Lake Placid 3

Truth be told, I didn't even know there was a 2nd and 3rd movie to the "Lake Placid" movie, so I just came over the third movie by coincidence. So I sat down and watched it.

And then the terror began...

Oh. My. God! The CGI effects in this movie were so unbelievably poor. The crocodiles were among the crappiest CGI creatures I have seen in a long, long time. The intentions were good, but the effects were so lousy.

As for the story? Well nothing much to be expected here. You have a pretty basic "let's make a sequel" movie here. Local people and animals being eaten by monstrously big crocodiles, and a gun happy hunter is brought into the fray. And a family with troubles that somehow manages to save the day. It is all here. And it has all been seen before.

The acting, well it was wholeheartedly attempted, and actually most weren't too shabby. Some were questionable to say the least. But, of course, this is not an award winning movie, just another SyFy flick.

I managed to sit through it, but I was so tempted to get up and find something else. Which I should have done. This movie is not really entertaining, it is in the line of being ridiculous. But generally I sit through a movie once I started it. I think you have to be a really, REALLY hardcore fan of the first "Placid Lake" movie to actually fully enjoy this movie.

Well, at least it was an attempt at making a movie with giant crocodiles, it just didn't work out all that well. This is not a good choice to put on if you want to be entertained by a good wholesome movie with giant creatures. There are lots of other (and better) movies out there.

"Lake Placid 3" is basically identical to "Lake Placid 2", with as only exceptions that instead of a crazy old hag feeding the crocodiles as if they were cute pets, it's now a dimwit child, and that the almighty cult-actor Michael Ironside dropped by for a shooting day or two and pick up a quick paycheck. This also means, of course, that it's a bad but tremendously entertaining horror flick IF you are in the right mood. Lots of lousy CGI crocodiles and even lousier gore effects, characters that compensate with testosterone/estrogen what they lack in intelligence, and about as much atmosphere and suspense as in an episode of "Sesame Street". I do wish to excessively thank and praise Roxanne Pallett, Kacey Clarke, and Angelica Penn. If it weren't for their gracious bodies and willingness to show gratuitous nudity, I probably wouldn't even remember I ever watched it.

Okay, seriously, if you really think that they wouldn't have massive monitoring of this lake after the first two "Killer Croc" attacks in Maine, but somehow, everyone just ignored the problem and THIRD set of killer crocodiles appear in this lake, and start eating people.

This is a fine production by SyFy, which means that you are going to get CGI monsters eating out of work actors...

We get to see some T&A for the video version, not sure how SyFy handled this nor do I care, really.

Okay, the plot is the Nephew of the Cloris Leachman character in the second sequel (who replaced that actually interesting Betty White character in the original) goes to clean out her cabin, and apparently this town that suffered two devastating attacks by Crocs is just find that a sheriff with a fish-finder has declared the lake Croc-Free.

The kid of the Zoologist nephew then proceeds to feed the crocs, who then go on to feed on annoying, uninteresting characters you don't care about.

Brazenly ridiculous. It has little to do with the self-satirical original Lake Placid, other than the name. For whatever reason, somebody thought the bargain-basement LP2 warranted a sequel, or a remake, or whatever. So there's yet another generation of these hungry chomping monsters.

Except for Michael Ironside as the quintessential skeptic hick sheriff, and the guy from Eureka poking fun at his Eureka character, the acting is laughably amateurish. The teen actors fare worst; when the girls scream, the shrill noise they emit sounds like an old Talking Tina doll with a broken speech mechanism. The laughable teen soap opera plot doesn't help the paper-thin throw-away characters, either. The knife-wielding nut wasn't bad, considering the outlandish cliché she got stuck with. Don't get me started on that latchkey kid and his weird problems. Throw-away characters have "gator meal" stamped on their heads at all times.

Could the director explain why the gators always grab people's shoes, and drag them for 20 minutes before they decide whether to kill them or not? Do they like to nibble on shoes?

Go in with a "laugh at dumb it is" MST3K attitude, and there'll be a few moments that will not disappoint.

Some people apparently haven't figured out that Black Lake in Aroostook County, Maine (known to us as Lake Placid) is a place to avoid if you don't like alligators coming on shore and attacking you. This time we have a family, a group of big game hunters, and some wandering college kids. Their paths will cross, some will die, and hopefully nobody watches this film so they never, ever make a "Lake Placid 4".

This film comes to us from director Griff Furst, who is better known, if he's even known at all, for having bit parts in movies (including the upcoming "Green Lantern" film), but not so much his directing. And also writer David Reed, who has never written a feature before... and judging from the complete lack of plot here, may never be asked to do so again.

The film is a "SyFy original" and it's very clear to the viewer, even if you didn't know that in advance. For one thing, it stars Colin Ferguson (Sheriff Carter from "Eureka") and even has him in uniform. I suspect they must have had him on contract to appear in a movie, or something like that... his career is not so terrible he needs this extra exposure. (When aired on the SyFy network, ads for "Eureka" did come on repeatedly, so the cross-promotion is no secret.)

For some reason, this film is ranked higher than "Lake Placid 2" on the Internet Movie Database. I am hoping this is because the film is new and hasn't sunk yet, because there's no way that part two could be any worse than this. This movie had the worst CGI yet, even by SyFy standards. Seriously, folks, give your animators an extra week or an extra thousand dollars or something... if you're going to make your alligators look this fake, you're better off not making the movie at all.

The DVD adds little more to the film than the TV version. There are no special features, only a few added scenes of full frontal nudity, oral sex, and bouncing breasts. I am all for nudity in horror films, but that doesn't automatically make the film good. The press release calls it "steamy, sexy and gory". Gory, maybe, but even the sex parts aren't all that sexy.

There's really nothing redeeming about this film. Horrible effects, no plot, bland characters. The directing is fine, though nothing special (literally anybody could have done it). I can't think of any reason to see this film, no matter how much you may have enjoyed the first one. Maybe if you're a die-hard Colin Ferguson fan? Otherwise, change the channel or go outside and get some exercise.