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The Crater Lake Monster | Year: 1977 Classification: Horror Directed: - William R. Stromberg Train wreck. Makes Ed Wood look superb by comparison. 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. No stars for this garbage What a waste of good plastic. I can say nothing good about this one at all. Its not scary, there are no good special fx to speak of, it's not sexy... it has no redeeming values whatsoever. Save your money, or spend it on a good monster flick like Humanoids from the Deep or something. Sorry, but this one's just boring 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. Despite a promising opening, this film is just tedious. For a start, the monster is hardly ever seen, the special effects are laughable (the close-up full-size model of the beast's head have very little resemblance to the stop-motion thing that looks as though it's made of plastercine). There are a couple of stereotype 'comic' hillbillies whose purpose seems to be to pad the film out with their varied uninteresting exploits (getting drunk, bickering, babbling on about absolutely nothing). Oh, and 'Crater Lake' is completely the wrong shape to be a crater. Buy The Crater Lake Monster at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on The Crater Lake Monster Search with the Priority Search Engine on The Crater Lake Monster This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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