Scary Croc Makes Lake Anything But Placid

Witney Seibold

Guest Movie Reviewer

   There's something about animal related Monster Movies that has always bothered me a little. Whether it's an intelligent lion that finds its way into a small tribe of European hunters, a dinosaur that has been resurrected for entertainment purposes, a school of ineffective piranha, or even a giant crocodile in Maine, one thing always persists the animals are always so hungry. Even if we were to come across a movie in a few years about a nest of genetically engineered hamsters living in an abandoned mine shaft, those cute little critters would doubtless be so hungry that the first humans to stumble across them would be messily devoured, and those malevolent hamsters would return to the depths of the shaft, chattering gleefully.

The hungry animal in question this time is a thirty foot long crocodile in a Maine lake, star of the creature feature Lake Placid. This film, directed by Steve Miner (Halloween: H2O), and starring Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, and Oliver Platt, is a prime example of a film which has no problem mocking itself, and in the process, makes a fun and ghastly guilty pleasure. Not since "The Relic" have monsters been so much fun.

Bridget plays a neurotic paleontologist escaping relationship troubles who is assigned to check out a tooth pulled from the bloody stump that used to be a local. She meets up with Bill, fish and game warden, and very funny, anti-sarcastic sheriff of the small lakeside town in Maine. They suspect it may be a bear. I guess this is a new-fangled kind of underwater bear, but I think that's another movie in itself. After a crocodile is suspected as the killer (thus making the film at least somewhat in tune with the previews), Oliver Platt, a rich crocodile worshipper, flies in to help.

What follows is one croc attack after another, while the characters try to figure out how to catch the thing. As the body count rises It's difficult to figure out why they want to catch it, but every time they insist on getting back into the boat, one cannot help but utter a giddy giggle.

This film has a few absolutely golden moments that make it the wonderfully diverting rubbery flick that it is. First, it knows that old rule: body parts are funny. There is a diver bitten in half, a decapitation, a rolling severed head (which Bill Pullman has the good manners to poke with a stick) and a scene where the leads pass around a worm-infested toe rather casually. Second, it knows that common sense is not a law, but a theory. Don't abandon pursuit, else we end the film right here! And third, this film features a scene where the croc is lured to the surface with bait, a real cow dangled above the water from a helicopter. Any film with a cow soaring through the air is grand by my standards.

All of the actors, cow included, look as if they're having irrepressible fun. There are a few moments where Bridget stops to talk about her relationships with Bill, which weigh the film down a little, and make you kind of antsy for the next attack. They are supposed to be meaningful, but that saccharine music and cheesy dialogue just turn those moments to muck. Otherwise, the silly on-screen ramblings are the right hand of what is a fun, ridiculous, bite-in-the-proverbial-pants.

Witney Seibold is a student at Santa Monica College's Academy of Entertainment and Technology. He has directed two shorts and works part-time at Mann's Criterion Movie Theater.