The Bog Creatures

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).

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.

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.

What we have here in BOG CREATURES is actually a decently made modern version of the C to Z grade creature feature thrillers of the 50s & 60s updated for the cell phone era. Which means nothing too remarkable in terms of plotting, acting, or execution. Sole purpose of the film is to part unwary viewers with 85 minutes of their time with relative ease and on as limited a budget as possible. The only attributes making it any different than HORROR OF PARTY BEACH or THE GIANT GILA MONSTER is some partial nudity during a flashback sequence and a squirm-inducing scene where the film's obnoxious horny pervert character stuffs a pair of ladies' knickers into his mouth. Ew.

One thing the movie does sort of have going for it is a admirable ambiguity as to just where on earth it was filmed. The plot is set in Norway with a visit to Amsterdam for an autopsy scene, but my eyes said Connecticut. Could be anywhere, really, giving fans of the movie something concrete to speculate over. Summer school for eager young filmmakers in Minnesota, perhaps. The cast also features attractive females in their 20s comfortable scampering around in their shorts & tank tops, including foxy Debbie Rochon beautifully spilling out of hers before she chews up the scenery with a burst of acting that none other in the cast can come close to. You can do worse with your time.

The premise also has some merit as well: Scandanavian peat field holds the corpses of several unfortunates thrown into what was once a bog to their fates, conjuring up images from old National Geographic magazines of mummified bog bodies. The corpses aren't happy about it and come back to a shuffling existence suitable for PG-13 rated fare. That they are depicted with low budget makeup effects consisting of muddy shawls & garlands of moss can't be held against the film, as it does not aspire to be an SFX study in rotting flesh, severed limbs and sexual violence. If anything it screams out as an attempt at a date movie rental with strong female roles, good looking semi-neutered guys handy for a body count who aren't as smart as the female lead, and a minimum of gratuity which might come off as sexist. She may think it's dumb but likely won't break it off over having agreed to watch it with you. Safe to rent.

Which unfortunately means that horror genre fans will likely find the results lacking in the sleaze, decadence and excess that the movies it resembles deliver. Consider THE EVIL DEAD with a PG rating, strip away its veneer of artistry, reign in the plot to remove anything too arresting and that's essentially what you get. For what its worth I'll confess to having sort of enjoyed watching it as well; wishing it had ended up as something else won't get us anywhere, and indeed there's room for another go at the motif if anybody is so inspired.

5/10

Five American archeological students are invited to Denmark by a disreputable anthropologist to dig up the remains of a berserker clan of Vikings in bog near a castle. Things go awry when the bodies amazingly come to life.

"The Bog Creatures" (2003) is a low-budget creature feature costing around $75,000 (I'm guesstimating based on the cost of another one of the small studio's productions from that time period). For such a miniscule budget, the story is rather ambitious and there's some welcome droll humor amidst the life-or-death goings-on. The female cast is okay, but not exceptional, including Leia Thompson (Diana), Courtney Henggeler (Suzie) and Debbie Rochon (Tara).

While I'm giving this a relatively low rating due to the story bogging down after the first half hour and some lame writing here or there, it's watchable if you don't mind really low-budget fare. There's a nice twist in the last act that I didn't see coming.

It runs 1 hour, 22 minutes, and was shot in Bovina, New York, which is a 1.5-hour drive southeast of Albany and a 1-hour drive northwest of Woodstock.

GRADE: C-