O Monstro

It's sad to see former stars reduced to "acting" in films like this. Well let's see here, we've got James Mitchum, and John Carradine in a movie about a Colombian lake monster. Sounds interesting, huh, wrong, the stars play second banana to a monster clearly made for less than the budget of your average candy bar. What's worse is that the film is so dark, half of the time you can't see what little action there is. For unintentional yuks this is one of those movies that can't be beat, but if your in the mood for a surreal horror thriller look elsewhere.

Where can we begin... This film starts off in Colombia with a young couple dancing to festive music in the night. As is natural in this situation, their frolicking is interrupted as the man is attacked and killed by a shadowy fish/lizard creature. Que loud scream and..."MONSTER". While the begining is far from unique, the camera work gave me some nostalgic vibes from similar 70's films and I thought that maybe, just maybe there was hope for this diamond in the rough. Alas...I suppose when you buy a 30 year old video tape for a dollar at an antique store, you get what you pay for. After a brief intro telling us how this is all based on a "true" story, we are introduced to a group of business men discussing the state of their mine in Colombia. Apparently talk of lake monsters and witchcraft have disrupted the flow of cash and the board 'ain't' happy about it. SO add in some environmental issues, religious views and an annoying nerdy kid who believes in the lake monster and you've got yourself...well... a mess. "The monster manages to "get in touch" with three or four individuals. These scenes aren't too bad, but they are few and far between the hour of talking. Even a witch burning doesn't do much to speed this film up. First problem. If you're going to have a movie called "monster", please make said monster not laughable. It's early scenes were brief, actually managing to keep the tension up, but believe me, the big reveal is sort of a let down. Imagine the Lock Ness monster mixed with a lizard and a catfish and you'll have some idea. Now once the creature is revealed, certainly our "hero's" will face off with it personally right...RIGHT!!! Nope, the best way is to pump a lamb full of dynamite and go fishing. I do have a slight problem with this. Obviously, if a creature has been surviving for thousands of years without having been discovered, and it is capable of going for a little stroll on land, it must be somewhat intelligent. So why does the creature decide to go out for a bite to eat and reveal itself when it is surrounded and being followed by a helicopter? Perhaps he was a media whore... Of course our hero manages to accidentally drop detonator in the water, causing him to brave a swim. Personally this was just stupidity on his part, and I was rooting for the Monster. Alas this occasionally clever beast decides to play around with a guy in a boat rather than take care of the real threat. SO the beast goes Kaboom. There is much rejoicing...unfortunately they don't realize that Monsters like to lay hundreds of eggs in a clearly visible and poorly protected area which can hatch spontaneously releasing offspring which are actually too large to fit in the supposed eggs they came from. Everybody up to speed? Don't worry about it. Personally I didn't hate this film as much as I have others. In this case the makers were simply over enthusiastic with their budget constraints. The plot could have worked and the film could have been a little scary with more money and better casting. One little factoid I noticed, is that women have progressed considerably since the 70's. In this movie, secretaries are called darlin' and honey, and have their posteriors fondled in ways that would see a modern man carried off for a chat with a grand jury.

This movie is one of the WORST films I have EVER seen!!! While I was watching it... I wanted so bad to turn it off and throw it away but I wanted to watch the rest of it so that I could tell off of you folks just how bad it is. It all starts out with it being described as being a TRUE story!!! Give me a break!!! I rubber monster swimming in a lake grabbing people like in "Jaws" and where did he get the feet or the fin's to come up on shore in the jungle and do the same thing!!! Other than that.... it had fake acting, fake props and a large amount of no-name actors that we have never heard of or that we never will in the future. This film is so bad, it deserves a 0!!!

I could barely keep myself from either nodding off or just turning off this turd, but I decided to stick it out if only for the reasoning that maybe *something* would happen. This is the work of a writer/producer/director/special fx, Kenneth Herts, who wants to make a statement on ecological damage while making a monster movie. That's what he wanted, anyway. What it turns out to be is a lot of acting, either slightly hammy or just mundane and without much merit, and scenes that seem to repeat themselves as the monster ATTACKS in the river waters (oh, and what luck, a woman just happens to be naked in it... even though there have already been DISAPPEARANCES!)

This is just nonsensical stuff, but I suppose it's not too harmful; it's not very obnoxious at the least and once or twice we get a semi-interesting peek at Brazilian "culture" (which is the father walking through town with his flock or other pieces of a semblance of 'hey, this is NOT America!'). But whatever hope the director had in casting Mitchum or Carradine is squandered on at best pedestrian and at worst excruciatingly banal and dumb dialog. It doesn't help that when we finally get something of a good look at the monster and the "action" happens, it too is stupidly staged and with only sleazy appeal. Usually I would feel sorry for a filmmaker who had a lot of problems getting a particular picture finished- in this case it took the better part of the mid 70s- but with Monstroid or Monster or whatever it's called... nah.

If you happen to get the Elvira DVD double-feature of this (bad print with bad transfer quality) with Blue Sunshine, make sure to skip this one. Unless, of course, you're an Elvira die-hard and can't help yourself to hear her luscious commentary; personally, I'd rather get Joel or Mike Nelson with the robots from Mystery Science Theater on this roast turkey.

Monster (1979)

* (out of 4)

One of the great joys of VHS was walking into an old video store and uncovering a film that probably had no right to be on VHS. You can find many of these gems now on DVD but this film, also known as MONSTROID: IT CAME FROM THE LAKE, has a special place in my heart because I discovered it at a very young age and I must admit that it really blew my mind as at the time I had no idea movies could be so bad. The film is pretty simple as a cement company in Columbia are dumping waste into the lake and soon people start to go missing. Some believe it's activists but the truth is that a large sea monster is eating people. Apparently this movie began filming in 1971 but ran out of money so they picked up a few shots here and there for the next several years before finally hitting drive-ins in 1979. This might explain some of the badness because the movie will be going along and then something will happen that makes no sense to the previous scene you just watched. There's no doubt that this is one of the dumbest, more insane and outright laughable movies ever made so if you're a fan of trash then this here is a must see. Within the first five minutes we're told twice that this is based on a true story. From this point on we get countless bad actors getting eaten by this creature. Speaking of the creature, you'd have to rank him right up there with the one in THE GIANT CLAW for one of the worst in history. This thing really does look like a big turd and it's constantly changing sizes and shapes. I'm going to guess they were trying to give it a Godzilla look but they failed pretty bad. The scenes where he's suppose to be eating people are priceless as are the moments when people see him in the water swimming around. For some reason this thing needed four credited screenwriters including Herbert L. Strock who many will remember for directing such films as HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN. The cast includes Robert Mitchum's son James and we get John Carradine playing a priest. God bless Carradine because no matter how bad the movie is you just know he's going to bring in some charm. As horrid as this movie is it's pretty much bad enough to where everyone should check it out just so they can say they've seen one of the worst monsters in film history.