaurus directly in front of him--and he pulls a face that looks more like Don Knotts seeing a ghost than anything resembling fright.

"Chiiiick! Oh, Chick!"

In an actually decent close-up, the eye of the beast turns toward him. And then Fuller helpfully sticks his legs into its open mouth so it can drag him beneath the waves. The boat is left to float empty.

Cut to some unfunny arguments about oars and motors with Arnie and Mitch, the two talk about how if Fuller stays out in the boat after 6 they'll get more money from him. Arnie comments that he'll probably stay out until dark. Notice it is daytime when they are saying this, when we just saw Fuller get eaten in full dark. Then they see the empty boat floating towards them, and Arnie refers to having rented the boat out "this morning." So I'm left unsure if the time issue was bad editing or not adjusting dialogue for when they could shoot.

They row over to the boat and discover it's full of blood (!) and Arnie suggests they fetch Calkins. Of course, your guess is as good as mine as to where all that blood came from since Fuller got eaten in the water. Steve arrives shortly and he and Calkins conclude that the man must have wounded his head falling overboard and bled into the boat. it's unlikely they'll find him but they need to start up a search at once--and in one of the few bits of good editing, the film cuts from Calkins starting a sentence to Steve finishing it as he talks to someone on the phone about the missing fisherman, He's sure that the man is dead, but they'll keep trying.

Meanwhile, we cut to Ross (Michael Hoover) and Paula Conway (Suzanne Lewis) driving past the town of Crater Lake. They're apparently some kind of married performing duo on their way to Las Vegas to start a new gig. Ross is also "English" but the actor is not quite up to that challenge. As they talk about Ross finally sobering up, their car dies. After an Arnie & Mitch interlude that's too "komical" to get into, we see the couple at a mechanic. Their engine is so hot it's smoking so he can't get to fixing it for hours. He suggests they go down to the lake and rent a boat while they wait.

Arnie & Mitch, meanwhile, are talking about the hoedown they're about to go to, as well as the motor that Mitch just fixed in their boat. Of course, Mitch had an extra piece left after he fixed it, but since it runs without the piece Artie tells him not to worry and tosses the part in the lake. Of course, it doesn't run after all--but that doesn't stop Arnie from renting it out to Ross and Paula for $25. And, "hilariously" the motor works for the couple.

Arnie and Mitch argue on their way to the hoedown, which results in Mitch throwing Arnie's hat in the lake and Arnie scuffing Mitch's new shoes. Mitch pushes Arnie in the lake and that does it. The two come to blows. Steve pulls up and just watches the two wrestling with a smirk on his face. They both end up in the lake, still squabbling--until Arnie lands on the severed, chewed up head of Fuller. Steve recovers the head with a plastic bag and then tells them to get back to their cabin and stay off the lake. Unfortunately, they don't remember they rented a boat out to the couple until Steve's parting demand to them as he pulls off is to not rent any boats, either. Arnie decides they better disregard rhe warning to stay off the lake and go find the couple before Steve finds out.

Two increasingly hilarious things happen next. One, despite a shot indicating it should be darker out, we see the prop head under the lake in broad daylight as it bumps its snout up against a solid white object. I can only assume this is the bottom of the Conways' boat as we cut to them, also in broad daylight, embracing in the boat. "There's so many stars," Paula says in awe, "I've never seen so many!" So either she's going blind or the moonlight in Crater Lake is really bright.

"He touched the butt!"

Their kissing is interrupted when their boat shakes, which would seem to indicate the shot of the Plesiosaurus bumping it should have happened then. Ross decides to gun the motor in response and ends up running them aground on a beach. Ross is knocked out, but he soon comes to in Paula's arms. She tells him that she saw something on the water--and then the stop-motion Plesiosaurus roars at them and advances towards them. Note that it's suddenly a lot slower than it's been on land in previous scenes. Paula runs to some nearby rocks and screams in terro, while Ross decides to--douse the boat in gasoline and set it on fire. This gambit works and the Plesiosaurus flees back into the lake, giving them an offended look over its shoulder as it goes.

And now the film takes a complete detour, so we can watch a guy with a greasy mullet and handlebar mustache load a gun in his apartment, before driving through a city to a liquor store. He grabs a bottle of booze and, instead of paying for it, draws his gun on the cashier. The cashier complains that it's the third time this month, but a woman walks in carrying a bag of groceries (!) and distracts the robber. He shoots the cashier, who has just grabbed a gun, and then shoots the woman through her mystery bag. He then grabs his bottle and leaves, not even bothering to try and get the money from the register as he steps over the dead woman.

The film continues to be weird as we look at Calkins via what is clearly meant to be the POV from the severed head he is examining. (Maybe it's also inside an anaconda?) Outside, Steve is waiting anxiously. Calkins comes out and over coffee the two discuss the odd details of the severed head. For one thing, the wounds were made by some kind of teeth that Calkins can't recognize. For another, the saliva he found in the wounds was teeming with a bacteria he couldn't recognize. (Not that anything will come of this, like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms) Here, Calkins casually informs us that 6 months have passed since the meteorite hit and that seems to be related since the fishing went bad and animals started disappearing shortly afterwards. Calkins declares that they should keep it to themselves for now, but Steve will warn everyone away from the lake just the same.

Arnie and Mitch find the Conways, apparently in a state of shock from what they witnessed. I guess they had a crippling fear of plesiosaurs. Mitch plays the sensitive one while Arnie gripes about the destroyed boat. After they see the couple onto an ambulance, Steve chews them out for renting the boat in the first place--not giving them a chance to explain that they rented it before the order to close down.

The film then spends more time with Arnie and Mitch set to whimsical Komedy music as they get drunk and argue over their money woes. Wasn't there a monster in this film? Could we get back to it, please? Wait, this sequence is still going. I don't want to see them get drunk and wander in the woods. I don't want to see them get scared by an owl and a log. No. Stop this. No. Why? Why?! Make it stop, for the love of--

At the diner, Steve investigates the car of the robber. The robber sees this through the window and hurries to his car as Steve is radioing it in. The two exchange gunfire and then a high speed chase ensues. The chase quickly ends up on some dirt roads. Hilariously, the robber suddenly bails out of his car before it goes over a cliff into a quarry. Oddly, they could drop a car off a cliff but not blow it up, because we just hear the explosion before cutting back to the burning car. Steve pursues the suspect past a cabin that Jason Voorhees ought to be hiding in. He manages to shoot the suspect in the leg just before they get to the lake...

...and then, in a completely silent shot, we see the robber reacting in horror at the sight of the plesiosaur prop head being waved around in front of the camera. Horrifying? No. Hilarious as all Hell? Yes. There's nothing but a smear of blood on a rock when Steve catches up to where the guy should be. So he phones Calkins and declares that he wants to comb the lake because there might be a creature in it after all.

Now, Steve mentions it's almost dark here. But it's broad daylight when he hears a sound while driving past the lake and wonders through foggy woods to find a flipper print--and then the Plesiosaurus chases him back to his car, which is suddenly only a few yards away. Steve finds that bullets just annoy it, but he manages to escape in his car.

Pictured: The only way to get me to start watching The Dukes of Hazzard.

Steve fetches Calkins and they go to examine the flipper prints. Calkins decides they should bring in Dan and Susan. Hearing Steve's description, Dan declares it sounds like "an aquatic dinosaur." (No. No. Not a freaking dinosaur) Steve then identifies a picture of a Plesiosaurus and Dan and Susan agree it must have been a fertile egg, somehow hatched by the meteorite,

As expected, Steve wants to kill it but Dan wants to capture it. Oddly, it's here that we find out that Fuller was a senator, because apparently the fiasco of a dead senator in his town is one of Steve's arguments for why an incredibly rare creature should be killed. I'm on Dan's side, though I kind of have to side with Steve when Dan admits he has no idea how to contain the plesiosaur. But he does come up with the idea of containing it inside a bay that could be sealed off. Steve agrees to call a town meeting to discuss the issue.

Cut to the prop plesiosaur head floating through the lake set to somebody pounding on piano keys to vaguely rip off the Jaws theme. The mechanic from earlier is working on some tractors and apparently missed the town meeting memo. Somehow he is ambushed by the Plesiosaurus that is slow-moving and roaring the whole way. At the town meeting, the only people agreeing with the capture plan are Arnie and Mitch--and then the wounded mechanic runs in, declaring there's a monster down at the ski lift.

For some reason, when Dan, Susan, and Steve get down there the beast is tossing bales of hay around. I don't really know why, since it's not like it thinks they're food.

"Look, I need some fiber to move all those humans through me, okay?"

Arnie and Mitch drive up, discussing what to do. Steve declares he's gonna kill it and runs over to a bulldozer. Arnie, intending to stop Steve runs over to point a shotgun in his face and order him not to kill the creature. Steve tells him there's no way they can save it now, so...Arnie climbs on the back on the bulldozer where he's totally exposed in order to tag along with Steve.

Upon actually rolling up to the beast, Arnie decides he doesn't want to get that close after all and hops off the bulldozer. Like many a squirrel crossing a street, his indecision was his doom. Arnie trips and the Plesiosaurus picks him up in its jaws. It then casually stands around with him in its mouth like a dog with a chew toy until Steve prods it a couple times and it tosses Arnie's dead body to the ground.

Now, you'd think a Plesiosaurus vs. bulldozer fight would be pretty entertaining. In fact, when I first read about the description of the climax, the person describing it claimed the Plesiosaurus got pushed off a cliff. That is false. Instead, via some awkward extreme close-ups, Steve pokes it in the back of the neck a few times as it bends down to pick up Arnie again. It then howls it pain, wanders off a little ways and then falls dead.

"Look, this is the best way to teach it how to balance a ball on its nose,, okay."

After a couple mournful glances at Arnie's corpse, everybody walks away and leaves Mitch sitting on the ground. He mumbles their old argument about "our boats." Roll credits.

Oof.

The Crater Lake Monster is truly a case of some great special effects (and some not so great ones) in service of a terrible film. It reminds me rather of Planet of Dinosaurs in that regard, but the main difference is that while the human scenes in that film were not well-written and added little to the proceedings, they weren't dull or actively painful. The Crater Lake Monster is rarely out and out painful, it's true, but it sure skirts the edge.

While the actors playing Arnie and Mitch are just charismatic enough to almost make the material work, it's still horrifically unfunny. And we spend a lot of time with them, for no real apparent reason. This isn't a movie that needed a lot of comedy to break up the tension because there was none to begin with. The biggest scaredy-cat you know could watch this film without being frightened a single time.

There's barely any plot, either. It's practically a thinly-connected series of scenes where stuff happens and occasionally a plesiosaur attacks. I mean, just try and figure out what the subplot of the liquor store killer had to do with anything. He just kills a few people, gets in a chase with the sheriff, and gets eaten. You could cut out his plot thread entirely and the film would not change in any significant way. In fact, I bet his plot was added in at the last minute as a misguided attempt to pump up the action.

As noted throughout this review, the film's post-production and editing are a joke. Scenes that were clearly meant to take place at night were never darkened so they just happen in broad daylight. Some scenes seem completely out of order--why did the monster's first victim have a gun, for instance? Why was he the first victim when, thematically, Fuller's death would have been a more appropriate first victim?

There's really nothing noteworthy about the film aside from its stop-motion beastie. The music is an oddly awful and utterly unnoticeable, The acting is an interesting mixture of pretty good, barely acceptable, and "Why are you trying to sound English?!"

Would I recommend The Crater Lake Monster? Hard to say. The stop-motion effects are certainly good if that's all you want out of the experience, but the film around them is no damn good. Worse, it manages to hover in the general region of "competent" too often to be enough fun as a bad movie. In the end, the film is just aggressively mediocre.

If you watch it, it won't hurt you, but it won't really entertain you, either.

Today's review brought to you by the letter C! Hit the banner above to see what the other Celluloid Zeroes chose for C!