MonsteritCamefromtheLake

Monster: It Came from the Lake (aka Monstroid) (1979)

Pay attention now because I’m only going to go over the synopsis once. There is an evil company dumping pollution into the lake. This angers a sea serpent that lives in the lake so it starts to kill people and leave the bits it doesn’t eat lying around. The local mayor, the mayor’s daughter, a reporter, and a couple of company men decide to kill the monster once and for all. So they hijack a helicopter and fill a goat with explosives. When the monster eats the goat they blow it up. Everyone is happy and the credits roll.

This is a bad movie. The story makes very little sense and seems to jump around. This might be because they started shooting in 1971 ran out of money and finished the thing 8 years later. In addition to a narrative that is all jumbled together the movie is also deadly boring. Trust me you will need the caffeinated beverage of your choice to get thru this turkey. But then I really don’t see why you would want to. Now to be fair I’m not sure if the cast is as bad as they seem, or if the script is just that shitty. The only real familiar face is that of John Carradine, who is showing up again for a paycheck. Other than that I can’t remember anyone else from the cast at all. There isn’t much more to say about the film other than it just is awful.

I did want to mention in my review the creature, since this movie is at it’s core a creature feature. I’m not joking when I say the monster is made of papier-mâché. Again I’m not just poking fun at it. There is a reason you never get to see the whole critter in the water, because it would have fallen apart. When they are chasing the creature in the water it looks like a net or maybe some garbage bags being pulled thru the water. Toss in the fact that all of the nighttime scenes are shot so poorly that you can’t see anything that is going on and you get the idea about what kind of movie this is.

My father always used to tell me never to just quit something, which is good advice; I don’t think it really applies to this movie. We all would have been much better off never seeing the completed Monster: It Came from the Lake. If you see this one somewhere just skip it. I don’t recommend this movie at all.

0 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer