This is the first Larry Buchanan movie I ever viewed, and sadly wasn't the last. I only bothered checking it out after seeing the trailer in "Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies" many years ago as a kid. I found the deceptive box art and melodramatic trailer even more entertaining than the film itself. I haven't even bothered watching this again for almost twenty years, but I remember enough to write this review.
The main story goes like this. At "Loch Ness", a team of scientists led by Pratt seek out to find Nessie, but instead discover eggs laid by the monster and the decide to steal one of them. Unsurprisingly, Nessie gets mad and begins rampaging around the area, searching for her egg. Meanwhile, another scientist named George Sanderson (Sandy Kenyon) recruits longtime Loch Ness resident Jack Stewart (Doc Livingston) to prove Nessie exists. I guess they ran out of money, because the rushed ending involved a crashed Luftwaffe plane being destroyed as a cover-up. There's a sub-plot or two thrown in that I couldn't be bothered to follow, like a psychotic ax wielding Scotsman living on a non-existent island in the middle of Loch Ness who tries to kill some teens.
Despite being a "horror" movie, the monster effects were too cheesy to frighten a kid. Nessie is a totally fake and cheap looking puppet head mounted on a long pole with a barely functioning mouth and lifeless beady eyes. Her roar was just a shameless recycle of the TIE fighter sound from Star Wars. Even her misty breath and nostrils bubbling underwater didn't look too impressive.
The attack scenes are usually too dark to make out what's happening. Even when Nessie kills in broad daylight, it's pathetic. She apparently kills a couple of soldiers by pushing them lightly with her snout. There's only one mildly disturbing death scene when Nessie dragged some guy in a sleeping bag into the water. Other than that, nothing in this movie was scary.
The acting is predictably bad, since all of the "actors/actresses" are all just members of Buchanans family. And I've heard enough legitimate Scottish accents to tell them apart from the obviously fake ones from the cast. And that's not all that solidifies the fact this didn't even take place at Loch Ness, but at Lake Tahoe, California. You can easily tell by the out of place California redwoods seen several times.
This film is so low-budget and crummy, yet you could say it's so bad, it's good. Otherwise, it's just a dime a dozen budget monster movie worth a single watch on a lazy day.
