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
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