Being Scottish, and with a bit of a weakness for B Movies, this instantly caught my eye when I saw it on budget DVD not long after it's release thanks to name dropping Loch Ness in the title.
The lake, to the north of Scotland, has had a few movies and even an episode of the Japanese Superhero show Ultraman based around its supposed monstrous inhabitant. Most are complete rubbish, and not even in a good way. This is especially egregious given that we almost got a Toho/Hammer co-production back in the day.
This one opens in the 70s, when a group of scientists discover a giant egg in the Loch. It isn't long before the dinosaurian creature that dropped this egg makes it's appearance and kills all but James, the young son of one of the scientists.
With any form of suspense completely out the window now we've seen the monster, we jump to present day Canada where...hold on a minute, Canada?! You're telling me a film that names Loch Ness IN THE TITLE sets no more than it's prologue in Scotland. I'm not hyper patriotic or anything but this seems like a n bit of an oversight.
Anyway, now adult James (Brian Krause) is a cryptozoologies, or at least that's what he says he is, I thought they would be enthusiastic about finding supposedly extinct creatures alive, but he just wants to kill them all, arrives in this small lakeside town because he's heard they've got a dinosaur in the lake. He's heard from village idiot Sean (Donelly Rhodes) who posted on his message board.
Sean may be seen as half daft, but his sister Karen (Carrie Genzel) isn't, she's the town sheriff, and her teenage son Josh (Niall Matter) is our de-facto protagonist hired as James' guide and boat captain for his studies. Needless to say he's also got an ex-girlfriend he still pines for called Zoe (Amber Borycki) with an idiot new boyfriend with equally idiot friends to get caught up in the chaos as it turns out the place is, in fact, swimming with killer dinosaurs and out motley crew of locals need to stop them.
Once you get past the fact we've got a movie where the antagonist is the Loch Ness Monster and the film isn't set in Loch Ness. Or Inverness, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Scotland, the U. K. or even the continent of Europe, you'll find a pretty by-the-numbers current Millenium creature feature. I'm pretty certain this was a SyFy original, I mean 90% of the plot and characters are the same as those, albeit this does feel a bit better.
I'm not saying it's good as such, but it's definitely before they stretched resources too thin. There's no originality, there's some old fashioned bad science (plesiosaurs don't have legs, this is more like a carnivorous brachiosaurus) and it's generally the type of movie you forget the second the credits roll. However, while I hated it at the time, upon a rewatch it really isn't too bad. Probably because of the 3 million similar-but-worse movies that came out subsequently making this actually feel quite entertaining in comparison.
While this film does make use of exclusively CGI monsters, which I don't like, it actually isn't unbearable for a movie with no budget. As mentioned we see the monster in full literally under 5 minutes into the movie, so there's no tension, but you almost wonder if that's because they were overly proud.
The cast helps out too. Krause isn't an amazing actor, but he has a degree of charisma, and probably deserved better than the type of movie he found himself in. He's playing a ridiculous character here, an awful B movie trope in a trenchcoat and fedora, but to his credit he can make you suspend belief a bit. Don S Davis, another familiar genre face, is a welcome addition as the Sherriff's deputy. Genzel has literally nothing to work with, despite being set up as a potential lead. Probably the most memorable aspect of her character is how laughably too young to be the father of Josh. On the subject of him, Niall Matter takes the unenviable task of the teenage lead, that worst trope of all, and to be fair to him isn't awful. I mean, I don't shed a tear if I never see him again, but I also wouldn't be averse to it.
Incidentally, pretty much everyone mentioned would find themselves at odds with prehistoric monsters later in their career, and in pretty much all of these cases this was at least a better endeavour than those.
In short, this isn't very good, but it also isn't THAT bad either. Like I can't see any context anyone would want to seek this out, but if people do actually still watch tv and you got this late at night or on a Sunday afternoon it's a fairly inoffensive little B-Movie. Once you get past the whole not actually set in Loch Ness thing.
The lake, to the north of Scotland, has had a few movies and even an episode of the Japanese Superhero show Ultraman based around its supposed monstrous inhabitant. Most are complete rubbish, and not even in a good way. This is especially egregious given that we almost got a Toho/Hammer co-production back in the day.
This one opens in the 70s, when a group of scientists discover a giant egg in the Loch. It isn't long before the dinosaurian creature that dropped this egg makes it's appearance and kills all but James, the young son of one of the scientists.
With any form of suspense completely out the window now we've seen the monster, we jump to present day Canada where...hold on a minute, Canada?! You're telling me a film that names Loch Ness IN THE TITLE sets no more than it's prologue in Scotland. I'm not hyper patriotic or anything but this seems like a n bit of an oversight.
Anyway, now adult James (Brian Krause) is a cryptozoologies, or at least that's what he says he is, I thought they would be enthusiastic about finding supposedly extinct creatures alive, but he just wants to kill them all, arrives in this small lakeside town because he's heard they've got a dinosaur in the lake. He's heard from village idiot Sean (Donelly Rhodes) who posted on his message board.
Sean may be seen as half daft, but his sister Karen (Carrie Genzel) isn't, she's the town sheriff, and her teenage son Josh (Niall Matter) is our de-facto protagonist hired as James' guide and boat captain for his studies. Needless to say he's also got an ex-girlfriend he still pines for called Zoe (Amber Borycki) with an idiot new boyfriend with equally idiot friends to get caught up in the chaos as it turns out the place is, in fact, swimming with killer dinosaurs and out motley crew of locals need to stop them.
Once you get past the fact we've got a movie where the antagonist is the Loch Ness Monster and the film isn't set in Loch Ness. Or Inverness, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Scotland, the U. K. or even the continent of Europe, you'll find a pretty by-the-numbers current Millenium creature feature. I'm pretty certain this was a SyFy original, I mean 90% of the plot and characters are the same as those, albeit this does feel a bit better.
I'm not saying it's good as such, but it's definitely before they stretched resources too thin. There's no originality, there's some old fashioned bad science (plesiosaurs don't have legs, this is more like a carnivorous brachiosaurus) and it's generally the type of movie you forget the second the credits roll. However, while I hated it at the time, upon a rewatch it really isn't too bad. Probably because of the 3 million similar-but-worse movies that came out subsequently making this actually feel quite entertaining in comparison.
While this film does make use of exclusively CGI monsters, which I don't like, it actually isn't unbearable for a movie with no budget. As mentioned we see the monster in full literally under 5 minutes into the movie, so there's no tension, but you almost wonder if that's because they were overly proud.
The cast helps out too. Krause isn't an amazing actor, but he has a degree of charisma, and probably deserved better than the type of movie he found himself in. He's playing a ridiculous character here, an awful B movie trope in a trenchcoat and fedora, but to his credit he can make you suspend belief a bit. Don S Davis, another familiar genre face, is a welcome addition as the Sherriff's deputy. Genzel has literally nothing to work with, despite being set up as a potential lead. Probably the most memorable aspect of her character is how laughably too young to be the father of Josh. On the subject of him, Niall Matter takes the unenviable task of the teenage lead, that worst trope of all, and to be fair to him isn't awful. I mean, I don't shed a tear if I never see him again, but I also wouldn't be averse to it.
Incidentally, pretty much everyone mentioned would find themselves at odds with prehistoric monsters later in their career, and in pretty much all of these cases this was at least a better endeavour than those.
In short, this isn't very good, but it also isn't THAT bad either. Like I can't see any context anyone would want to seek this out, but if people do actually still watch tv and you got this late at night or on a Sunday afternoon it's a fairly inoffensive little B-Movie. Once you get past the whole not actually set in Loch Ness thing.