Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake

If you know Bill Rebane, you'll know what to expect here: Low budget antics with local actors, z-grade effects, and yet an overall charming atmosphere. This is one of his better efforts as it actually has things happening during the plot.

A guy and his gal end up on an isolated island and in between heavy petting, he recounts and incident from his childhood while growing up on the island with his father. When he was but a kid, some folks ended up on the island looking into some sort of legend (and of course the treasure implied by the legend). You've got some treasure hunters masquerading as loggers, and odds with local crazy hunter Charlie (they exchange pot shots at each other fairly regularly), two scientist chicks, and another scientist guy who very early on gets killed by some creature in the lagoon.

Bottom line is: there's a crazy frog monster in the lake in the middle of the island and he's not too happy at being disturbed. The loggers are next on the menu (and the also clash with our narrator's dad several times), but when old Charlie gets plugged our frog guy goes mental and it's up to our survivors to get off the island before Rana gets them all, and who will survive (except the narrator, of course, but then we've got to find out why he came back).

Much more exciting than Rebane's Alpha Incident and The Game, Rana is a more straightforward horror film which pleased me to no end as I'm a sucker for a regional film. The plot moves very fast (for a Rebane film) and there's even a smattering of gore here and there. The acting is what you'd expect if you know Rebane's films, and some of the music was downright funky. Rather high incidents of slow motion throughout, for some reason.

To summarise: If you're curious about Bill Rebane, try this one, Demons of Ludlow and the Giant Spider invasion. Lesser works included the strange film The Game, the boring Alpha Incident, and the so-so comedy Twister's Revenge.

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.

(1975) Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake HORROR

Almost like a carbon copy of "Creature From The Black Lagoon" which centers on a man telling a story about a particular lake on a island. The next scene introduces a female paleontologist on an exploration looking for old amphibians, and she is guided by a young man who knows about the island including the lake. As it turns out, it is soon discovered that "Shadow Lake" is one of the oldest lakes known to man since the rare species it has. There's also an old geezer who lives there as well, as he guards the island and tries to scare anyone who he thinks are trespassers who're three loggers in a quest to find gold unaware that it's being protected by a frog like amphibian which viewers don't get to see until near the end. Low budget, bad acting and some inconsistencies regarding someone hurt or a person's death is often used all the time for avoiding to get help. Watching this movie is like a bad dream with inconsistencies.

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.

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.