Monstroid (1980)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

That was an excellent one.

Simply A Masterpiece

One of my all time favorites.

When John Carradine is in a film, it's either going to be very good or very bad. With a title like MONSTROID "It Came From the Lake," you can well imagine which side of the equation this thing falls on.During its first four minutes, the film tells us twice that it is based on actual events. If that's true, then in June 1971, the Colombian village of Chimayo was terrorized by a huge, ridiculous- looking lake monster ostensibly created by industrial pollution from a nearby cement plant. Since the film's heroes kill the monster in broad daylight—by blowing it to bits using a dead lamb they filled with dynamite—as numerous people watch (and take pictures) from the shore, and with a TV news crew filming every moment, it's odd that no record of these "real-life events" exists anywhere. I suspect "Monstroid" was fact-based in the same way that "Fargo" was."Monstroid" contains many classic elements of grindhouse fare: bad acting, tons of padding (mostly in the form of helicopter footage), macho one-dimensional heroes, female characters who are little more than eye candy, racist stereotypes (in this case, of the Colombian people as ignorant, gullible peasants), numerous screenwriters credited, and the overall look of a home movie shot in someone's back yard.During filming, John Carradine told a crew member, "This is the worst piece of s**t I've ever worked on, and I've worked on a lot of pieces of s**t." I can attest to the second part.

According to this film, the events portrayed are based on fact, meaning that, in 1971, a really dumb looking monster, the result of industrial pollution, rose from a lake to terrorise the rural Colombian village of Chimayo, before eventually being blown to smithereens with dynamite, the creature's spectacular demise captured on camera by numerous onlookers, including a television crew. And yet no evidence of this remarkable event survives.Even more unbelievable than writer/director Kenneth Hartford's claims of authenticity is the fact that he not only somehow scraped together a budget to film this hokey garbage, but also managed to get some semi-decent performers involved, including legendary horror actor John Carradine, Robert Mitchum's son James Mitchum, and Spanish character actor Aldo Sambrell. I can only guess that Hartford hid the film's incredibly pathetic looking monster from the cast until they signed on the dotted line.Hartford also hides his creature from his audience for much of the running time, the large proportion of the film consisting of lots of dull dialogue and quite a lot of footage of helicopters taking off and landing. The monster is only seen clearly in the closing moments, when troubleshooter Travis (Mitchum) and cement-plant foreman Pete (Anthony Eisley) go fishing for the craptastic creature with a lamb stuffed full of explosives, at which point the film becomes a fully-fledged unintentional comedy.2.5 out of 10, rounded up to 3 for the sheer chutzpah of player Pete, who dumps his beautiful blonde girlfriend Laura for equally attractive brunette Juanita, goes to meet Laura at the lake to explain his behaviour, has sex with her, and then immediately dumps her again, leaving her to get eaten by the monster! And he's one of the film's heroes!

Sure, this is one of them bad movies, but on the other hand, it's yet another good bad movies! The sexual politics of this one alone are hilarious, but wait till you get a load of the monster.A woman is having a bit of a dance for her boyfriend while he lounges in a hammock ignoring her next to a lake and the next thing you know he's being grabbed by a huge slimy claw and killed. The lake is in Colombia, but the cement factory next to the lake is US owned. Back in the US, the boss of the factory explains to troubleshooter Jim Mitchum (in between groping his secretary) that Jim's go to go down there and sort things out, as a local revolutionary called Sanchez is causing trouble by claiming pollution from the factory has caused some sort of monster to go on the rampage. There's also a news reporter there also reporting on the pollution.Jim's got to go down there and clean up the whole mess. In the town by the lake, the factory boss is having trouble dumping his girlfriend for the mayor's daughter and gets confused doing so and then they end up having sex by the lake, followed by a classic dumping by the factory boss, resulting in the creature chewing the girlfriend's legs off (one of the few gore pieces of the film).Naturally, Jim's put out by this, and a confrontation with Sanchez, and as Sanchez says: "We'll see who kicks who's arse". He's also having run ins with the reporter (seemingly being paid to hang about one place reporting on every single thing that happens there), as this is the seventies, Jim gets her in the sack pretty shortly. Add to this two nosey kids, John Carridine as a priest, and the first victim's missus being called a witch and being harassed by locals (ala Don't Torture a Duckling) and you've got a rather large cast to deal with. Also, Aldo Sambrell's in the cast too.Apart from Sanchez (who these days would probably be the hero, what with his pro-environmental/revolutionary stance, here he's made out to be a fanatic), everyone gets it together to rid the lake of the creature once and for all, and we get to see the creature in full. Try not to laugh too much! I've got to give to the makers of the film – they aren't shy in showing the creature, no matter how crap it looks.I love films with giant monsters in them, so I was fairly happy with this one. Maybe a wee bit too much interpersonal drama by a too large cast, but the creature itself is worth seeking this one out. That, and the way that woman are portrayed in this one (either sexual objects or witches), I guess there was one strong female character (the mayor's daughter/helicopter pilot), but big Jim gets confused by a female being a pilot. There's also a nice sting in the tale and for some reason, the film is called Monstroid at the start of the film but Monster at the end? There's no way this film was made in 1980 (I see now it was mostly made in 1971).

Hey HULU.com is playing the Elvira late night horror show on their site and this movie is their under the Name Monsteroid, good fun to watch Elvira comment on this Crappy movie ....Have Fun with bad movies. Anyways this movie really has very little value other than to see how bad the 70's were for horror flicks Bad Effects, Bad Dialog, just bad movie making. Avoid this unless you want to laugh at it. While you are at HULU check out the other movies that are their right now there is 10 episodes and some are pretty decent movies with good plots and production and you can watch a lot of them in 480p as long as you have a decent speed connection.