The Crater Lake Monster doesn’t seen to have ever made it to UK cinemas but when it was first released in the States, British film magazines carried enticing still images of a giant prehistoric beast facing off against a bulldozer and to these then 15 year old eyes, it looked like possibly the most exciting film in years. Imagine then the crushing disappointment in catching up with it many years later only to find it was a pathetic cheapie with a rubbish monster and far too much supposedly hilarious (it isn’t) comic relief.
In Crater Lake, Northern California, a group of ill-defined scientists led by Dr Richard Calkins (Bob Hyman) discover drawings on the walls of a cave complex, including images of humans battling what appears to be a Plesiosaurus. But their work is interrupted by the arrival of a meteor that crashes into the lake, destroying the cave system and super-heating the water enough to awaken a long-dormant dinosaur that lumbers to the surface and starts attacking people. Eventually the monster is cornered by town sheriff and the scientists and put to death by the aforementioned bulldozer.
The Crater Lake Monster suffered a troubled production history which perhaps goes some way to explaining its many problems. When director William R. Stromberg started the film, financed from his own pocket, he cast himself as the lead scientist, Dr Richard Calkins. His money quickly ran out and Stromberg turned to Crown International Pictures for additional funding. Stromberg then went back and reshot everything that he’s already filmed with Hyman replacing him in the scientist role. Writer Richard Cardella (who also played the sheriff) later told The Unknown Movies website that Crown International “screwed up everything. They pulled their support for some key scenes (that would have explained a lot and plugged some of the obvious holes), added a canned score that really sucked, and turned it over to some hack to edit.” 1
It’s very clear from the finished film that all was not well. A couple of scenes, for example, appear to been meant for day-for-night post-production but either there wasn’t enough money or someone forgot – a woman (Suzanne Lewis) in a boat says to her partner (Michael Hoover) “look at all the stars” but they’re clearly boating in broad daylight. Later, the sheriff investigates the scenes of a monster attack and waves his torch around to get a better view, again in broad daylight. A scene set in a darkroom is brightly lit too, suggesting that a red tint was planned but never executed. That some scenes were never shot might explain the sudden and jarring revelation that several months have elapsed in the story, a passage of time signalled only in an abrupt dialogue exchange.
But other problems go beyond any alleged neglect by Crown International. Cardella’s script is all over the place, spending far too much time with a pair of idiot comedy rednecks, Arnie (Glenn Roberts) and Mitch (Mark Siegel), who are trying to set up a boat hire business and monster victims are often introduced in non-sequitur sub-plots that have little bearing on anything else going on in the film. Most egregious of these is the gun-totin’ robber who shoots up a convenience store in a nearby town (in a clumsily staged and nonsensical sequence) for nothing more than a bottle of booze and gets chased very slowly around Crater Lake before the monster’s giant plastic head hoves into view and eats him.
That ridiculous plastic head – sometimes seen drifting serenely around the lake – lets the monster down though its stop-motion incarnation isn’t too awful. It’s not up to Ray Harryhausen’s standards obviously but given the meagre resources on hand, despite a few matte lines and an unavoidable crudity, it holds it own – just. According to the end credits the effects were filmed in “Fantamation”, the work of David Allen, supervising an uncredited Randy Cook and Phil Tippett with some input from Jim Danforth. They do the best they can with the money available and the results at least lift the film in the scenes in which it appears.
That moment that piqued my interest all those years ago, the climactic battle between bulldozer and dinosaur, is brief but among the best moments in an otherwise very sorry film. You’ll be able to live with the sometimes shaky effects, but getting past the tedious script, the awful and frequently inappropriate library music cues and those bloody awful idiots trying to hire out their knackered old boat is much harder work. And it’s more effort than the film really deserves. Stromberg never made another film – perhaps his experiences on The Crater Lake Monster were enough for one career.
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