“My first responsibility is to save human lives, not sea serpents!”
It might be a terrible film, but 1977’s The Crater Lake Monster has something about it that makes it difficult to dislike. The film was written by William R. Stromberg (who also directed) and Richard Cardella (who starred in the film as Sheriff Steve Hanson). It was distributed by Crown International Pictures, who apparently took over the film, forcing their ideas about what the film should be and butchering the movie into its final product without Stromberg or Cardella’s approval.
In the film, a pair of researchers, Dan Turner (Richard Garrison) and Susan Patterson (Kacey Cobb), discover ancient cave drawings depicting a prehistoric creature battling men, which proves that dinosaurs and humans coexisted at one point in time. Turner brings Dr. Calkins to the site and they, along with Susan, are almost killed when a meteorite crashes into nearby Crater Lake. Months later, Sheriff Steve Hanson (Cardella) starts dealing with a number of missing person cases and then the strange death of a local senator. He teams up with Dr. Calkins to determine who or what is causing these disappearances. What they find surprises them. After consulting with Dan and Susan (who are mysteriously absent for ninety percent of the movie), the group determines that the creature is a plesiosaur. The sheriff gives Dan and Susan twenty-four hours to capture the creature before calling for help from the government. Before they can put their plan into action, however, the plesiosaur attacks the town, forcing the sheriff and two local boat renters, Arnie and Mitch (Glenn Roberts and Mark Siegel), to fight the beast. Who lives? Who dies? Watch The Crater Lake Monster to find out if our heroes survive!
The film is so bad that most people write it off as a forgettable mess. For a small following of fans, however, the movie falls under the so-bad-its-good umbrella. For me, the bad outweighs the good, but the good is so awesome that I’m willing to suffer through the bad parts in order to see the good things. For starters, Richard Cardella, Glen Roberts, and Mark Siegel do pretty good jobs in their roles. Cardella hams it up as Sheriff Hanson and sports the sweetest moustache and sideburns you’ll ever see on an alpha male. Roberts, credited as Glenn Roberts, and Siegel provide almost all of the intended laughs in the film and a few non-intentional ones as well. The stop-motion creature effects, headed up by David Allen and including Phil Tippett, are excellent, but lighting and editing make the creature look terrible. Allen and Tippett both went on to bigger and better things. Allen worked on the Puppet Master films, Willow, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, The Howling, and tons of other big films. Tippett worked on some of the biggest films of all time including the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, Dragonheart, the Twilight films, and many, many more.
The bad things in the film are plentiful, but I’ll just highlight a few of them. For starters, Dan and Susan get things going at the beginning of the film and then aren’t seen again until the final minutes before the credits roll. On top of that, they take over the situation despite being MIA the entire time that people die and/or go missing. A lot of the movie takes place at night, but almost all of the scenes were shot during the daytime and NOT edited as day-for-night to give the illusion of happening after the sun goes down. The editing is atrocious and there’s an entire subplot with a liquor store robbery that takes up a good portion of the film, only to have the robber get eaten by the beast.
If you want to see some cool stop-motion effects from two of the greatest effects artists of all time, check out The Crater Lake Monster. If you want a nonsensical plot, bad acting, and worse editing, watch this movie. If you prefer your cinema experience to be a tad more high brow, skip this film altogether!
Thanks for checking out my review. This film really isn’t that good, but it’s pretty cool to check out at least one time.
Ken's Alternate Universe! 