The Crater Lake Monster

The Crater Lake Monster PG (gore and killing) - fantasy and beasts Sciencefiction Monsters

Only watchable in the context of it being so bad its good. The plot makes very little actual sense and is full of insistencies, the acting and attempts at comedy, suspense, action or horror are terrible, the special effects would be an embarrassment to Ray Harryhausen 30 years prior, the direction/editing are lousy and finally its all shot on film that whilst colour is so indistinct its difficult to tell what you're looking at sometimes. All in all its really bad and yet somehow my wife and I actually (admittedly for all the wrong reasons) enjoyed it. The ending is one of most unintentionally funny we've seen in a while..

True that it's just a ridiculous monster movie, but there's something endearing about the whole excercise. Maybe it's just because it gave me an ending that I wasn't expecting that made me re-evaluate the movie. But.. Nevertheless, some bad acting, some weird plot lines (I like the serial killer drunk guy, did they add that to pad the movie?) and some shoddy special effects. But I do say some, because the stop motion dino effects are very good. So there are a FEW things going for it, and the whole "bad movie" karma that it has (and actually deserves) along with the good, certainly makes this one worth a watch.

Ah, back when every minor landmark had its own monster.

Thanks to budget cuts there was no postproduction work to change several day for night scenes. Which results in bright day scenes with people using flashlights, talking about how beautiful the stars look and so on. These scenes are hilarious and would be the only reason for watching this film. The cuts also effected the monster effects and forced them to use stock music instead of a proper score. While the unintentional comedy was amusing the intentional comedy was eye rollingly bad.

Its a low budget monster movie from the 70s. Just with that you know what youre getting XD A lot of talking, exterior shots galore, and when the monter actually shows you cant help but laugh. If you wanna make fun of it while you watch then id recommend XD

While the dialog is atrocious, the Stop-motion Elasmosaurs created by Jim Danforth is very well animated. Its not Ray Harryhausen level but close. With a better plot, better dialog, and better actors this could have been a nice little sci-fi gem. Unfortunately, The creature isn't enough to save the film. Its worth seeing once if your a stop-motion buff and like creepy atmospherics but it leaves way too much to be desired. Ah the 70s....it wouldn't be right not to have a car chase and a prehistoric creature roaming around.

Boring monster movie is only redeemed by infrequent stop-motion special effects and occasional appearances by a giant rubber monster head. The story involves a meteor crashing into Crater Lake (Crater Lake in Northern California, near Susanville, not the more famous National Park in Oregon), which then causes a dinosaur egg to hatch, unleashing a Loch Ness Monster-like creature upon the lakeside residents. Produced, written, and directed by William R. Stromberg, who's only other credit is special effects on "Night Train to Terror," and featuring a cast of non-actors, "The Crater Lake Monster" is strictly amateur hour. Sometimes, these sort of films are charming in their amateurishness, such as "The Milpitas Monster" or films by Ed Wood, but "The Crater Lake Monster" was just boring. It's too bad the enjoyable stop-motion and giant rubber monster head couldn't have been part of a better overall movie (you know, something like "Lake Placid"). I never thought I'd say this, but I think I preferred the giant mutated rabbits of "Night of the Lepus."

I rewatched this film for the purposes of writing this review immediately after watching The Creeping Terror. The Crater Lake Monster clears the low bar of being superior to The Creeping Terror - it feels like the people involved were trying to create a decent film instead of running a scam - but it is still a complete cinematic failure. Many of the issues with the film stem from the fact that the movie is not entirely certain of what story it wants to tell. The movie can't decide who the main character it is - it focuses on a group of scientists and the local sheriff, then switches focus to two (rather annoying) simpletons named Mitch and Arnie who run a boat rental business by the lake. Along the same vein, the movie has subplots that lack a satisfactory conclusion, such as the story of a couple who rent a boat and run into the monster and that of an armed robber on the run from the law, both of which end unceremoniously and have little effect on the central plot despite taking up a fair amount of screen time. The film also has problems on a technical level. Most obviously, someone involved in the film's production failed to properly implement the day for night shots, resulting in a hilarious scene where the aforementioned couple wax poetically about how the beauty of the stars and the moonlight when it is clearly about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. On the upside, the stop motion monster, while not lifelike, is charming. The stop motion scenes, however, are brief, and the monster is otherwise portrayed in using an unconvincing rubber head. This is an awful movie, but it is somewhat charming in its incompetence.

So bad it's good...worthy of being on MST 3000