The Loch Ness Horror

Something strange is happening in Loch Ness. The water is crystal clear, nor cold. A giant robotic plastic monster emerges and kills Scots! What is this movie?! First, I love reading stories about Nessie, sea monsters in general. When i saw this for sale, i thought it was a cheap rip off of jaws. No. It was terrible! The story was pointless, acting was 100% garbage, the only up side was the cool mechanical Nessie they used. It was full of inaccuracy, wrong locations, and bad everything. Not worth your while, just leave it on the shelf (or garbage can) you found it on. On second note, This film was shot in Cailifornia, not Loch Ness, a major diss to Nessie fans.

What can I say about a movie as bad as this? The people who made this movie, didn't even try to make the monster in it look realistic. You never see more than its head, and the head is just a giant puppet that has little movement except for when it opens it mouth to roar. And the sound they used for the roaring is the best part. At many points in the movie it sounds exactly like a TIE fighter flying over! I couldn't believe that when I first heard it and had to rewind several times to make it sink in. Other than the terrible looking monster and the noises it makes, there isn't much more to this film except for a few corny attack scenes and the crazy Scotsman attacking the kids trying to have an intimate moment in his castle. Still, it's watchable if you like this sort of trash. I know I do....

Although I like some other films made by this director, this is the only one I ever paid to see in a theater. I never made it to the end before I walked out. The ad showed a neat-looking monster, but the puppet/parade float used in this film looks nothing like it. Actually, I didn't know this was made by the same guy who did THE EYE CREATURES when I went to see it. Had I known that, there's no way I'd have paid to watch it. Some movies are so bad they are good but this is not one of them.

If it wasn't for Loch Ness we would never see such corny delights about Nessie. Larry Buchanan's take on this Scottish legend is quite entertaining at times as movies about monsters made of plastic can be. The fake is hilarious, the fake Scottish accents are funny. The kill-scenes cracked me up. I also loved the fact that there were more American tourists and Nessie-hunters from Houston, Tx invading Loch Ness then actual locals living there. Still, this film never reaches the cheesy heights the classic trailer promises. Not a total loss though, makes a cool double feature along with THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER (1977).

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 some guy named 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. That's about all I cared to gather.

Despite being a "horror" movie, the monster effects were way too cheesy to even scare a kid. Nessie is a totally fake and cheap looking puppet head on a pole with a barely functioning mouth and lifeless beady eyes. The only way it could have been worse is if she was portrayed by a sock puppet. 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. When she attacks people, it looks hilariously bad. She apparently kills a couple of soldiers by tapping them lightly with her snout or lazily biting Pratts shoulder and head while he just stands there like an idiot. 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 awful, since all of the "actors/actresses" are all just members of Buchanans family. And I've heard enough legitimate Scottish accents to find the obviously fake ones insulting if they thought it would fool anyone. And that's not all that proves 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.