Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Platypuschow The Crater Lake Monster is a 1970's monster themed b-movie but alas not one of the better ones.It tells the story of a meteor that awakens something ancient beneath a lake which proceeds to chomp on the locals.I was drawn to the movie because of the cover art but shortly into the film you'll realise that it's not being entirely honest with you.The movie itself looks and sounds great, in fact I was stunned to discover that it's as old as 77 so for that it gets a remarkable thumbs up. The SFX however leave a lot to be desired even for it's time. The "Monster" looks like it's straight out of Jason & The Argonauts movie (The original ones) and for that reason it's very hard to take seriously.One stand out part of this film is a couple of comedy characters who actually make the film somewhat watchable to a degree. I actually laughed but was frustrated that even the dreadful finale had to screw that up.With more plot holes than you can shake a stick at this should have been better but poor writing and laughable sfx ruined it.The Good:Some oddly good comedyLooks ahead of its timeThe Bad:SFX are unintentionally funnyCover is deceptiveWeak finaleThings I Learnt From This Movie:Bray Wyatt has come a long wayStars are easier to see during the dayDying underwater will cause your blood to teleport onto your boat

swedzin I kind of enjoy these low budget monster movies, but this one, I didn't find very enjoyable. As per usual… a few scientist found a cave near The Crater Lake (that doesn't even look like crater lake, it doesn't even resemble to any of them). There they saw a caveman paintings, that presents a tribe fighting a dinosaur (sounds like a creationist wet dream if you ask me…). During their research, a meteor fell into a lake, and… nothing special happened about it… it was forgotten during the movie course. Just to make room for a Plesiosaur like monster to come out of the lake and start terrorizing people all over the small county. So… the meteor is forgotten, and no one is asking questions about it? OK, move on. Obviously, the director of the film William Stromberg and the writer/leading actor Richard Cardella were inspired by Loch Ness monster. Yep, it's one of 'those' movies.Let's start with the plot/script: It's pretty lame, very limp story, just an excuse to see a large stop-motion monster eating people alive. The characters are so weak, they are not properly developed, they are just moving around and you can just easily guess who is next for dinner. Actors are bad, so uninterested in their performance, or the film, just talking feebly and watching the floor… they were just pathetic meat sacks that talked, no emotions, noting. The monster effects were… well, stop motion was pretty much solid, while from close, the big toy head was used, and that was so fake. The monster sound effects were also pretty solid. The music score was nothing special, it's just funnily intense, I remember an intense piano, like some drunken cat is jumping on the keyboards… Richard Cardella plays the sheriff, with that lame performance, he looks like he doesn't give a damn about his little mountain town.HERE COMES SPOILERS: There are few scenes… and I just can't resist to tell you about them. First of all, the film suddenly jumps from it's main plot to a totally different subplot. It's about some ugly, mustache hobo, who robbed the store and than headed to a crater lake, just to get eaten by a monster. Karma's a bitch, right? And that's the moment where sheriff started to suspect about something weird in the lake. The next scene is just there to give us a rush towards the end of the film, it's about sheriff returning to the lake, on the same location where that ugly hobo was eaten, just to suddenly confront a monster. And the last one is a… let's call it a dramatic duel between a sheriff and a monster. While sheriff is driving a big heavy equipment vehicle, he use it to defeat the monster. And, I could easily say that this is perhaps a first time, maybe, a first time to see main star using a large machine to defeat a large monster. Just like in Aliens (1986) and a shameless Aliens rip off Carnosaur 2 (1995). Maybe I'm wrong…SPOILER ENDS.So, don't come near this film, it's bad, boring, lame, it doesn't apply to your mind, it just repel off your head. Nothing special happens… just boring, boring stuff. Skip this one, and find something more interesting, or more ridiculous.

ferbs54 My bad, and all that, but for some reason, I had long assumed "The Crater Lake Monster" was a product of the late 1950s--a black-and-white cousin of such other films dealing with thawed-out critters returning to harass modern man as "The Monster That Challenged the World" (1957) and "The Monster of Piedras Blancas" (1959). Of course, I was incorrect in that surmise, and the picture in question turns out to be from the year 1977, and filmed in beautiful supersaturated color, to boot. Still, this film's heart seems to be very much with the great sci-fi pictures that had been produced two decades earlier. A minor and modest entertainment at best, it yet succeeds as a pastiche of its '50s antecedents, and indeed, had it been filmed in B&W and featured some vintage automobiles, might have been able to fool many other folks as to its year of birth.In the film, coscreenwriter Richard Cardella plays Sheriff Steve Hanson, who is in charge of the peaceful, picturesque little town of Crater Lake, somewhere between L.A. and Las Vegas. The plummeting of a sparkling meteorite into the local lake spells big trouble for Hanson, the townsfolk and some visiting tourists, however, as the superhot chunk of space junk soon warms up the lake's waters and acts as an incubator of sorts for a plesiosaur egg that had long lain dormant in its icy depths. And before long, a fully grown plesiosaur--think of the head and body of a brontosaurus, but substitute seallike flippers for the legs--with a decidedly nasty disposition and a hunger for meat is seen waddling and chomping its way through the area! It would seem as if Hanson, along with the town's doc, a visiting archaeologist and his girlfriend, and the area's two doofus boat renters, Arnie and Mitch, will have their hands very full, eliminating--and perhaps even capturing--the prehistoric menace...."A beast more terrifying than your most frightening nightmare," the original trailer for "The Crater Lake Monster" proclaimed, and while this amusing bit of hyperbole is of course patent nonsense, the film's creature nonetheless is a most pleasing creation. Brought to life via Harryhausen-like stop-motion animation courtesy of David W. Allen, the plesiosaur is fairly awesome to behold, and to the film's credit, we do not have to wait more than 15 minutes before getting our initial glimpse. (I always got impatient, when I was a kid, if a film withheld that first look for too long, and I suppose I haven't changed much!) The creature looks most impressive every time we see it, even when director/coscreenwriter William R. Stromberg gives us a long shot of the lake, with only the monster's head and neck briefly emerging from it. Indeed, the entire film LOOKS just fine, with rich colors and lovely scenery (the picture makes nice use of its Huntington Lake and Palomar Mountain, California, locales), shown to good advantage on its current Rhino DVD incarnation. As for the film's acting...well, I'm not saying that the Academy egregiously overlooked anybody here, but the thesping is nonetheless better than you might expect. Cardella, in the lead role, is especially good as the befuddled, tough, scared but dependably capable sheriff; indeed, an unexpectedly charismatic portrayal from this relatively unknown actor. Anyway, those are the film's not inconsiderable virtues, which are, unfortunately, counterbalanced by a goodly share of drawbacks.It's hard to put a finger on any one reason, but "Crater Lake Monster" exudes that indefinable sense of an amateur effort, albeit a very skilled one, and featuring those excellent FX. As detailed on a certain Wiki site, the film had a troubled production vis-a-vis financing, and I suppose that all involved did the best they could under the circumstances. The picture features some blatantly goofy humor, thanks to those cracker-barrel numskulls Mitch and Arnie (we get to see the two argue constantly, fight, toss each other in the lake, get drunk, stumble around in the woods, etc.), but these scenes also allow us to get to know the characters better, and thus to actually worry about them when they are in peril. What is worse than the inane humor is the ease with which the plesiosaur is ultimately dispatched; a horribly rushed, unbelievable and anticlimactic denouement that should leave very few viewers satisfied. And then there is the matter of time elapsed in the film. We are told at one point that it had been six months since the meteorite plunged into Crater Lake, although there is absolutely no way for the viewer to have realized this; indeed, all the occurrences in the film seem to transpire over the duration of around 72 hours. So yes, the film most certainly is a minor effort, and a mixed bag at best, but still most undeserving of the lowest "BOMB" rating that the wet blankets at "Maltin's Movie Guide" have chosen to bestow on it. The film is especially perfect for the kiddies and those with an abiding love for 1950s monster fare, not to mention those who are suckers for stop-motion FX. In all, a nice try, from a group of filmmakers whose heart was certainly in the right place....

movieman_kev A meteor crashes into a lake which causes a dinosaur egg to hatch and before you can say Lock Ness, the baby Dino is chowing down on the local townspeople in this low-budget b-movie.This movie has almost everything that one wants from a dinosaur flick. Well except for a good storyline, believable characters, a credible or even passable dino, good special effects, and/or anything that'll keep you from falling asleep, but other than those things the movie is tops, What it does have is two knuckleheads that are painfully groan-inducingly unfunny, so there's that. Seriously though, don't waste your time.