Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake

Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake (1981)

1/2 (out of 4)

Kelly tells the story of when he was 11-years-old and staying with his father by a large lake. He tells the story of how one summer a half-man, half-frog creature began stalking people.

Bill Rebane directed this film and it's without question one of the worst films of its kind. In fact, I'd argue that this was one of the slowest and weakest films ever made for the genre and the only thing that really saves it is the fact that Troma bought it and gave it a much better title: CROAKED: FROG MONSTER FROM HELL. That title alone is exploitation gold but it also seems that Troma knew that the film itself couldn't be sold so they came up with a crazy title to get some sales.

As far as the film goes, it's really a throwback to the various monster pictures of the 1950's drive-in era. Movies like ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES and THE GIANT GILA MONSTER is what this film tries to be like but the problem here is that the film is deadly dull from the word go. We keep hearing a lot about this monster but we never clearly see him until the very end. And when he does arrive it's easy to see why the filmmakers didn't want to show it off as the creature costume is downright awful. I mean it's really, really bad and certainly one of the worst that you're ever going to see.

The performances really aren't any better and the gore effects are pretty tame and not at all creative. The film clocks in at around 89-minutes, which is honestly about eighty-minutes too long. RANA: THE LEGEND OF SHADOW LAKE just doesn't have a single thing going for it outside of its great title and alternate title. I'm sure they were trying to do something but it just seems like they had no money so instead of anything good we were just given a boring talk-fest.

The version I saw was titled "Croaked: Frog Monster From Hell". Well, this movie did have some funny parts in it but not enough to sustain a 90 minute flick. In between each funny part you had to bear through 10 - 15 minutes of just talking, talking, talking. The plot involves an island, a lost treasure, a little kid and the adult he becomes that narrates the movie, a scientist, and some yahoos looking for the treasure. In certain scenes in the pond where Rana lives you clearly hear an oboe playing the Jaws theme. Rana turns out to be more like the creature from the black lagoon than he does a "frog monster". I won't spoil the ending but hopefully you can stay awake for it.

Okay, so the cover art and poster are complete lies for this film. It's a classic swamp thing type movie. From the art you would think it's a movie about a giant Frog right? No, it's just some green guy walking around making Frog noises. I found it funny the monsters name is supposedly "Rana", which is the name given to the creature by Native American tribes. The word "Rana" is simply the Spanish word for Frog. How very creative (not!). I was disappointed, this was one of the worst, most boring creature features I think I've ever seen. It just dragged its feet for way too long, the acting was horrendous and the monster design could not have been more basic.

Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake is one of the most truly horrible visions ever put on film. The excruciating acting and horribly conceived script take it to a rare level of high comedy.

The plot involves a kid who finds a frog bone. The bone turns out to be from some kind of vague fossil frog or something, so a paleontologist shows up to look around this isolated island. Meanwhile, a bunch of true wizards are trying to swim to the bottom of Shadow Lake to find a buried treasure. There's a fair bit of bad early 70's music, and obscure scenes of the kid fishing and playing with deer. Jerry Gregoris, the film's producer, plays crazy Charlie, who tells the kid of a strange creature who lives in the lake, "half man... half frog... half, I dunno WHAT! They called him Rana...". People get killed by this guy running around in the Creature from the Black Lagoon's suit after someone dumped a gloppy bucket of green paint on it. Eventually Rana gets what's coming to him and the horrible secret at the bottom of Shadow Lake is revealed.

Scenes such as the kid, Kelly, feeding baby deer, fishing and trying to be cool in front of the paleontologist's beautiful (ha!) assistant are ugly. Even uglier is the adult Kelly narrating the tale while he makes out with his somewhat sleazy girlfriend. Watch for the scene when crazy Charlie's goat takes a tumble in the background.

This film is for the truly sadistic. If you somehow manage to find a copy, view at your own risk.

I hadn't even heard about "Rana" a.k.a "Croaked: Frog Monster from Hell" until a friend of mine mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, but I instantly wanted to see it for a number of reasons. Number one: Hello! It's a movie about a giant killer frog monster! What more reason do you need? We've seen angry frogs before in the early 70's eco-horror trash fest "Frogs", but they were only normal sized and boring killer frogs! Plus, one of the taglines I encountered stated: "This time, the frog dissects you!" Best cheesy tagline ever! Number two: this is another accomplishment of the notoriously awful director Bill Rebane, who also made the insufferable creature features "Giant Spider Invasion" and "The Capture of Bigfoot". Of course, in my wild enthusiasm, I actually forgot that this thing is probably rare and ultra-obscure for a good reason. Could it possibly be any worse than the other Rebane stinkers, like the aforementioned ones and also "The Demons of Ludlow" and "Monster-a-Go- Go"? Oh yes, sire! This is bad film-making in the purest meaning of the term: long boring stretches of footage that is completely irrelevant, one-dimensional characters, inept dialogs and a total absence of excitement and bloody action. The titular monster is nowhere to be seen until late in the film, but unlike as in "Jaws", you'd wish they never bothered to show it at all once you finally see it. Speaking of "Jaws", there are multiple more heavy influences from that film, like the music and the underwater P.O.V. shots, but I can hardly hold that against Bill Rebane because practically all horror movies around that time imitated the successful gimmicks of Spielberg's summer blockbuster. The plot is narrated by a guy, as some sort of warm fireplace story to his girlfriend in their holiday cabin, and describes a traumatizing encounter of his own childhood. In the story, the narrator is an 8-year- old kid, living with his father near a swamp. After the mysterious disappearance of an anthropologist in the area, another much better looking anthropologist of the female kind comes to investigate. More and more people start to vanish in the swamp, like poachers, but obviously nobody believe the crazy old guy when he says that the legendary frog monster is to be blamed. Rana, as he/she/it is called, looks more like the inbred cousin of Creature from the Black Lagoon than like a frog or any type of amphibian whatsoever. "Rana" is pretty boring during the first hour, but then suddenly quite a lot happens in the span of only a few minutes. One of the characters stumbles over a skull with the eyes still in its sockets, there's a gunfight in slow-motion at the pier and the monster's claws can be admired as he crushes the head of a poacher into a tree. After these three minutes of outrageous action, everything gets boring and tedious again. Couldn't you have spread the a little, Mr. Rebane?