Lake Placid (1999)

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, a movie is rescued from its incompetency by its stupidity. Come take a dip in Lake Placid.

or don't

Overview: A mysterious creature kills a man at the local lake (which, by the by, is not even named Lake Placid). A tooth is recovered which appears prehistoric, so the local sheriff and the Game & Parks officer get the help of a New York paleontologist to identify the beast.


The plot follows a pretty standard creature feature: something weird is killing people, and our at-odds band of heroes have to uncover the mystery and stop the threat. This movie attempts to stand out from the pack by adding in wry humor. More on that later.

Notable moments/quotes: Pretty early on, we get to see the caliber of effects in this movie when the first victim is ripped in half.

this is quickly followed by fat jokes directed at the sheriff

Kelly (or maybe Katie, I swear to god they change her name halfway through the movie), being told she has to leave New York for the small Maine town: "Maine? I'm allergic to timber!"

Two-Named Woman: "You got anything against museums?"
Hank, the sheriff: "No."
Kelly/Katie/who cares: "You been in one?"
Her question is met with sheepish silence.

Jack, the Game & Parks guy, talking to an old woman who lives on the lakeshore: "Do you know how your husband died?"
Cheerful old lady: "Oh, yes! I killed him!"

In a bizarre scene, our New Yorker whines because "camping" actually means "sleeping in tents." She begs to "camp" in a Ramada as her voice approaches octaves that cause dogs physical pain.

Jack: "Never been to Maine before?"
K: "I have good hygiene. I'm not welcome."

A bit into the movie, a rich professor of pathology (or maybe mythology, the movie can't make up its mind) arrives in his own helicopter to assist in the search. The movie makes an offhand mention that this man Hector likes to go to Florida to wrestle crocodiles.

Hector Sue: "Law enforcement is dangerous work, and you have such big boobs!"

Sheriff, to Hector just before he takes a dive into the lake: "I brought a pork chop for luck. Maybe you can wear it around your neck."

When we finally get a glimpse of our massive croc, it eats a bear whole and severely hampers a helicopter from taking off. Yeah.

Sweet old lady: "If I had a dick, here's where I'd tell you to suck it."

Old lady: "You can't take a cow by eminent domain!"
Sheriff: "We just did."

Dr. Useless: "This is not a happy cow."

Old lady, sipping tea with a deputy while the rest of the cast battles a croc: "I'm rooting for the crocodile. I hope he eats all your friends alive!"

not so much, lady

My thoughts: For the first hour of this around 100 minute stinker, I was ready to declare this one of the most insipid films I'd ever had the misfortune of watching. However, in the last thirty minutes or so, the movie does something bold. Something amazing. Something hilariously stupid. The characters need to lure out the croc so they can capture it. How do they do this? They hijack a cow thru eminent domain...

tie it to a helicopter...

and use it as bait to lure out the beast!

spoiler alert: it works

Like, mother of God. For the mere "PETA would have heart attacks over this" factor alone, I'm inclined to give this movie a pass. I'm thoroughly convinced that this entire sequence was the whole reason the movie was made, because the writing picks up in quality, the actors seem to start having more fun, and WE SEE A COW BEING FLOWN OVER A LAKE TO DRAW OUT A CROCODILE. For that sequence alone, I ended up enjoying this film, because how can you watch a B movie earnestly put forever that kind of zany scheme and not laugh your ass off?

However, there are plenty of problems with this movie. The movie clearly wants to be funny... see "cow bait..." but a lot of the jokes and moments just plain don't work. For much of the movie, the deliveries fall a little too flat and dry. I was reminded of people trying to do British humor without really understanding what makes British humor funny.

Furthermore, a lot of its characterizations either aren't consistent or don't make sense. In example, the character of Katie/Kelly the scientist spends nearly all of the movie when she's not fleeing for her life complaining about having to rough it. Yet, during random scenes she'll seem completely at peace with being in the wilderness and will march along without so much as a word of irritation. I almost got the impression of there being a scene of character development for her that established the moment or the circumstances under which she stops hating being in the sticks which was removed in editing. Really, it wouldn't have even taken much.

On top of that, the end of the movie has her and no-personality ranger Jack hook up. How? Why? These two don't share many lines in the movie that seem flirtatious in any way, and they have zero chemistry to me. More deleted scenes? Or was it just in someone's contract somewhere to have a love interest, and the filmmakers decided to shoehorn one in at the last minute?

The Mary Sue professor is also fairly inconsistent. He's either a braggart always flirting with the ladies... or he's an insecure little man trying to look big. If more effort had been put into establishing his character, sure, this could have worked, but gods forbid we get in the way of the "amazing" special effects.

Still, I can only hate a movie so much when it gives me a helicopter flying a cow as bait to lure out a 30-foot crocodile. I only wish this had been cut down to a short film that just focused on the action instead of kind-of-not-really trying to make something more of itself. There's the core of a dumb, but workable little action/horror movie in here, but it gets bloated by material that ironically fails to flesh out many of its characters or its world to a satisfying degree.

Except for the fat, grumpy sheriff. He was fine as-is just being a grump.

In the end, I'm just not sure the movie was dumb enough to maximize its potential. It tried to straddle a middle ground between batshit goofy and serious tension, and failed.

I give this movie a Nic Cage Receives Some Unexpected Help out of five. Facebook and Patreon are still up and running. Thanks for reading.