The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

You won't be disappointed!

Better Late Then Never

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

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 meteor lands in Crater Lake, Oregon, where the incredible heat incubates a dormant, fertile Plesiosaur egg; once hatched, the dinosaur rapidly grows to 50ft in length and begins to feed on unfortunate visitors and locals. Sheriff Steve Hanson (Richard Cardella) investigates with the help of paleontologists Dan (Richard Garrison) and Susan (Kacey Cobb).Filmed in Fantamation (whetever the heck that is), The Crater Lake Monster is a typical 50s-style creature feature, only it's from the late-70s, meaning that along with the hokey premise, dreadful acting and jerky stop-motion monster, we also get Jaws-inspired attack scenes with a fair amount of bright red blood splashed all over the place, and characters sporting either big sideburns or Farrah flicks. Helping to pad out the film to feature length are light relief hick duo Arnie and Mitch, a pair of drunken dolts who hire out fishing boats on the lake, plus a pointless sub-plot about an armed robber on the run from the law having shot two people during a liquor store hold-up (maybe he was upset because they didn't stock one of their stylish 'Booze' T-shirts in his size).Fans of quality film-making will no doubt quickly move right along, but those who dig shonky monster movies for their sheer naffness should find enough to enjoy here: in addition to the not-in-the-least-bit-scary animated aquatic creature, we get some hilarious close-ups of a crap monster model in the water, some of the worst day-for-night photography ever ('Look at the stars' coos a woman to her husband as the sun beats down on them from a clear blue sky), true professional Bob Hyman as the town's doctor fluffing his lines but carrying on regardless, a guy crashing a boat gently on a sandbank and then taking a nap, a very slow car chase, and a police photo-lab adorned with 10 x 8s of cute kittens and puppies (suspects in an illegal bone and catnip smuggling operation perhaps?).

First off, this movie bears a striking resemblance to the Japanese film "Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds". I would suggest one of them ripped off the other, but both came out in 1977. They have nearly identical setups as a dinosaur is released thanks to strange disasters and it begins to feed on the locals. That one though did have a huge volcanic eruption at the end and a monster bird thrown in for fun, while this one has two guys that are in the film way too much. So the winner of who was the better film goes to the Japanese film. It took itself a bit too seriously, but this one spent a bit too much time on two characters that I suppose the filmmakers thought were a riot. I have read how bad this film is and when it started I was thinking, "this is not to bad." Two people were killed in quick succession in between the monster attacking a herd of cows so I did not think it was going to be a super great film, but at least it looked as if there would be plenty of action. Then the film focuses on this two losers with a boat renting place and it will show you scenes that seem to have no reason for being in the film.The story has a meteor crashing into a lake and this will warm the lake up enough to incubate a dinosaur egg. Time passes, though there was nothing to indicate this, and it gets big and begins chomping on the locals and the tourists. Sheriff knows somethings is wrong, but it is not until later that it all comes together for him. The plot was okay, had they done a better job of crafting the film and had more bloody kills this one could of been a classic. Unfortunately, there are huge stretches of nothing happening and a strange moment where a man robs a liquor store and shoots two people that almost seems to come from another movie.The thing that really drags this film down though is Arnie and his buddy as they chew up more scenery than the dinosaur chews up people. You will have to watch them have discussions, fight, and sit around drinking and then walking and not having any encounters with the dinosaur until the end where I gave the film one more point than I was when the dinosaur at least got a hold of one of these bozos. If they had focused on the dinosaur and had some more action this film would have been still bad, but more watchable. Watching two guys being portrayed as funny, but they are not...boring.So this film pretty much is your standard Jaws ripoff. The only thing that makes it stand out is the two buds and the strange inclusion of a robbery and chase. The film was pretty boring for the most part, but I will say it was rather bloody for a PG rated film as we even have a severed head thrown into it. Could have been good, if the makers of this film did not think those two idiots were super funny.

...and it is this film. I imagine that if indeed there is a negative afterlife, damned souls are tied to a rather uncomfortable couch and forced to watch this movie on a continuous loop for all eternity. Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but it is probably the worst film I have ever seen next to "Manos, the Hands of Fate"... and I have seen a lot of bad movies, believe you me. This is just a crummy B movie, bad film-making at it's finest(or is it worst?) The thing I really didn't like about this movie is the moronic duo they threw in for comedy relief. Now, a little comedy relief is a good thing, but most of the movie is focused on the adventures of these two morons, rather than on the "heroes" of this film, who are actually in it for less time than them! To be fair, Crown International really destroyed the movie by adding bad music and doing a poor job editing. But honestly, this was probably a bad film to begin with, so Crown really couldn't have done that much to hurt it. This really needs to be in the bottom 100 list. I wouldn't wish this one on my worst enemy. Actually, it's my kind of campy B movie. It was bad, but I still liked it, despite my one star rating.