Search - The Crater Lake Monster on DVD

Pathetic Creature Feature!

Bunny Man! | Seattle, WA USA | 04/19/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This is a truly terrible film!



Most disappointing--as a resident of the Pacific Northwest, I at least expected this to be set at Crater Lake, Oregon. No such luck. It would have been a camp experience to find a local connection for a dinosaur flick!



Every aspect of the film is laughable--none more so that the bad day-for-night scenes! The actors are wooden. They have bad hair. We actually root for the stop motion dinosaur to eat all of them! Sadly, some people survive.



The catatonic state of a couple of the tourists involved with the monster (the alcoholic magician and his assistant) might well mirror the state of the viewer of the film.



Sad, sad, sad...................."

It Had Potential

Stanley Runk | Camp North Pines | 08/17/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"A dinosaur egg lays frozen at the bottom of Crater Lake. One day a meteor falls into the lake, heating the water, incubating the egg, and VOILA....there's a rampaging dinosaur on the loose! Plotwise it's got all the fixins for a cheap and fun monster movie. The unfortunate thing is that the fun is missing.

The movie does seem to be a kind of tribute the monster movies of the 50s, but Tremors it isn't. The dinosaur itself is stop motion animation and the close up head shots are a big plaster looking thing. I certainly have no problem with these things, I love that kind of stuff. It just seems like too much screen time is devoted to these two nitwits who rent out boats. They're played for comic relief and this might have worked if they were actually funny and not simply irritating.

Not much else I can really say about it. I like the effort, but the formula just didn't seem to work so well this time."

Amazing

Bakuryuu Tyranno | England | 09/03/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Some people miss the point with some things.



For example, with the two brothers who obviously not very bright, but their development is deeper than that. In the senes with them, its obvious that one is basicaly immoral, willing to do almost anything to get money, while the other objects to his brother being immoral, but he's obviously scared enough of his brother not to do anything about it most of the time.



Also, the robber who appears in one scene and kills this people almost turns the thing into a "novie", in other words, a movie that is almost like a novel, because it has other things going on besides the main plotline.



Sites made by people who are actually honest and research things have noted that the claymation was good for its time, even if the people writing these articles didn't like the movie itself. I agree with them simply because, aside from the fact that they research these things (more often than not by watching other, simpilar movies) I really don't care that much about special effects. CGI might not have existed when this movie was made, but I'm still happy there's no CGI in it because CGI is beyond horrible.



The only remotely bad thing about this movie that I can see is that when one of the female victims is running from the monster, she gets a relatively far distance from it and collapses against some wrocks, THEN she starts screaming hysterically.



Still, this movie can't really be blamed for that because at this point there were a lot of movies with at least one female victim who screamed hysterically when she was in danger."

The Worst Dinosaur And Meteorite Comedy Ever Made

Robert I. Hedges | 01/16/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"
"The Crater Lake Monster" is a movie that reeks in so many dimensions that it really becomes difficult to criticize simply because it's hard to decide where to start. Other reviewers have summarized the plot (such as it is) nicely, so I will dispense with that other than to say it concerns a dinosaur that hatches when a meteorite impacts a rural area near "Crater Lake." The commotion requires an idiotic sheriff, several comic relief hillbillies, and a crack team of researchers from a university to attempt to deal with the creature, resulting, of course, in the typical "we need to kill it" versus the "we need to save it for science" arguments (one guess as to which side of that debate is proven correct).



This film has almost unbearable acting with a script to match, and features some of the cheesiest dialogue in movie history. I have seen many bad films, and this is definitely in the "so bad it's a crime it wasn't done by MST3K" category. The pretense, plot, and general fundamentals (watch for such Ed Wood classic techniques as "day for night" shooting, in which the temporal aspects of the movie become completely disjointed from reality) of the film match the ineptness of the actors, but perhaps lamest of all is the monster itself which is one of the worst and least terrifying creatures in the annals of horror cinema.



This film is also available in "The Horrible Horrors Collection, Volume 2" (from Rhino), a multi-DVD pack with seven other cheesy stinkers, most of which are actually even worse than "The Crater Lake Monster". (Hard to believe, but true.)



For fans of really terrible cinema, this one will be sure to elicit delighted groans.



Recommended only for truly hardened connoisseurs of schlock cinema.

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