The Bog Creatures

Ho, ho, ho - the name itself screams at you from the video store - 'rent me, rent me' - or maybe that's just me? If only the film itself screamed 'watch me' or at least 'enjoy me in a camp kinda way'...it doesn't really - but hey I've seen worse.

They really don't make them like this anymore. It kinda reminds me of the whole Hammer flicks. You know, the ones that starred Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Anyways, this one relies on atmosphere rather than gore or nudity. Which I'm not saying is a bad thing. The acting was surprisingly good for the budget this movie had. And it was shot-on-film. Another great thing about this movie was Debbie Rochon! She did such a great job. She needs to start winning awards for her performances. She's so great! Well, that's all I have to say. I give it a 10!!!

Fans of generic fun will have a fun time with "The Bog Creatures" and self-righteous "film connoisseurs" will be offended. I'm a little of both, so I just may be a good source...

It starts out with a hopelessly low-budget medieval battle (My dear friend/generic film buff, who rented this one, noticed a "knight" wearing a striped T-shirt!). The lazy filmmakers pay no attention to detail and don't even attempt authenticity. The low-grade DV cinematography doesn't help, either. Fortunately, the movie slips into some campy fun as the real story starts. Five bright and good-natured college flunkies (??) assist an ex-college flunkie in doing some excavation work in a Scottish bog (although it looks more like American woodlands). Nearby is an ancient castle in which mysterious events are tied to. The "ancient" castle has wooden walls, wooden-hinge doors and a brand spanking new paint job, but oh-well what can you do with lazy filmmakers. Suddenly, shamefully under-costumed bog creatures (wearing untainted shirts and khaki pants) turn the bog into their happy hunting ground. The typically formulaic story is surprisingly grounded, and never descends to an unwatchable bomb level. Director J. Christian Ingvordsen seems to know what goes into a pleasant, crowd pleasing horror flick, but he doesn't seem to have the means to achieve his goal. The screenplay, written by Matthew M. Howe is plain and simple rubbish, but it could have been cool rubbish had there been directed with a bigger budget.

There are fine women to be found, and not much of anything else. This is a pretty bad one, but I guess it could have been a lot worse. If your looking for a decisive recommendation or the opposite, I'd advise passing this one for sure (unless you are interested in seeing a man devour a woman's panties whole in one of the most absurd, if highly memorable, scenes).

We rented this one because we pretty much knew it would suck and we figured either way, it would be fun. Anyway, last night, I finally got around to watching it and I was kind of surprised that it turned out to be somewhat watchable. The plot (what little there is) concerns a group of misfit teens being "selected" to go out and dig for junk where a bunch of "bog people" once lived. Once some corpses uhm, I mean artifacts are discovered, weird stuff starts to happen. That's it. Since we learn jack-all about the characters, you will not care about one single person here. There is no gore whatsoever and the creature (zombie) effects are pretty damn cheesy. Did you ever watch that show that used to play on Nickelodeon called "Are You Afraid Of The Dark"? Well, if you can remember back that far to what those effects looked like with all the fake fog and whatnot, then you can get a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about. It's on the same level.

Now, I just watched this last night and the only character that I even came close to liking was the guy who swallowed a pair of panties (!). I do remember a couple of cute girls running around (Don't get excited. There's no real nudity to speak of) and there was this guy who looked like he was trying to be a body double for Tommy Lee. His faux tough-guy persona was fun times. There was also this guy with a weird accent that showed up close to the beginning then just disappeared. That's too bad. He was funny. All in all, it's a pretty decent effort that makes good use of its low-budget (although, not nearly as well as "In The Woods").

I think the coolest part of the Dvd was the "making of" that was tacked on. Here, we get to go behind the scenes and meet the director. He's a pretty likeable guy with some interesting things to say. He gives us his definition of "guerilla film-making" and we learn about how the idea for the story was conceived.

If you're into b-horror, you may want to give this one a look. It's (if nothing else) worth a rental and the premise of a Viking/horror movie is actually kind of original in this day and age.

Well, to spoil it all for you... the only nudity is in the first 15 seconds or so. And you see exactly what the bog "creatures" look like about 5 minutes later. There was no suspense, and I think it would be way out of line to call this a "horror" flick. Some good points... the acting was decent, and some parts were quite humorous. My favorite part was the ending... Get through all of it, and you'll know what I mean. Bottom line? Not completely terrible, but not really too watchable, either. 5/10 from me...