Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake

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.

The version I saw was titled "Croaked: Frog Monster From Hell". Well, this movie did have some funny parts in it but not enough to sustain a 90 minute flick. In between each funny part you had to bear through 10 - 15 minutes of just talking, talking, talking. The plot involves an island, a lost treasure, a little kid and the adult he becomes that narrates the movie, a scientist, and some yahoos looking for the treasure. In certain scenes in the pond where Rana lives you clearly hear an oboe playing the Jaws theme. Rana turns out to be more like the creature from the black lagoon than he does a "frog monster". I won't spoil the ending but hopefully you can stay awake for it.

I'm not a Troma fan, in fact I'd go as far as to say that my opinion of the average Troma film is somewhat derogative.

This early Troma title is very different from the others and yet succeeds in somehow being worse. Allegedly a horror comedy I can assure you in contains minimal horror and absolutely no comedy, looking at the cover I know that's probably hard to believe.

Rana: The Legend Of Shadow Lake otherwise known as Croaked : Frog Monster From Hell is not about a giant frog as the cover art would suggest and is more a Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) type, except despite being made in the 50's the monster looked better then.

With very little actually happening, looking terrible when things do and with little to no redeeming features Rana is actually worse than the cover would suggest and that's really quite impressive.

Nice to know Troma was awful from day one.

The Good:

Funny cover art

The Bad:

Daft concept

Weak horror, poor comedy

Dishonest cover

Oddly boring

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

An actual giant frog would have been considerably more interesting

This makes the Toxic Avenger look intellectual

(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.

This "film" is a Grade Z classic - I have to laugh when I read other comments of these low,low budget horror/monster movies and people are actually ticked off that they weren't "good" - as if these things could be considered well made, well executed horror films. Example, this thing was shot over the course of a COUPLE DAYS in 1975 using local people with a budget that wouldn't cover a sandwich run to the deli. What do you expect??? But for those twisted ones who enjoy, devour and laugh like crazy at badly made cinema, well, this one is amazing! There is truly Ed Wood type dialogue in this flick - awful, unintentionally hilarious dialogue - in fact the THIRD line of the whole film is "We're so isolated on this island" Yes - now THAT'S exposition! The performances are terrible, the guy playing the crazy Ol' hermit gives a 110% and it is a horrible peice of mugging - he's the kind of cliched crazy old timer who actuallys says "heap o' trouble" THREE times in the course of a minute - I kid you not. You never see the "creature" until WAY near the end and the costume is ridiculous. My friends and I laughed a lot at this piece of trash - so if you're looking for a Sam Raimi or even a John Carpenter - no this is not for you - but if you howl at Ed Woods films and seek out campy trash from the 1970s - then look no further.