Loch Ness - Il risveglio del mostro

Some of the early victims find out all too late that the 40-foot Plesiosaur is not the placid, gentle giant that minds its own business paddling around the Loch as we've been told, but a rampaging monolith with an attitude that likes to waddle its way out of the water, wreck boats, roar like a foghorn, chase victims, bite them in half (it doesn't eat them whole, for whatever reason), dismember, decapitate, etc.

And it swam its way through some "undersea tunnel" (about 4,000 miles long?) from Scotland's Loch Ness to North America's Lake Ontario. No, really. It did. A vengeful scientist. a cross of Capt. Ahab and Indy Jones, wants to get even with the thing, having witnessed it devour his dad and two other men. The guy comes complete with all the clichés: an Australian safari hat, enough fire power to blow up a city, and he mumbles when he talks.

The movie plays like a remake of Lake Placid, which in turn was an apparent satire of Jurassic Park and Jaws type flicks. However, this one seems to want to take itself seriously. The actors play it this way, and make most of the characters work (even the clichéd ones).

The biggest problem was shoddy CGI. In one attack sequence, for example, Nessie decapitates its victim. Nessie's animation is so obviously pasted on to the picture it makes you laugh. Even phonier looking is the resulting "blood spray" which looks like somebody blew up a bottle of Cherry Soda (and pasted that in poorly, as well).

Decently entertaining, and at least it was free.

I have to admit that I'm a sucker for monster movies, particularly of the "aquatic beast eats people" variety. Here is a modern example of the genre, and folks, it ain't bad at all.

It is very conscious of it's roots. It's ancestors are films like "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms", and "The Giant Behemoth", both staples of my childhood. The monster is not really a plesiosaur, as the cryptozoologist in the movie calls it, but a real Hollywood fantasy beast, and a darned cute one at that. Against all the notions of modern paleontology it waddles about on all fours, belly to the ground and head held high. It owes it's appearance to the earlier films' notions of what "dinosaurs" looked like, and owes more to the nineteenth century reconstructions of Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope than it does to actual scientific fact. All for the better. This isn't "Jurassic Park", this is "Oh my god there's a monster loose and we gotta stop it!" movie.

An old fashioned monster movie with modern cgi, and a goodly amount of blood n' guts. I have no problem with gore in movies like this. It's only a movie, boys and girls, it's special effects, and my reaction is usually not "yuck! No sleep for me tonight" but rather, "that's interesting,I wonder how they did that?" Does that make me a bad person? I think not.

An interesting story, decent production values, adequate acting, and every cliché in the book all add up to a funfest for watery creature fans everywhere. And the baby monsters are a real hoot. A nice refreshing change from the slew of copycat teen slasher and torture porn flicks we've been bombarded with lately.

I had a good time watching this one.

I never went into this expecting a particularly good movie, with a title like Loch Ness Terror, who would? So, when it finished, I got what I expected. The plot is nonsensical, there are lapses in logic, clichéd characters and sub-plots everywhere, poor CGI and an ending that is beyond anti-climatic. Basically, the film revolved around a grizzled (and unintentional Clint Eastwood rip-off?) cryptozoologist who witnessed his father consumed by Nessie many years ago. Thrown into the mix is a "crazy" uncle who claims to have seen the beast, a sheriff whose husband passed away and is now looking after a son. Surprise surprise, he is still in love with his ex-girlfriend who is now dating a rich jerk! If that is not the most predictable and boring story you have heard of, please tell of another...

Honestly, none of the actors are any good. Brian Krause, who plays Clint Eastwood...I mean James Murphy (zoologist) has it all. The hat, the scar, the cigar, the low voice...not Eastwood at all! All the other performers are just as bad (well, maybe except the old deputy guy, he was pretty funny). At times I was rooting for the dinosaur to eat them, as I could not stand their presence any longer. And on the topic of the dinosaur, could it be any faker? Honestly, there has been numerous cases of sub-par CGI, but this tops them all. All the digital effects stand out to the point where they look like cutouts from a video game. The gore could have been a tad redeeming, if it had looked somewhat mediocre instead of pathetic.

Paul Ziller, the director, has not got a shred of noticeable talent. The POV shots are unoriginal and poorly done (Jaws much?) and for a horror film, there are zero scares. In fact, if this were a comedy it would be excellent, as I found myself laughing through pretty much the entire running time of 74 minutes. When the end comes around, it is so lackluster it is almost hard to believe. Recommended for lovers of bad films and people who love a good laugh.

½/5

No, "Beyond Loch Ness" is NOT a good movie. That is not what I'm saying. The point I am trying to make is that although it is pretty much just another formula-based, low-budget sci-fi flick with a monster that decides to kill people all of a sudden for no reason, people trying to stop it, people who refuse to believe it, and a love story mixed altogether in it; the film itself is alright for what it is. It is much, much better than some of its predecessors and certainly going to be better than its descendants, who will inevitably follow.

"Beyond Loch Ness" is one of the rare sci-fi flicks to actually feature decent CGI. It wasn't perfect, no, and sometimes there were some parts that didn't really seem to make sense. Such as this early shot where all we see of the Loch Ness monster is just her lower torso as she approaches. It didn't really give her an impressive appearance and just didn't seem to fit right. But at least the creatures look 3-dimensional, aren't blurry or too slender, have muscular structures, etc.

Acting was okay. I won't say that it was worth writing home about, and neither was the screenplay. The character said lines that I knew were going to come up, and they said them the exact way I knew they would. Many times, characters would get irritating, or just bland, but for some reason, they do well enough to keep us watching. And the screenplay does have some plot holes. For example, if these plesiosaurs have been breeding in freshwater lakes for hundreds of years, and they span numerous offspring, who come ashore and kill vast numbers of people every season, how come they go undiscovered until just now? Maybe they usually stayed under water until just now, this one time, when they decide to take a family stroll? Good a guess as any, I suppose.

So bottom line, again, "Beyond Loch Ness" is not a good movie and it isn't a special one, not even for a low-budget made-for-TV sci-fi flick. But it is decent enough and is kind of entertaining. It's better than others such as "Python", "Alligator 2", "Gryphon", "King of the Lost World", and others. Recommended...only if you like low-budget flicks.

I watched most of this film using my DVR to fast-forward through the early parts, so I missed the explanation of how Nessie gets from Scotland to North America. The more interesting question is *why* she would make the trip. After all, she and her ancestors seem to have done fine in Loch Ness for untold centuries. (Incidentally, Loch Ness is a freshwater lake–contrary to what one person posting here says. Some "lochs" are indeed saltwater sea inlets; however, Loch Ness isn't that kind.) I've enjoyed watching science fiction monster films since the Golden Age of Radiation during the 1950s, when I must have seen every film featuring dinosaurs released from the depths of the sea by atom bomb testing or mutant giant insects and mollusks running amok. I can still enjoy many of those films, but I've not yet been able to make a habit of watching the Sci-Fi Channel's made-for-TV films. Apart from their weak scripts and dreary acting, the films are hard to watch because of their almost uniformly poor CGI. Other people have commented here that the special effects in BEYOND LOCH NESS are a cut above the Sci-Fi Channel's usual standard, and I think that's probably true. There are moments in this film when it's almost possible to believe that the dinosaurs are real. However, those moments are both few and brief. A general problem with this film is that the dinosaurs are on the screen far too long; the longer we look at them, the phonier they appear. Wouldn't it make more sense to have less dinosaur footage and to make the effects in the footage that is used better? There are scenes in this film in which Nessie waddles across dry land like a duck; I almost expected it to quack.

Another problem I find with this film may be more a matter of my taste than an objective criticism of the film–namely its emphasis on gore. Is it absolutely necessary to show graphic images of people being bitten in half and chewed up? Older films are often much more frightening for the off-camera violence and carnage that they suggest. Nowadays, I suppose, it's necessary to show audiences the blood–and lots of it. It's a shame that audiences are so desensitized that they can't be frightened unless they see closeups of people being dismembered and eaten. Personally, I find graphic gore more repulsive than scary. Moreover, in BEYOND LOCH NESS, the gore often merely looks ludicrously unrealistic.

I have one final question about this film that another person here has already raised: What does become of the deputy sheriff at the end of the film? Is it possible that a scene accounting for his fate was cut, leaving an awkward continuity problem? Oh, well. The same thing has happened in far better films, such as THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI (exactly what is Jack Hawkins trying to explain to the Burmese women as they leave the river in that film?).