Customer Reviews

The Crater Lake Monster [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

OK, first thing - why is this the "Crater Lake" monster? The lake is OBVIOUSLY not THE Crater Lake of Oregon. It's a long, narrow lake, nothing remotely "crater-ish" about it. But that's nit-picking compared to the rest.

Ed Wood on his WORST DAY didn't have continuity problems like this. It isn't just the old "day/night" problem, either - at one point, a character mentions that SIX MONTHS have gone by since the beginning of the film! (It looked more like 2-3 long days - at most.) But yes, we do have people staring up at the sunny sky and commenting on all the beautiful stars. Over half of the film is devoted to two complete imbeciles and their "funny" antics. Believe me, you will BEG for the monster to eat them both. Soon. You will never, EVER, see acting as wooden and clueless as this - the entire cast is totally, hopelessly inept, untalented, clueless and painful to watch. Oh, and all of the men in the movie are going bald, and they seem to WANT to show you their bald pates. What the...?

Scared yet? No? OK, we have a completely pointless diversion with a derelict of some sort. He's sitting in his decrepit, rancid home, and decides to make a booze run. He goes to the local Quicky-Mart and takes a pint to the register, pulls out a gun, and shoots the cashier and a customer. Why? And he just takes the pint! Later, there's a slo-mo "O.J.-style" chase so the killer can be eaten by the monster. By then, you will probably have forgotten who this guy was, but that's alright, because he has NO OTHER ROLE to play than monster-chow. Pure padding.

The monster may be one of the last of the stop-motion dinosaurs, but it's a long long way from Harryhausen. Downhill, that is. And the NON stop-motion shots of the head are side-splitting - it's just absolutely eye-rollingly pathetic.

BELIEVE me, I could go on and on. So why 2 stars? I simply can't recall ever seeing SO many problems with a movie. It isn't PAINFUL (much), and if I were teaching any film classes, I would certainly insist on showing this as a comprehensive, all-inclusive omnibus of scripting, directing, acting, and filming shortcomings, bobbles, knee-slappers, howlers, wildly excessive padding, musical mis-cues and general incompetence. I'd say it has a very high MST-ability quotient, but the cheese-movie neophyte is warned - this MAY result in permanent damage.

...goes against every natural law." Hmmm...that's exactly what I was thinking about this film as I watched it last night. The front of this Rhino DVD release for The Crater Lake Monster (1977) lists Stuart Whitman, Stella Stevens, and Tony Bill as the stars, but after watching the film last night, none of these three actors appear in this feature...a little research indicates they did appear together, in a film titled Las Vegas Lady (1975), which was also released to DVD by Rhino, so I suspect some sort of printing mix up (I kinda wish they had mixed up the films, as I feel Las Vegas Lady had to have been better than what I saw)...produced and directed by William R. Stromberg (gee his only film to date...big surprise), the film stars Richard Cardella (who also wrote this turkey), Glen Roberts (who looks quite a bit like George `Buck' Flowers), Mark Siegel (who would later discover his true calling behind the scenes, creating creatures for such films like Ghost Busters, Dune, and Poltergeist II), and Bob `Buster' Hyman (I'm speculating his nickname, given his last name).

As the story begins, a couple of paleontology students make a `startling' discovery in an abandoned mine of native drawings that, according to one of them, must be at least 1,000 years old (yeah, right...and I was looking for the `Fresh Paint' sign...seriously, the paint couldn't have been more than a day or two old). The (ahem) ancient paintings suggests that dinosaurs and man may have co-existed at some point...but alas, this amazing discovery is soon overshadowed by the arrival of a flaming meteor from space, which lands in nearby Crater Lake, causing the mine to collapse...but all is not lost, as the heat from the meteor warms the water to the point where a dormant dinosaur egg hatches, releasing a prehistoric relic that grows into a very hungry creature, whose diet seems to include fish, cattle, and the local hick population. After Sheriff Steve Hanson (Cardella) has a run in with the creature, the town seems split on what to do...there are those who feel the monster is bad for business and should be killed (the sheriff is inclined to agree after almost becoming `dino chow'...his words, not mine), but the scientific community (by scientific community I mean the two paleontology students and the local doctor, played by Bob `Buster' Hyman) believes a discovery of this magnitude needs to be captured and studied...I, myself, would probably opt for the former over the latter, especially since the creature's killed a number of people, including a senator who had gone fishin' (don't you think the disappearance of a senator would have sent a whole lot of federales into the area? I suppose he probably wasn't that popular). This all leads up to a rather unspectacular final confrontation between the creature and the townsfolk...will creature be victorious, turning the town into its' own, private larder? Or will the sheriff have one hellava trophy to mount on his wall? Will Arnie (Roberts) and Mitch (Siegel), owners of the boat rental/bait and tackle shop, ever commit and consummate their thinly veiled homoerotic relationship? Most of these questions shall be answered...

I've seen a lot of creature features, some good, many mediocre, and some just downright bad. The Crater Lake Monster falls to the left of just down right bad. The main reason for this is the inclusion of some of the worst comedic elements committed to film I've ever seen. In terms of on screen comedic duos, many would probably agree Abbott and Costello are among the tops, with Martin and Lewis following a close second. The characters played by Roberts and Siegel were written apparently to try and emulate these pairings, but the key to success is having one character being the straight man, while the other the buffoon. Two moronic buffoons do not a comedy duo make...the direction lacked, well, direction...the continuity was awful (the film was supposed to take place over a number of months, but there was no indication of this other than the characters telling us this), often we were supposed to believe it was night, but it was obvious this was not the case as the sun was still up (check out the scene where the magician, with one of the worst English accents I've ever heard, is out on a boat with his girlfriend, both commenting on how lovely the stars are despite that fact the sun is clearly visible), and seemingly meaningless plot points would appear out of nowhere...this is perfectly illustrated by the cut to scene featuring the guy in some city who robs a liquor store, killing the cashier and a customer, stealing only a bottle of booze (this scene was really a bummer, as it killed whatever humor the director cultivated to this point, and given my earlier comments, you'll know that wasn't much). Much later on the character does re-appear and ends up getting devoured by the creature...as far as the creature...the stop motion stuff was pretty bad (the credits later reveal the work was done in `Fantamation', whatever that means...I've only seen that process here, so it must not have been that successful), but when compared to the prop work, it looks award winning. The props of the creature's head were so bad they could only be shown either underwater or in a bunch of frantic, quick cut shots...it didn't matter much as the poorness came though regardless. I will give the film credit for at least showing the creature more than I would have expected. I can't tell you how many creature features I've seen where the creature rarely makes an appearance, and the audience is meant to piece it together on their own.

The full screen print here looks pretty good, and the audio ain't half bad. Included is a 35 second trailer for the film. The DVD case indicates a R rating, but it's really PG.

Cookieman108

This movie is ecthed in my mind as a movie so bad that it is fun to watch and make fun of. The acting is worse then a bad military training film on STD's.

This is a truly terrible film!

Most disappointing--as a resident of the Pacific Northwest, I at least expected this to be set at Crater Lake, Oregon. No such luck. It would have been a camp experience to find a local connection for a dinosaur flick!

Every aspect of the film is laughable--none more so that the bad day-for-night scenes! The actors are wooden. They have bad hair. We actually root for the stop motion dinosaur to eat all of them! Sadly, some people survive.

The catatonic state of a couple of the tourists involved with the monster (the alcoholic magician and his assistant) might well mirror the state of the viewer of the film.

Sad, sad, sad....................

A dinosaur egg lays frozen at the bottom of Crater Lake. One day a meteor falls into the lake, heating the water, incubating the egg, and VOILA....there's a rampaging dinosaur on the loose! Plotwise it's got all the fixins for a cheap and fun monster movie. The unfortunate thing is that the fun is missing.
The movie does seem to be a kind of tribute the monster movies of the 50s, but Tremors it isn't. The dinosaur itself is stop motion animation and the close up head shots are a big plaster looking thing. I certainly have no problem with these things, I love that kind of stuff. It just seems like too much screen time is devoted to these two nitwits who rent out boats. They're played for comic relief and this might have worked if they were actually funny and not simply irritating.
Not much else I can really say about it. I like the effort, but the formula just didn't seem to work so well this time.

"The Crater Lake Monster" is a movie that reeks in so many dimensions that it really becomes difficult to criticize simply because it's hard to decide where to start. Other reviewers have summarized the plot (such as it is) nicely, so I will dispense with that other than to say it concerns a dinosaur that hatches when a meteorite impacts a rural area near "Crater Lake." The commotion requires an idiotic sheriff, several comic relief hillbillies, and a crack team of researchers from a university to attempt to deal with the creature, resulting, of course, in the typical "we need to kill it" versus the "we need to save it for science" arguments (one guess as to which side of that debate is proven correct).

This film has almost unbearable acting with a script to match, and features some of the cheesiest dialogue in movie history. I have seen many bad films, and this is definitely in the "so bad it's a crime it wasn't done by MST3K" category. The pretense, plot, and general fundamentals (watch for such Ed Wood classic techniques as "day for night" shooting, in which the temporal aspects of the movie become completely disjointed from reality) of the film match the ineptness of the actors, but perhaps lamest of all is the monster itself which is one of the worst and least terrifying creatures in the annals of horror cinema.

This film is also available in "The Horrible Horrors Collection, Volume 2" (from Rhino), a multi-DVD pack with seven other cheesy stinkers, most of which are actually even worse than "The Crater Lake Monster". (Hard to believe, but true.)

For fans of really terrible cinema, this one will be sure to elicit delighted groans.

Recommended only for truly hardened connoisseurs of schlock cinema.

A group of scientists find cave-drawings of cavemen fighting a dinosaur-like creature (proof all those old movies were right after all and man did live alongside the big growling ones?). However, they barely have time to speculate before a meteor crashes into the nearby Crater Lake. Okay, so it's all pretty silly, but it's still entertaining, and at least the monster is stop-motion rather than a man in a rubber suit.
4 stars.

Some people miss the point with some things.

For example, with the two brothers who obviously not very bright, but their development is deeper than that. In the senes with them, its obvious that one is basicaly immoral, willing to do almost anything to get money, while the other objects to his brother being immoral, but he's obviously scared enough of his brother not to do anything about it most of the time.

Also, the robber who appears in one scene and kills this people almost turns the thing into a "novie", in other words, a movie that is almost like a novel, because it has other things going on besides the main plotline.

Sites made by people who are actually honest and research things have noted that the claymation was good for its time, even if the people writing these articles didn't like the movie itself. I agree with them simply because, aside from the fact that they research these things (more often than not by watching other, simpilar movies) I really don't care that much about special effects. CGI might not have existed when this movie was made, but I'm still happy there's no CGI in it because CGI is beyond horrible.

The only remotely bad thing about this movie that I can see is that when one of the female victims is running from the monster, she gets a relatively far distance from it and collapses against some wrocks, THEN she starts screaming hysterically.

Still, this movie can't really be blamed for that because at this point there were a lot of movies with at least one female victim who screamed hysterically when she was in danger.

This movie is not as bad as many of my fellow reviewers have wtitten. Yes the movie suffers from wooden acting and scripting. However it does have its charms. The comedy relief while often unfunny does have its moments. The stop motion dinosaur is good and there is more shots of it than I would expect in a movie this cheap. I liked this movie and think that it was worth the $6.50 or so that I paid for a used copy on Amazon.

Featuring stop-action special effects, The Crater Lake Monster (1977) has a look similar to a creature feature from the late 50's. The simplistic plot is pretty far out, and some of the acting is a bit stiff, but if you are in the right frame of mind, the film does have some entertainment value. David W. Allen's stop action work, reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen, may be the most interesting aspect of this film, although it occasionally features some decent cinematography, and provides a few laughs.

A meteor crashes into Crater Lake, in Oregon. Coming to rest on the bottom, the meteorite emits a great deal of heat, warming up a long lost dinosaur egg and causing it to hatch. The creature looks like a plesiosaur, a dinosaur that can swim, and has fins similar to a seal. Over time it grows quite large, eating most of the fish in the lake. Seeking a new source of food, the dinosaur attacks boats in the lake, and crawls ashore to grab a bite to eat.

When human remains turn up at the lake, Sheriff Hanson (Richard Cardella) attempts to close it down, but Arnie (Glenn Roberts) and Mitch (Mark Siegel), two goofy guys who are partners in a boat rental business, still allow a couple to take a boat out on the lake, with almost disastrous results. When Hanson sees the monster for himself, his scientist friends amazingly come up with a theory to explain the creature's presence.

The special effects budget probably limits how much we see of the dinosaur, who stays concealed until near the end, where it appears in its full glory for a battle with an earthmover. The Crater Lake Monster is not a very well made film, the acting isn't great, the special effects are pedestrian even for 1977, and the movie is padded with some mostly extraneous action scenes. With all that, the film will still have a certain charm for some. It scores points mainly for nostalgia value, and for making something half decent with very little to work with, as the dinosaur here is a long way from Harryhausen's fighting skeleton men in Jason and the Argonauts, which was made in way back in 1963.

The Crater Lake Monster has recently been released on Bluray, as a double feature with the science fiction adventure Galaxina (1980). The print has some signs of dirt, but the film looks quite decent in high definition. Even if you have no interest in Galaxina, the Galaxina / Crater Lake Monster- Double Feature- [Blu-ray] would probably be the preferred way to view this movie.