Lake Placid

A Bloody Comedy

Cast: Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson

Director: Steve Miner

Plot Summary: A big croc starts killing people in a lake in Maine (of all places) and experts are brought in to catch and kill the beast.

In the tradition of the wonderfully hokey but entertaining B-movies (okay, some were F-movies) of the 1950s and 1960s, Lake Placid is a bigger budget, bigger cast version for the 1990s. The spirit lives on, however, with overacting, implausible situations, and a general sense of tongue-in-cheek, bloody humor.

Sheriff Keough (Gleeson) is surprised to find a mysterious force swimming Bear Lake in Maine (there is no Lake Placid), and calls in the Marines… well, actually two paleontologists from New York City, Jack Wells (Pullman) and Kelly Scott (Fonda). These city slickers arrive in the back woods, and much humor is generated by their lack of outdoor skills.

A rich guy named Hector (Platt) arrives, a self-stylized “Croc Lover”, and he is a piece of eccentric work. Knowing the danger, he swims in the lake anyway. The croc was nice enough to have read the script and only picks off the non-stars.

I must admit I chuckled a bit at this offering. It’s not to be taken seriously. Hunting with a live cow hanging from a cradle is just one of their lame-brained plans (the aforementioned swimming alone is another), and the croc easily outwits these doofuses until, of course, the very end.

If you don’t mind quirky humor, along with a croc chomping down on a bunch of locals, then go ahead and pick this one up for a look see. It isn’t horror in the traditional sense, it’s more of a comedy with buckets of blood.