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Lake Superior: "Feeding Ground For A Race Of Carnivorous Pre

Robert I. Hedges | 04/21/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Most movies featuring the Loch Ness Monster set the film At Loch Ness, or at least in Scotland. Not so "Loch Ness Terror" (also known as "Beyond Loch Ness,") which finds Nessie and her brood of plesiosaurs in Lake Superior. The film actually does open in Loch Ness in a scene done in sepiatone to let us know it's in the distant past (well the seventies, anyway.) A scientific expedition looking for plesiosaurs finds a giant egg. The eggnapping makes Nessie, the mother of all plesiosaurs, beyond mad and she proceeds to demolish the entire party, except one young boy, who sees his father killed and vows vengeance.

In the present day Nessie has moved to Lake Superior, and mysterious things start happening. An ultra-cool cryptozoologist, James Murphy (Brian Krause,) shows up to find out what's going on and befriends Josh Riley (Niall Matter,) a young bait shop entrepreneur. Josh's mom, Karen Riley (Carrie Genzel) is the town sheriff; rounding out the principals are the stunningly gorgeous Zoe (Amber Borycki,) Josh's ex-flame, who is now dating Josh's nemesis, spoiled rich brat Brody (Sebastian Gacki.)

Josh's crazy uncle kicks the whole thing off by tying to photograph Nessie with conceptually nasty results, but fairly laughable execution. Murphy starts parading a bunch of high-tech anti-plesiosaur weaponry to the other cast members, and has a lot of pseudo-scientific dialogue about the magnetic properties of minerals, although he also says "disorientated," where most scientists would use the more commonly acceptable "disoriented." (Just a pet peeve of mine...now back to the review.) We learn lots of interesting facts along the way. For instance: an alligator can rip a car door off ("I saw it on the news,") and that plesiosaurs can be fooled by standing very still. It's all very scientific.

Zoe and Brody (and a couple of extras) go to an island in the middle of Lake Superior where Nessie has her nest, unknown to them. Their romantic camping trip is abruptly terminated, and Josh becomes alarmed when they don't return. Before it's over with Josh gets to be a hero and battle a plesiosaur with a shovel in a coal chute, while we get to see the loathsome Brody become the lunch buffet for a bunch of baby plesiosaurs. Murphy reveals himself to be the kid who watched his dad get munched by Nessie years ago (obviously,) and has a plan for Nessie involving a Russian electromagnetic pulse gun, and a huge hypodermic needle of cyanide. He also answers the central puzzler of the whole movie: why and how is Nessie in Michigan? It turns out that plesiosaurs like to breed in safe and deep inland lakes, and they pass through the earth's crust using deep trans-arctic tunnels that connect the bodies of water! At the end (no, I won't tell you how it happens,) there are two neat couples left: Josh and Zoe (who are instantly back in love) and Karen and James, who wants to settle down by the lake. Nobody could see that coming I bet.

The movie is ridiculous, but far better than many of its B-movie brethren. The script is decent for what it is, the acting (notably Krause and Matter) is especially good for a film in this genre, and the CGI plesiosaurs aren't the worst computer graphics I've ever seen, though the plesiosaur puppets are quite ridiculous. Overall for a cheap action monster movie, "Loch Ness Terror" is a fun choice."