The Crater Lake Monster (1977) review

THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER 1977

Richard Cardella (Steve Hanson), Glenn Roberts (Arnie Chabot), Mark Siegel (Mitch Kowalski), Bob Hyman (Richard Calkins), Richard Garrison (Dan Turner), Kacey Cobb (Susan Patterson)

Directed by William R. Stromberg

The Short Version: A creature resembling a Plesiosaur hatches from a dormant egg after a meteor crashes into Crater Lake in this moderately ambitious, if failed low budget throwback to the monsters of many a Fab 50s flick. Periodic dino attacks and bad acting ensues. Lots of meaningless dialog, hillbilly comedy, and an intrusive sub-plot involving the sheriff chasing a crazy man (he kills for his booze but pays for his meals!) around the lake defy the viewer to keep watching. Hindered by a handful of behind the scenes mishaps, this nearly worthless monster movie is redeemed by the stop-motion animated Crater Lake critter.

A meteor crashes into Crater Lake, attracting the attention of local scientists and law enforcement. Acting as an incubator, the heat from the falling rock hatches a dormant prehistoric egg at the bottom of the lake. Six months later a very hungry aquatic dinosaur goes on a modest rampage devouring anyone who goes near, or into the water.

Reportedly financed through an inheritance, the one and only directorial effort of William R. Stromberg is torture to sit through. It begins promisingly, but sinks faster than a mob victim wearing cement shoes. Outside of a few fleeting moments of potential, the monster sequences keep it alive, but even some of these are infected with inertia. Most grievous is the finale--where you'd expect it to shine the most. According to sources, an animation shot for the climax inexplicably went missing (more about this below). Filmed for approximately $200,000, Stromberg's big screen debut as director was, like many a movie, not without its share of production problems.

A portion of the movie had already been shot when the filmmakers came to the conclusion that what they had was inefficient. The decision was made to scrap what they had and start over. According to director Stromberg he cast himself in the role of the doctor for the initial version, but stayed behind the camera for the do-over. Crown International came aboard bringing additional financing with them. With Crown involved, Stromberg reportedly lost a lot of control. Planned monster sequences such as an attack in a cavern and the beast ripping off the roof of a building to get at room full of dancers went unfilmed due to budgetary constraints. Reportedly, Stromberg also had little input in regards to the editing of his movie. Existing expository scenes were cut, yet, oddly, some others were extended leaving a mostly boring mess of a movie when the monster isn't onscreen. 

 
Moreover, the editing is totally backwards by forcing the stock 50s monster characters (law enforcement that wants the thing dead and the scientists that want the thing alive) into the background and putting the spotlight on a hillbilly Laurel & Hardy schtick that takes up far too much of the running time. Elsewhere an utterly stupid sub-plot about a disgruntled long hair killing two people in a convenient store leading to a gunfight-chase with the sheriff adds nothing except more questions. Why does he gun down a store clerk and a customer over a $4.75 bottle of liquor, but has no problem paying for a meal in a diner shortly thereafter? If this bit of padding led to the sheriff's discovery of the monster it would make more sense for its placement, but it doesn't. The sheriff (played by co-scripter Cardella) stumbles upon the monster a few scenes later.

Aside from leaden to bad acting, horrible pacing, and incongruous editing, Paul Gentry salvages some of the technical aspects with his cinematography; his camera captures some beautiful, as well as haunting visuals of the title body of water. Filmed on location at Huntington Lake in the High Sierras and on Palomar Mountain, some moody shots of natural fog and mist add an enormous amount of production value to a film with very little of it. Scotland's Loch Ness Monster is evoked in some of these shots where the monsters neck breaks the water, gliding a ways before descending back into the lake.

Before making his creature feature, Stromberg dabbled in amateur cinema; at an early age he concocted a 16mm version of 'Sound of Thunder' by Ray Bradbury (later made into an execrable, big budget disaster in 2005) and working in animation for DAVEY AND GOLIATH cartoons and commercials. Collaborating with long-time friend and filmmaking associate Richard Cardella (he plays the sheriff in the film), the duo set about writing a script about that most famous of mystery monsters, Bigfoot. This being the mid 70s, Bigfoot sightings were on a multitude of Silver Screens with a variety of interpretations, so this idea was eventually abandoned--settling on a monster more akin to that other famous folkloric creature, the aforementioned Loch Ness Monster.

The strength of CRATER LAKE (what little there is) lies mostly in its stop-motion creation. The picture had quite a pedigree behind the scenes in bringing the beast to life. David Allen, well known to insiders and cult fans, but not established with mainstream viewers to the degree of Harryhausen or Danforth, signed on as stop-motion supervisor. If you remember those animated Swiss Miss, Pillsbury Doughboy, and Mrs. Butterworth commercials, you've seen just some of Allen's work. His King Kong Volkswagen commercial is his crowning achievement among his TV credits. 

Another friend of the director, Allen designed the title creature as well as assisting in the construction and sculpting of the 15 inch model. STAR WARS (1977) animator Jon Berg (also listed as John Berg) built the armature. Award winning FX artists Phil Tippett (DRAGONSLAYER, ROBOCOP, WILLOW, STARSHIP TROOPERS) and Randy Cook (CAVEMAN, THE THING, FRIGHT NIGHT, LORD OF THE RING series) joined the pack as assistant animators. Like Berg, Tippett worked on STAR WARS and popularized the use of the Go-Motion SPX technique; both he and Berg animated the chessboard monsters highlighted in the sequence where Luke is warned Wookies are prone to ripping arms out of sockets when they lose at the game.

Going back to the animation, Tippet sculpted the creature minus the head (which Allen handled). Along with assistant animators Tippet and Cook, the great Jim Danforth allegedly pitched in and did some animating of his own although there is conflicting information that he never worked on the film at all. Reportedly these effects took roughly two and a half months to complete. David Allen animated half of the stop-motion sequences, while Tippet and Cook did the rest of the work; which leaves us with Jim Danforth. According to an old Cinefantastique article, Danforth's minimal work on the picture was highlighted by a spectacular bit of animation during the climax showing the snowplow ramming into the monster. This particular bit ended up disappearing somehow or other. There are a couple of brief shots done live showing the plow cutting into the creature (yet no wounds are visible on the animated monster), but these are unimaginatively directed, doing nothing to help bring the film to a crescendo on the scale of one of Harryhausen's creature feature denouements.

Taking into account the films low-level status and Danforth's limited participation, one can speculate he wished to disassociate himself from the production. To see what Danforth was capable of, check out Hammer's WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (1970); a picture that also featured David Allen animation (the Chasmosaurus sequence). Other Danforth credits include 7 FACES OF DR. LAO (1964), PLANET OF DINOSAURS (1978), CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981), and CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982). 

It wasn't all dimensional animation (or Fantamation as it's described on promotional materials and in the credits) seen onscreen in CRATER LAKE, though.

Contacted in 1975 to build a Bigfoot suit when the picture was still about the Sasquatch, makeup artist Steve Neill (GOD TOLD ME TO, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, FULL MOON HIGH, GALAXY OF TERROR, Q, FORBIDDEN WORLD) was then tasked with building a large monster head instead. It's seen a few times under and above water, and matches very well with the animated creature. Funnily enough, Neill's aquatic dino noggin turned up a few years later in Mel Brooks' HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 1 (1981) without the artists knowledge. Incidentally, all these guys  (minus Danforth) worked together on LASERBLAST (1978) the following year.

 
Regardless of circumstances determining how good or bad the finished product is, Stromberg's name is on it as director. Despite making quite a lot of money, Stromberg never directed again; but in articles of the time period, the man seemed to look forward to mounting another project. However, William's sons, Robert and William T. Stromberg, followed in his footsteps--the former having done visual effects for many major Hollywood pictures and directed MALEFICIENT (2014); the latter has more than two dozen credits as a composer. 

 
As for THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER, it's barely a footnote in monster cinema, but one that most everybody has seen on television or video at some point. Aside from being one of the better 'creature from the lake' flicks--a sub-genre with very little to recommend it--only the hardcore bad movie fans and stop-motion fanatics will have tolerance for it. The only things that save this MONSTER from remaining at the bottom of CRATER LAKE are its special effects and photography--two things that most other pictures built around a similar topic can rarely, if ever muster.

This review is representative of the Mill Creek blu-ray paired with GALAXINA (1980). Specs and extras: no extras; 16x9 widescreen 1.85:1; 1080i (for CRATER LAKE MONSTER); three English audio options: 2.0 DTS HD, 2.0 Dolby Digital, English PMC Uncompressed;  running time: 1:23:54

Celluloid Trails: The Un-Making of Starcrash II

"When I contacted some American producers after the success of STARCRASH and offered them quite a few projects, they were only interested in making STARCRASH II."--Luigi Cozzi, Cinefantastique, September, 1981 

This entry of Celluloid Trails catalogs the various rumors and reports attached to the non-making of the sequel/followup to Luigi Cozzi's 1978 cult favorite STARCRASH. 

Luigi Cozzi's STARCRASH (1978), for all its technical faults, became a surprisingly profitable film around the world, particularly during its US release in 1979. Put down by original distributor AIP and picked up by Roger Corman, STARCRASH was a test for his company to gauge audience interest before producing a SciFi feature of his own. Regardless of what one thinks of the finished product, if Cozzi's picture hadn't been successful for Corman (it was one of their top hits at the time), there likely wouldn't have been a BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980); nor the handful of other New World SciFi films. 

The natural progression of a sequel to Cozzi's movie seemed inevitable what with the purported $16,000,000 box office haul. Considering its popularity at the time--while miniscule compared to the STAR WARS juggernaut--it's bewildering that a followup production didn't immediately head into hyperspace. Ironically, Cozzi had written another SciFi movie, the Stella Starless STAR RIDERS (see insert photo), before he even began shooting his most well known movie.

Co-written in 1977 with SciFi novelist, A.E. Van Vogt, STAR RIDERS would never make its way to the Silver Screen, at least not in the form envisioned by its creator. It did survive in the written form, though; the novel version of Star Riders would surface several years later in 1986 in Italy as I cavalieri delle stelle (The Knights of the Stars). 

David Hasselhoff, Caroline Munro, Joe Spinell, Judd Hamilton

Going back to 1979, Cozzi's story was transformed into a STARCRASH sequel--allegedly by Judd Hamilton--and without the directors consent. The plot was altered and modified to suit Caroline Munro's Stella Star as the main character in the original Star Riders story was a man. In initial announcements, Stella and Elle battle an evil Queen (to have been played by Nancy Kwan) and her kung fu fighting space women while rescuing both a prince and princess. In other advertising materials the evil queen has seemingly been removed and replaced by the original villain of the story, Baron Waak (to have been played by Klaus Kinski;see insert). To read the full synopsis, there appears to be little room for Stella and Elle amongst a storyline rife with betrayals and throne usurping. Backed by Cannon with an alleged, and far more ambitious budget of $12 million, Jack Rabin (THE GIANT BEHEMOTH; THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE) was signed on to do special effects alongside returning Armando Valcauda. However, the film would remain in interplanetary purgatory for a few years before being sucked into the black hole of unmade movies.

By the middle of 1980, and a year after filming was supposed to have begun, it was announced Stella Star was set to fly again in what was now called STAR PATROL. Reported as being written and directed by Luigi Cozzi, it was to be the first of three sequels. In the interim, Cozzi made the ALIEN (1979) clone ALIEN CONTAMINATION (ALIEN ARRIVES ON EARTH), which was distributed in America by Cannon Films. Elsewhere, Caroline Munro was reunited with Count Zarth Arn himself, Joe Spinell, in William Lustig's MANIAC (1980), the second of three times they would work together. Munro was also up for the lead in the second film version of Peter O'Donnell's comic strip (and novels), MODESTY BLAISE. Munro never got to play the popular spy girl; instead, Ann Turkel played the role in what ended up as an unsold Television pilot in 1982.

By 1981, STAR PATROL was announced as being in the pre-production stage. How much pre-production is anyone's guess, if even any at all had been undertaken. Curiously, and regardless of his oft-reported attachment to the project, Luigi Cozzi was said to be adamantly against making a STARCRASH II. Apparently the director would have written a new script for the picture had he been notified as opposed  to the unauthorized tampering with his existing script; to him, the unrelated STAR RIDERS was not a proper fit for the character. Negotiations between Cozzi, Cannon, actor turned filmmaker David Winters (WEST SIDE STORY), and partner Judd Hamilton were ongoing in an effort to reach some sort of agreement.

Towards the end of that year Munro was slated to star in THE LAST HORROR FILM; initially described as a comedy horror picture from producer Irwin Yablans. The film ended up being produced by her then husband, Judd Hamilton and director David Winters. The filming of this, the third collaboration between Munro and Spinell, took place during the Cannes Film Festival in 1981; the producers figured they'd make a movie while attempting to drum up interest in STAR PATROL at the world famous film marketplace.

On Thanksgiving weekend that year at New York's Creation Con, Munro discussed this new horror film, and unveiled what was referred to as a preview for STAR PATROL. In a 1982 Starlog interview, Munro stated this next space adventure wasn't technically a sequel aside from her reprising the Stella Star role. She went on to describe it as a spy-styled, swashbuckling spoof. With the budget slashed from the originally ballyhooed $12 million to the much lower $2 million (the original was $4,000,000, if you can believe it), it was probably best for those involved to intentionally refer to it as a spoof.

Meanwhile, more rumors began to swirl in various magazines stating David Winters and his partner Sean Casey were in London attempting to get their own Stella Star adventure into orbit with an altogether different actress. Unknown to Munro or Hamilton (both of whom had likewise been rumored to have parted ways with Winters), the duo were trying to purchase the rights to the character from Cozzi, who refused without the participation of Munro and Hamilton. In an issue of Fangoria, Winters denied there had been a falling out between both parties, and stated he had two projects designed for Munro in the lead--one of these was an historical epic that would have seen her playing Queen Boudica; and the other was the on and off again STARCRASH followup; which, according to Winters, models and character designs were already being made (possibly some of these were part of the aforementioned preview). Despite all this, it was also reported that Munro and Hamilton intended to make the picture (now bearing the title of STELLA STAR) without Winters. 

With no compromise forthcoming, Cannon dropped the stalled Stella Star project, but retained Cozzi's services to helm two back-to-back HERCULES movies both starring Lou Ferrigno. Interestingly enough, his STAR RIDERS script, or what was later intended to be STARCRASH 2, was transformed into HERCULES (1983). Cozzi had a few other unmade SciFi-Fantasy projects around this time such as a space remake of THE CRIMSON PIRATE (1952) starring Burt Lancaster; this one never set sail, nor did Ferrigno get to flex his pecs in a proposed 'Hercules 3'.

In the midst of all the rumors and false starts, a "sequel" to STARCRASH did surface in 1981 with GIOCHI EROTICI NELLA TERZA GALASSIA (EROTIC GAMES IN GALAXY 3), aka ESCAPE FROM GALAXY 3, released in some territories as STARCRASH 2. Its only connection was recycling the SPX footage from Cozzi's film. It's a rare case of an imitation of an imitation.

As for STAR CRASH's SPX director Armando Valcauda, he worked on another kooky Italian space opera, THE HUMANOID (L'UMANOIDE [1979]) for director Aldo Lado (SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS, THE NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS). Like STARCRASH, that picture had an impressive cast (Richard Kiel, Barbara Bach, Corrine Clery, Leonard Mann, Arthur Kennedy, Ivan Rassimov, Massimo Serato) and was far more derivative of STAR WARS (1977) than Cozzi's film was. AIP was apparently in discussions to distribute that one in the US, but passed on it. They were in serious financial troubles at that time, eventually being sold to Filmways in 1979. In 1980 Valcauda was attached to what was promoted as an Italy-Spain-US production, a SciFi flick titled TWO IN THE STARS (see photos above). To have been directed by Euro-western specialist Giuliano Carnimeo (Anthony Ascott), this film failed to launch as well. Valcauda worked with Cozzi again on his two HERCULES films for Cannon.

Caroline Munro worked for Luigi Cozzi one last time in 1989 with the horror film, THE BLACK CAT--a film that owed more to Argento than Cozzi's penchant for SciFi-Fantasy. Unfortunately, her last working relationship with the STARCRASH director was anything but pleasant; according to Munro, she was never paid a dime despite being reassured of eventual payment. Despite never learning the truth of what really happened, she stated to have no ill feelings towards the man who created Stella Star. Munro appeared in a few other horror pictures like SLAUGHTER HIGH (1986), FACELESS (198), and the little seen Paul Naschy tour de force, EL AULLIDO DEL DIABLO (HOWL OF THE DEVIL [1987]). She and Judd Hamilton divorced in 1986. David Winters remained in the business producing and directing various movies, and is still active in the industry.

Armando Valcauda, Caroline Munro, Luigi Cozzi

 
As for Cozzi, he did little else on the scale of his cult SciFi favorite. He worked on the troubled NOSFERATU IN VENICE (1988)--a film with a revolving door of directors; he directed additional sequences for SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS (1989) uncredited; PAGANINI HORROR came in 1989 followed by the impressive documentary DARIO ARGENTO'S WORLD OF HORROR (1991). He later partnered with Argento to open the Profondo Rosso store in Rome, a genre-centric memorabilia shop. Last year, the man expressed interest in making movies again. As for the unmade STARCRASH sequel, the films most ardent worshipers would have gladly welcomed some further adventures of Stella Star.