This movie has got to be a contender for having the single dumbest move by a character of all time. James Mitchum portrays a troubleshooter named Bill Travis, who jumps out of a helicopter into a lake to retrieve a bomb detonator, right after he's seen with his own eyes a giant monster in that lake, which has already gone for the bait provided by the helicopter's crew, and is dragging along that same detonator. Go ahead, you can reread that if you haven't seen the movie, and marvel at how genuinely stupid that sounds.
This really is a terribly goofy monster flick released in 1980, although filming started about a decade earlier and ran into the type of problems these kind of films do, namely they're so bad they virtually never get completed. I saw this one under the title "Monstroid: It Came From the Lake", and it makes pains at the opening to state that the story is based on a real event that happened in Colombia in 1971. However if you take the minute or so to research that, you'll learn that the Colombian village of Chimayo is entirely fictional, but the one in New Mexico where they filmed this actually exists. Go figure.
As if to add insult to injury, the close of the picture teases what could have been a sequel when a nest of eggs is revealed, owing to the lake monster that was just destroyed. I would love to have been there when Robert Mitchum got a chance to see his son star in this thing, wondering how in hell he could trample on the family name in such a manner. One saving grace for all who appeared here is that the closing credits only listed the players, but without the characters they portrayed, so as not to harm their chances of landing another acting gig. But if you were Mitchum or John Carradine (the priest), you were pretty much screwed, as most anyone watching would have known who you were.
This really is a terribly goofy monster flick released in 1980, although filming started about a decade earlier and ran into the type of problems these kind of films do, namely they're so bad they virtually never get completed. I saw this one under the title "Monstroid: It Came From the Lake", and it makes pains at the opening to state that the story is based on a real event that happened in Colombia in 1971. However if you take the minute or so to research that, you'll learn that the Colombian village of Chimayo is entirely fictional, but the one in New Mexico where they filmed this actually exists. Go figure.
As if to add insult to injury, the close of the picture teases what could have been a sequel when a nest of eggs is revealed, owing to the lake monster that was just destroyed. I would love to have been there when Robert Mitchum got a chance to see his son star in this thing, wondering how in hell he could trample on the family name in such a manner. One saving grace for all who appeared here is that the closing credits only listed the players, but without the characters they portrayed, so as not to harm their chances of landing another acting gig. But if you were Mitchum or John Carradine (the priest), you were pretty much screwed, as most anyone watching would have known who you were.