Customer Reviews

Creature from the Black Lake

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

 

 

Creature from Black Lake is a decent production, and once played out the story is actually pretty good. Fimple is cast perfectly for this roll, and creates a likeable character as Pahoo; comical, yet somehow vulnerable, and we find out how well this actually works at setting us up for a shock later in the film.

Two college students head to the deep south to search for an elusive creature said to be stalking the lakes and swamps of Louisiana. We get a hint of their camaraderie and of Pahoo's love for burgers (how can he eat so much?) as they head south in a van, loaded with camping gear, and their equipment, a camera and a tape recorder, with which they record some pretty creepy Bigfoot sounds.

We follow their investigation as they interview local townsfolk about the monster. Not everyone is so eager to talk about it, and the sherif doesn't like them poking around, stirring up fear in a peaceful community. He wants them out of town. Of course they stick around, and to make matters worse, they hook up with a couple of local gals for an evening of beer drinking and campfire romance. One of the girls is the sherif's daughter. The boys end up in the slammer for the night.

The following day they are told to leave town, but they decide to stay another night to see if they can catch sight of the creature. They catch sight alright, and disaster strikes for the two would-be Bigfoot Hunters. The Creature from Black Lake features an unexpected, and dramatic twist ending. It's a fun film for anyone interested in campy, 70's creature features. If you're looking for a classic Bigfoot film, complete with eerie, dark, Louisiana bayou scenes, and a giant beast lurking in the shadows, I suggest The Creature from Black Lake. It's a fun film.

The scenes are shot well, and the acting is pretty good for the most part. It was originally shot in a widescreen format, cinemascope or something, because the version reproduced for the DVD features the infamous pan-and-scan trick to get characters into frame. Of course the title sequences are all squeezed in there in order to make all the words fit on a standard TV screen, so everything looks stretched and tall. Maybe someone will decide to release this again in a widescreen format on DVD.

Next to The Legend of Boggy Creek I'd have to say this is my favorite Bigfoot film of that era. In fact, aside from Harry and The Hendersons, which wasn't a thriller, any other Bigfoot movie I've seen was just okay. This movie has a certain quality about it which makes it fun to watch, entertaining and spooky at times.

Fimple kept pretty busy in the movie and TV business. You might recognize him most recently as Grandpa Hugo Firefly in Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses (2003), but he played small rolls in many movies over the years, and appeared in many TV show episodes, including ER, Quantum Leap, The A-Team, The Fall Guy, The Dukes of Hazard, and many others, even Petticoat Junction and Green Acres back in the late 60's. Sadly Dennis Fiimple passed away in August of 2002, of natural causes, shortly after finishing his work on House of 1000 Corpses.

John David Carson is a familiar face of film and television as well, having appeared in episodes of Hawaii Five-0, CHiPs, Charlies Angels, The Fall Guy, Eight is Enough, Barnaby Jones, and many others, including a small roll in the 1990 film Pretty Woman.

Carson plays the cool, good looking half of the duo, but Fimple has some sort of appeal, even though many might consider him less than attractive. Heck, one of the young vixens in the film even shows interest in him.

Jack Elam portrayed town drunk Joe Canton. Elam's career spanned 6 decades, beginning way back in 1944 with Trailin' West. You may remember him as the cooky-eyed Doctor Nikolas Van Helsing in The Canonball Run (1981), or from a host of other films and TV shows throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Elam passed away in October, 2003.

God, what an aweful transfer! To be honest, I was just happy to find this movie at all, less on DVD. We've probably seen better compression on YouTube, but given the source, I didn't mind. In fact, I suppose it almost adds to the creepiness of the film, which will always hold a special place in my heart as an indoctrination into the horror genre as a child. If you're reading this review, I can only assume that you have a distant memory of this flick from your childhood. It's still good fun to watch, rest assured - just don't expect some sort of gleaming transfer to wow your socks off.

Two 35yo college students (played by intergalactic superstars John David Carson and Dennis Fimple) travel into the wilds of Louisiana in search of the legendary Biggus Footus creature. Along the way, they encounter Dub Taylor and Jack Elam as backwoods gents w/ stories of their own sasquatch adventures. While not frightening in the least, CFBL does have a few fun moments of near excitement, and a nice hillbilly atmosphere. Watch as a double feature w/ ABOMINABLE (where the creature actually looks a bit like Jack Elam) for added yetti yuks...

This dvd brought back some fun memories from my teenage years. The filmaking is raw and typical for a low budget flick from 1977. The acting is also pretty stiff, but in order for Jack Elam and Dub Taylor to really shine in this, they were not going to cast any A-Listers in the lead roles.

The DVD itself is bare-bones a disk as I have seen. It is basically run the movie. No special features of any kind. Not even a scene selection option. You plug it in and watch, if you want to go to a particular scene, watch your time and then FF or RW to that spot. Pretty simple, but then I only paid a few bucks for it, and honestly this movie probably did not have any real "behind the scenes" stuff of any interest.

As far as interviews go, I believe that many members of the cast have passed away, while the majority of them were one timers as they only appeared in this feature. All in all, the story is a good one and interesting. I actually got scared during the creature scenes when I was 13.....My how times have changed!

Yes regional film making can range bad miss or a small success in most cases. Many of them are pretty bad like Blood Waters of Dr. Z Many have a cult following like The Alien Factor. This movie - Creature from Black Lake falls somewhere in between
Jim McCullough Jr. wrote this (& also acts in it ) and filmed it in Louisiana. It is a simple story where 2 University of Chicago students want to do a report on the legendary Sasquatch "bi pedal" creature roaming the swamps. Along the way they run into 2 legendary actors Jack Elam as Joe Cantor & Dub Taylor as Grandpaw Bridges.
Jack Elam was a great character actor who appeared in westerns, B movies and a few classics. To name a few Kiss Me Deadly and the Girl in Lovers Land
Dub Taylor was in quite a few classics such as Mr Smith goes to Washington , You Cant Take it With You, Back to the Future 3. His career spanned a good 50 years.
Anyway despite some campy scenes and some cornball moments & dialog, the movie itself isn't too bad. It is no classic, but the monster is effective, and there are a few good shocks around the climax of the movie. If you like movies like Sting of Death, Night Fright, and other low budget regional horror my guess is you will enjoy this.
The Mill Creek transfer is widescreen however the print looks like something out of an Alpha Video title. This could have used a digital remastering. If there is enough fan interest to get this released from a studio who would 'clean it up' it could get released again. The supplements are ok (cast bios and production notes)
The DVD is out of print, so all we can hope for is someone to step up and get this released again. It is a shame that both the movie and the DVD are both obscure..

Another classic spooker movie the wife and I enjoyed.Which included our
favorite actors.

What fun it was to get to see this great cult classic again. And now thanks to Amazon.com and its supporters I can watch it as many times as I like ! Thanks again, Cliff

"Creature From Black Lake" was released in 1976, just in time to cash in on the "Boggy Creek" and general bigfoot mania. This film is a hilarious example of B-movie fare, and has a lot to recommend it to people who love drive-ins and the ludicrous bargain basement films they used to show. I knew when I saw the opening credits roll that this was going to be a classic of the genre (starring Dennis Fimple and John David Carson, and featuring other luminaries such as Jack Elam, Dub Taylor, and Roger Pancake,) and I have never been more right. This is a classic of B-movie filmmaking, guaranteed to make any fan laugh and roll their eyes alternately.

The film opens (allegedly) at the University of Chicago, which is a very prestigious school. Here it looks amazingly like a junior high school, and the anthropology class on bigfoot is pretentious yet funny. Two college students of advanced age, Pahoo (Fimple...I love this character name so much,) and Reeves (Carson) are so convinced of the existence of bigfoot that they con their professor into giving them a terrible old van and some money to take a field trip to Arkansas and Louisiana to find proof of bigfoot. Immediately thereafter, we are introduced to one of the major motifs of the film: driving. They drive all over the place, and the Director, Joy N. Houck Jr., doesn't let us miss a moment of the excitement as they drive from Illinois to Louisiana.

Eventually they make it to the small town of interest, and Sheriff Billy Carter (Bill Thurman) immediately makes it clear to the boys that they are not to investigate Sasquatch in his town, and they are definitely not to become involved with his daughter, Becky (Becky Smiser) and her friend Michelle (Michelle Willingham,) which they, of course, do. I can't blame them: I didn't care anything about this movie until Becky showed up, but her appearance made it all worthwhile. I also find it ironically amusing that the Sheriff's character name was Billy Carter. Bearing in mind that this was released in the spring on 1976 and the ghastly horror of the Carter administration with all the spectacular foibles of the real Billy Carter was mere months in the future, I couldn't help but draw amusing parallels. The characters of the two men are somewhat similar, only the Sheriff in the movie is vastly more cultured, erudite, and intellectual than the President's brother was.

Pahoo and Reeves start talking to locals, and quickly work their way to Grandpa Bridges' (Dub Taylor) house, where he tells them about the creature in exchange for cash. Before it's over you get to see Dub, first topless, and later in pajamas, and he even brandishes a harmonica and sings! How could this movie possibly get better? (At least in this film he chose not to wear an "Ex-Lax" shirt, which is, sadly, not always the case with Dub.) When the taboo subject of the creature comes up over a heap o' vittles, Grandma Bridges gets the vapors, provoking Dub's wrath. This scene is likely the worst-acted in the film, and is one of the worst performances in any movie ever. Despite Dub's displeasure and the no end of emoting he does, he does rescue the boys from his barn when they are attacked by the creature, who turns out to be less frightening than most of the locals. I cannot overemphasize how cheesy this mangy skunk ape is.

The boys go camping and invite the girls, resulting in a bad case of Sheriff interruptus. Billy Carter jails the boys, and subsequently also jails drunk old Joe Canton (Jack Elam,) who has the most evocative phlegm-clearing scene in movie history and is the man they wanted to speak with anyway! What are the chances? Jack tells them to come out to his home in the swamp. After they are released they do so, and he tells them where to find the creature. They go camp in the yeti's lair, and much hokey drama ensues. There's a pointless subplot about Vietnam, there's a hilarious scene where bigfoot plunders a tent, there's a shooting, a stabbing, and eventually a meeting of the minds between Billy Carter, Pahoo, and Reeves, but only after the horrifying creature rolls the awful van down an embankment and sets it on fire. The ending is as ridiculous as anything you have likely ever seen, and I won't spoil it for you, it's just too delicious.

The DVD comes with extras: some very brief production notes and star biographies. Humorously enough, Elam and Taylor got biographies (and deserve them, no doubt,) but the stars, Fimple and Carson, get nary a mention. This is a patently ridiculous movie, but if you are amused by B-movies from decades past, this is hard to beat.

This movie was made on a low budget with mostly unknown actors, except for veteran actors Jack Elam & Dub Taylor.

The filming was atmospheric, special effects showed the budget.
But the actors saved the movie.

If you have a rainy day with nothing to do, pop some popcorn and enjoy this flick.

I remembered watching this movie when I was a kid and being scared to death. Found it on here and had to have it on DVD! While not as frightening as it used to be now that I'm 40, it still has a spooky feel to it to save for the windy winter nights. Jack Elam and Dub Taylor are very welcome additions to the cast, but don't have very big parts, I'm sorry to say. John David Carson and Dennis Fimple are great together, although it's kind of hard to picture Fimple as a college student (he was 36 at the time the movie was made). All in all, a fun ride to take down memory lane. If you're into old, cheesy horror classics then don't pass this one up!