The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

RELEASED IN 1977 and written & directed by William R. Stromberg, "The Crater Lake Monster" details events in the high country of central California after a meteor strikes the eponymous (fictitious) lake and incubates a prehistoric egg, which hatches a plesiosaur-like creature that terrorizes the locals. Despite the title, the story does not take place in Crater Lake, Oregon, and the filmmakers don't hide this fact in light of (1.) the California plates of the vehicles and (2.) the lake is clearly snake-like in shape and not round like Crater Lake in Oregon. Speaking of the lake they used for establishing shots, it's located roughly 425 miles southeast of Crater Lake in central California.The movie is akin to modern Syfy flicks, but shot on a low-budget in the mid-70s. It lacks the production quality of 70's creature features like "Jaws" (1975) and "Prophecy" (1979), but isn't even up to the production level of TV flicks like "Snowbeast" (1977) and "Kingdom of the Spiders" (1977). The second-rate acting of the principles in particular distinguishes "The Crater Lake Monster" from these movies. But the Ray Harryhausen-like stop-motion effects are effective, although whenever the creature is shown emerging from the lake the contrast between the two (the monster and the lake) looks decidedly fake.Kacey Cobb shines on the female front and looks great in tight jeans, but her role is too small. There's some goofy slapstick provided by Arnie and Mitch, which is only a notch or so above the antics of Skipper and Gilligan. Other than that, the tone is serious and there are some highlights, like the excellent locations, the 70's atmosphere (styles/décor/etc.) and the surprisingly moving close. I should add that I never perceived the plesiosaur as a particularly scary or formidable dinosaur, but this flick gave me a different perspective.THE FILM RUNS 1 hour & 25 minutes and was shot in Huntington Lake and Palomar Mountain, California. ADDITIONAL WRITER: Richard Cardella. GRADE: C

The Crater Lake Monster is very much a combination of good and bad, unfortunately most of it is bad.So after a meteor splashes down in Crater Lake mysterious disappearances begin to happen, predominately in the form of middle-aged white guys with mustaches - in fact almost without exception. This eventually gets the attention of a slow-witted local sheriff, who reluctantly starts up his investigation in and around the lake. Throughout the movie they included as many Jaws plot-points as possible, or at least as many as the budget and run time would accommodate. The film packs a whopping amount of "comic relief" mostly in the form of two dumb guys, who run a boat-renting business, however something has been eating all the fish, therefore killing the fishing business, which in turn wrecks their business. So naturally these two fall on hard-times and they spend half their time getting drunk, which plays out in the form of several excessively long scenes, which are loaded to the gills with their drunken shenanigans. Some folks make like these folksy scenes (Hee-Haw fans take notice) but for me there of questionable value. If you haven't guessed yet The Crater Lake Monster is hardly the most inspired movie out there and it's run time is heavily padded by an inordinate amount of scenes that are completely mundane, which often include slow and pointless camera pans and long zooms - that take forever to complete.To no great surprise the monster itself is the best and most entertaining part of this cheap little creature feature; which is brought to life through a series of shots that include partial life-size mock-ups of the monster (or at least it's head and neck) and of course there's some corny stop-motion animation - which is my favorite part. Back to the "victims" of the monster, this movie is very, very, simple in it's construction and it keeps on presenting more and more nameless souls only to be picked-off by the monster, in fact some are on the screen for no more then a minute before they're killed. Again most of the victims are of the white and mustachioed variety - don't forget that this movie was made back in the mid-70's after all. They also felt the need to include a pointless sub-story right in the middle of the film, for apparently no reason other than to break-up the monotony for a little while, a brief change of scenery. The bemulletted, murderous liquor store robber sure is a sight to see and his condiment-infested apartment is even better - this new character, as pointless as he is (even for THIS movie) is good for few laughs, it's all good until the sheriff steps in and ends this brief side-trip. Finally the sheriff encounters the monster, only to retreat in his laughably lame olive green station wagon/cop car.After that encounter the Jaws power-wrangling tactics kick into high-gear, what to do with the damn thing, is obviously their focal point. Ultimately the ending is, like the rest of the movie, extremely ham-handed and the final show-down between Man and Beast is, not surprisingly, a disappointment. The monster is killed quickly and easily and the finale generates no tension what-so-ever. Again from my viewpoint it's the monsters goofy looking stop-motion, that provides the entertainment in this otherwise painfully lame final scene of Man versus Beast.And now for some flattery, I'll try.......... the strong-points of this weak amateur effort are few in number, I can say that the photography is crisp, clear and colorful and it does good job of showing off the natural beauty of the Crater Lake area. On another point, the films humor, certainly not all of it, but some of it is modestly effective - in a folksy kind of way. But let me be clear there are a lot of boring parts in this movie, which really tends to bog down the movie as a whole.This movie is just the sort of dreck that when seen nowadays's, through the cynically judgmental eyes of the jaded modern viewer, is nothing but pure comic fodder, one that's ripe for the merciless mockeries and unceasing torrents of sarcasm, from all those who it fails to impress - which is probably everyone whose ever seen it. Sure I know that may sound a bit harsh (though it does have plenty of company and I've seen a lot movies that are much worse), but if you've ever seen this movie you'll know that this ones well worthy of your scorn. In fact it's a perfectly healthy reaction to such a crappy movie. In conclusion: Not too good, no.

I just can believe how English the one guy is in this film. Don't worry you can't miss him when you see it. The movie itself isn't horrible for the time period. Rifftrax makes it bearable. The plot is interesting, actually could be a decent remake to be honest. This is the kind of movie that could benefit from some modern special effects. The drunk that robs the liquor store leaves it open for a sequel though, because that scene was obviously stolen from a different movie since it had absolutely nothing to do with this movie.Mitch and Arnie make a bold attempt at having a homosexual relationship in a 70's movie. So you have to give the movie credit.

My bad, and all that, but for some reason, I had long assumed "The Crater Lake Monster" was a product of the late 1950s--a black-and-white cousin of such other films dealing with thawed-out critters returning to harass modern man as "The Monster That Challenged the World" (1957) and "The Monster of Piedras Blancas" (1959). Of course, I was incorrect in that surmise, and the picture in question turns out to be from the year 1977, and filmed in beautiful supersaturated color, to boot. Still, this film's heart seems to be very much with the great sci-fi pictures that had been produced two decades earlier. A minor and modest entertainment at best, it yet succeeds as a pastiche of its '50s antecedents, and indeed, had it been filmed in B&W and featured some vintage automobiles, might have been able to fool many other folks as to its year of birth.In the film, coscreenwriter Richard Cardella plays Sheriff Steve Hanson, who is in charge of the peaceful, picturesque little town of Crater Lake, somewhere between L.A. and Las Vegas. The plummeting of a sparkling meteorite into the local lake spells big trouble for Hanson, the townsfolk and some visiting tourists, however, as the superhot chunk of space junk soon warms up the lake's waters and acts as an incubator of sorts for a plesiosaur egg that had long lain dormant in its icy depths. And before long, a fully grown plesiosaur--think of the head and body of a brontosaurus, but substitute seallike flippers for the legs--with a decidedly nasty disposition and a hunger for meat is seen waddling and chomping its way through the area! It would seem as if Hanson, along with the town's doc, a visiting archaeologist and his girlfriend, and the area's two doofus boat renters, Arnie and Mitch, will have their hands very full, eliminating--and perhaps even capturing--the prehistoric menace...."A beast more terrifying than your most frightening nightmare," the original trailer for "The Crater Lake Monster" proclaimed, and while this amusing bit of hyperbole is of course patent nonsense, the film's creature nonetheless is a most pleasing creation. Brought to life via Harryhausen-like stop-motion animation courtesy of David W. Allen, the plesiosaur is fairly awesome to behold, and to the film's credit, we do not have to wait more than 15 minutes before getting our initial glimpse. (I always got impatient, when I was a kid, if a film withheld that first look for too long, and I suppose I haven't changed much!) The creature looks most impressive every time we see it, even when director/coscreenwriter William R. Stromberg gives us a long shot of the lake, with only the monster's head and neck briefly emerging from it. Indeed, the entire film LOOKS just fine, with rich colors and lovely scenery (the picture makes nice use of its Huntington Lake and Palomar Mountain, California, locales), shown to good advantage on its current Rhino DVD incarnation. As for the film's acting...well, I'm not saying that the Academy egregiously overlooked anybody here, but the thesping is nonetheless better than you might expect. Cardella, in the lead role, is especially good as the befuddled, tough, scared but dependably capable sheriff; indeed, an unexpectedly charismatic portrayal from this relatively unknown actor. Anyway, those are the film's not inconsiderable virtues, which are, unfortunately, counterbalanced by a goodly share of drawbacks.It's hard to put a finger on any one reason, but "Crater Lake Monster" exudes that indefinable sense of an amateur effort, albeit a very skilled one, and featuring those excellent FX. As detailed on a certain Wiki site, the film had a troubled production vis-a-vis financing, and I suppose that all involved did the best they could under the circumstances. The picture features some blatantly goofy humor, thanks to those cracker-barrel numskulls Mitch and Arnie (we get to see the two argue constantly, fight, toss each other in the lake, get drunk, stumble around in the woods, etc.), but these scenes also allow us to get to know the characters better, and thus to actually worry about them when they are in peril. What is worse than the inane humor is the ease with which the plesiosaur is ultimately dispatched; a horribly rushed, unbelievable and anticlimactic denouement that should leave very few viewers satisfied. And then there is the matter of time elapsed in the film. We are told at one point that it had been six months since the meteorite plunged into Crater Lake, although there is absolutely no way for the viewer to have realized this; indeed, all the occurrences in the film seem to transpire over the duration of around 72 hours. So yes, the film most certainly is a minor effort, and a mixed bag at best, but still most undeserving of the lowest "BOMB" rating that the wet blankets at "Maltin's Movie Guide" have chosen to bestow on it. The film is especially perfect for the kiddies and those with an abiding love for 1950s monster fare, not to mention those who are suckers for stop-motion FX. In all, a nice try, from a group of filmmakers whose heart was certainly in the right place....