The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

Things kick off with “Doc” smoking a pipe and enjoying a good book when a car comes speeding up his driveway. It is one of his students from the College that has made an incredible discovery. Doc is driven back to a mine where he sees ancient cave drawings of Indians alongside a dinosaur. At that same exact time an asteroid hits the local lake and they have to flee as the mine caves in. Not to be deterred the same students go diving on the lake to recover the asteroid, but it is too hot to handle. That is important because it is heating up the bottom of the lake, which is normally freezing cold.

Months later the fish and game around the lake disappear. Why you might ask? Remember when the asteroid hit the lake? Well it heated up the mud and made a lost and forgotten dinosaur egg hatch. Now they have a Plesiosaur stomping around eating the locals because it is out of fish! It is up to a couple of goofball rednecks, Doc, and the sheriff to protect the citizens from The Crater Lake Monster. And by protect, I mean run away after bullets don’t work. Though they do eventually have a killer dinosaur vs. snowplow battle for the ages. 

Time for me to get back to my roots and talk some drive-in movies. Now I never got to see most of these under the stars but instead caught them as they made the rounds of the local late-night horror host shows. The Crater Lake Monster is one of those and I’ve always enjoyed it. This movie gets regularly savaged by critics and fans alike but I just don’t understand the reaction. Please allow me to try and convince you why this is a decent movie.

I’m going to start off with the plot. I understand that it might seem a bit forced and unimaginative because much of the movie consists of character A being introduced and immediately going out onto the lake to be eaten. Followed by character B doing the same thing. But having grown up on a steady diet of monster movies as a kid this was a common theme to the genre, so The Crater Lake Monster can’t be blamed for this. We do have some main characters including the very memorable redneck owners of the boat rental, Arnie and Mitch. The pair have some great lines and serve not only as the comic relief but help move the plot along thru their hijinks. While we get a lot of introduce and kill off there are also some that survive long enough to root for. And by the end I think that most viewers will be cheering for them.

One more thing to mention about the plot is that they jump right into the action and never let up. This isn’t one of those terrible movies filled with stock footage or padding, but instead they had a story to tell and action to show. That makes this one a fast and fun time where you will never be watching the clock. I’ve sat thru far too many low budget flicks that meander along and will cure anyone’s insomnia, but this one avoids that pitfall.

I love the creature effects work!

The coolest thing about the movie are the special effects work used to bring the monster to life. We get some stop motion, rear projection, and a giant rubber head used to make this happen. These are old school effects like they used on the original King Kong. For a lower budget monster movie in the seventies this is some pretty decent work and they do a good job blending the three together. I get that it might seem dated, even when the movie was new, but there is some quality creature work here that should be appreciated.

In addition to the above I’ve always been amused by some of the sillier things in The Crater Lake Monster. For example, the distributor, Crown International, had some financial issues and were unable to finish the movie. That means the blue filter to create the day for night shots weren’t done. Pay attention and you have characters acting like it is dark out while in broad daylight. There is even one scene where an actress talks about how beautiful the stars are tonight while shielding her eyes from the sun. I call this drive-in gold and it makes me love the movie all that much more.

The Crater Lake Monster is a fun bit of cheese that I highly recommend all fans of either monster movies or the drive-in check out. I have a copy on one of those Mill Creek sets and I’m sure it isn’t that hard to find. It is worth the effort, trust me.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer

The Bay (2012)

Normally I’m not a found footage kind of guy. They just aren’t the sort of thing that I get a kick out of. That said a few years ago I sat thru The Bay at Twelve Hours of Terror (a horror movie marathon hosted in a theater) and rather liked it. Some six years later I thought I’d revisit it and see if the movie held up.

Things start off with a woman telling her story via a Skype call. It seems that she was an intern covering what was supposed to be a boring old fourth of July celebration at a small town in Maryland. She mentions that there was a big conspiracy and that all of the footage you are about to see was confiscated. Luckily it was leaked and now everyone can know the truth. The story is told with the footage from the intern and her news crew, a couple with their baby, some dashboard footage from police cars, and your normal cameras covering commercial establishments (security cameras). Over all of this the reporter narrates.

Spoilers ahead: There is no way for me to give a plot synopsis without some spoilers. I wanted to warn everyone ahead of time. You can skip ahead to the last paragraph to get my recommendation about The Bay if you want to keep things a mystery. Okay? Last warning… There is a big chicken farm that has been dumping forty-five million pounds of chicken shit into the bay every year! Gross right? That shit is full of steroids used to accelerate the growth of the chickens so that they go from chicks to our dinner plates as quickly as possible. I guess not all of it metabolizes since those same steroids cause a particularly nasty little parasitic isopod to mutate. This thing hangs on a fish tongue causing it to shrivel up and fall off. Then the bugger feeds off the blood of the fish while acting as it’s tongue. Nasty little bastard. Well these things mutate get into the water supply and start eating everyone that comes in contact with the water!

In spite of being a found footage flick they manage to mitigate the nausea inducing shaky camera work that seem to dominate this subgenre.  It makes sense since much of the flick is coming from stationary security cameras, dash mounted police cameras, and a professional cameraman shooting news reports. Since you can actually see what is happening it also allows for a couple bad ass jump scares like the first time we see an isopod. There are more but I won’t spoil them. Even though this was my second viewing they still got me with the scares. Some I forgot, and some still work even when I knew they were coming.

Can't complain about the gore!

It’s kind of hard to get attached to the characters since they aren’t developed much, but instead are just being drawn along by the story. Though there is one little girl that is alone and scared. That was a bit tough to watch. The plot is solid and unlike many found footage movies actually has a story to tell rather than just randomly having characters wandering around. Far too many are just a couple of characters spending an hour being scared by sounds in the woods. The Bay is sharing the “truth” of the event.

The creatures are based on a real animal and the way in which they become dangerous is fairly realistic. That is lot scarier than a guy in a rubber suit. Something like this could happen and the government would fall all over themselves to cover it up, much like the movie claims. This is the sort of story that works really well as a found footage flick, since it makes the whole thing feel more real and therefore a great deal more frightening.

Well the Devil must be ice skating because I dig the Bay and recommend you check it out. Yeah, I just recommended another found footage movie. Damn I’m surprised at myself.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer