25) The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

"Do you know what impact this'll have on the scientific community?" 
"I don't give a damn about the scientific community!"

Director
William Stromberg

Cast
Richard Cardella - Sheriff Steve Hanson
Glenn Roberts - Arnie Chabot
Mark Siegal - Mitch Kowalski
Bob Hyman - Richard Calkins

I wonder how many people have visited Crater Lake National Park in Southern Oregon, and basked in the knowledge that they're in a place of cinematic legend as Crater Lake was the filming location for 1977's The Crater Lake Monster. My guess is very few. Despite being filmed at Crater Lake, the movie takes place at fictional Crater Lake in Northern California.  

This B-movie is quite the mixture of really bad acting, stop motion, and a little rip-off from Jaws. 
The monster looks like something out of Lake Loch Ness. According to Wikipedia, it's actually a plesiosaur, although I don't remember that little tidbit of info being mentioned in the movie. I could have missed it, though.
In the beginning of the movie, a fire ball falls from the sky, suggesting this is our monster coming from space. But if that's the case, how did a plesiosaur get in space? And how did it survive the fiery plummet through the earth's atmosphere, crash into the lake and develop under water for a long time before surfacing. Obviously, I wouldn't expect a low-budget film like this to be that informative, even in regards to its own plotline.
Sheriff Steve Hanson (Richard Cardella) witnesses the meteor fall and calls it into the police station.
Months later, he consults some scientists to dive into the lake and pull it out. However, the scientists determine the meteor is too hot for them to touch. It's so hot in fact, they deem it's actually heating up the water. That's some serious dinosaur meteor fireball!
One thing leads to another, as things do in B-monster movies, and the remains of a few people are found in the lake.
Will authorities link these deaths to a giant monster? Will they even find the monster? Spoiler- yes, to both!
Hanson is finally told that the wounds on the  remains of one of the victims were clearly caused by the teeth of a large animal (*whisper* just...like...in...Jaws.)
The Jaws inspiration is seen in the animal versus man close-up shots. Also, the plot seems loosely similar. In this case, a man-eating monster is tormenting the waters of a national park rather than a beach. A police officer is trying to keep people out of the water as tourists are mysteriously disappearing around the lake, and their bodies are washing up on shore.
Anyhow, a guy named Ferguson survives an attack from the monster, and runs into a diner. He tells the sheriff and the other people in there what happened. So, Hanson and others go to find this monster.
They find it outside a lot full of tractors and other farm vehicles. And then...it gets personal! This is as "B" a movie as a B-movie can be.
The stop-motion of the monster is just classic to watch...reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen's work, but certainly not as good as his.
Two characters, Arnie Chabot (Glenn Roberts) and Mitch Kowalski (Mark Siegal) are two guys running a boat dock. They're the comic relief of this shlockfest. But their comedy is just "yuck, yuck" funny, with lame gags, and slapstick pushing and shoving in the water. It's eye-rolling lame humor that adds absolutely nothing to the story. Nothing! It's just two grown men purposely trying to act childish just to get a laugh. That's it, and that's all.
The acting all around is plain and simply bad. It's like watching an elementary school stage production. The delivery is void of any respective inflection based on whatever is happening in the scene. It's just "say the line, and lets move on."
The audience for this flick would probably be made up of B-monster movie fans, although there are a lot better movies in the genre to watch.
For a giant monster flick, this is as cheap as they come. It's slow moving (both the movie and the monster, I mean) and lacks any emotion whatsoever. But I still had some fun watching it merely for its own sake.
Also, I'd like to use this platform to shout out to Richard Cardella's gorgeous 1977 walrus mustache. A thing of beauty is a treasure and a joy forever!

Memorable Roles in Horrific History - Tim Curry as the Brackett family in Tales from the Crypt

There are a load of performances out there in horrormovieland that may have been taken over by the weeds of time, and perhaps other performances. Still, many of those moments don't deserve to go unnoticed. No, they deserve to be swung back in the faces of audiences like Jack Torrence's ax to the bathroom door. I'll post those roles here as I find them, or remember them, or both.

If you ask me, which no one did but I'm saying it regardless, every appearance of Tim Curry in a movie is always great. He single-handedly made Muppet Treasure Island fun to watch. He made Home Alone 2: Lost in New York better than it would have been without him. His role in the movie Clue added some much needed energy. Curry is just cinema gold. And if he hadn't landed the role of Pennywise and terrorized the small town of Derry, Maine in the 1990 TV mini-series IT, that movie would have just been a big flop all around. His casting is really what made that movie!
And about two years later after he terrorized the town of Derry, he starred in another classic horror series - Tales from the Crypt.
Tales aired on HBO back in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s in seven seasons.
The first episode of season 5,  Death of Some Salesmen, starred Curry in three horrific roles.
This episode aired Oct. 2, 1993, and starred Ed Begley, Jr., as salesman Judd Campbell who's really out to con his customers.
He's successful at it until he meets the Bracketts - a family of rednecks who, little does Campbell know, hate salesmen.
Tim Curry plays the entire family - Ma and Pa Brackett, as well as their "lovely" daughter, Winona. 
When he rings their doorbell, thinking he's paying a visit to someone else, Ma Brackett answers and ends up inviting him inside. As Campbell discovers the real owners of the house dead and stuffed in awkward spaces throughout the house, he finds himself  held captive and using his con tactics to talk his way out, leaving him agreeing to marry Winona, with a shotgun in his back.
It's a cringe-saturated episode, and Curry looks like he's having fun playing these three roles.
He really tries to bolster up the exaggerated horror Tales from the Crypt is famous for.
It's certainly a great start to season 5, and Curry is fun and absorbing to watch.
Like many other episodes of Tales from the Crypt, this episode has the spirit and feel of the EC comic, and much of that is thanks to Curry's performance. Playing three roles in one story shows how versatile Curry is.

24) Warlock: The Armageddon (1993)

I'm not a man. I am a witch.

Director
Anthony Hickox

Cast
Julian Sands - Warlock
Chris Young - Kenny Travis
Paula Marshall - Samantha Ellison
Steve Kahan - Will Travis
R.G. Armstrong - Franks

Warlock: The Armageddon is a sequel to the 1989 movie Warlock. 
Julian Sands returns in the role of the dude witch himself! And as far as other returning cast, he's it. No one else from the first movie shows up in this one.
I confess it took me three attempts to get through this movie. I fell asleep the first two times. During the third time, I had to stand at parts so I could get through it.
In the first movie, the Warlock travels from 1691 to modern day Los Angeles to search for the Grand Grimoire hidden centuries before, and destroy all creation. In the sequel, he comes back to small town America to acquire some rune stones scattered centuries before, and destroy all creation.
It turns out the Warlock is actually the son of Satan himself.
In the past, Druids have regularly performed a ritual with the stones to stop the birth of Satan's son, which can only occur during a lunar eclipse.
During one of these rituals, Christians come and attack the Druids thinking they're performing some kind of Satanic ceremony. This causes the stones to be scattered far and wide.
The movie then cuts to modern day America where he's born again as a full grown adult (umm...ouch!) to a woman who has one of the stones in her possession.
The stone was an heirloom passed down through her family. She puts it on as she's getting ready for a date. But, to her detriment, she happens to see a lunar eclipse taking place at that moment while looking at herself in the mirror. And boom - she's instantly preggers with the warlock. Thank God it doesn't happen that easily in real life!
As the Warlock is born, he uses the woman's body as a conduit to speak with the devil, who tells him to go find the other stones.
Horror icon, Zack Galligan (Gremlins 1 and 2, Waxwork), makes a cameo as the girl's date. What's funny is that Galligan's character, who is on screen for about 30 seconds, has a name - Douglas. But the Warlock still doesn't have a name. Good for you, Billy from Gremlins!
Meanwhile, some Druids - they're still around - pick up on various signs taking place indicating the devil's son has come and do what they can to stop him before he brings the devil into the world.
Two Druids, Will Travis (Steve Kahan) and Franks (R.G. Armstrong - Dick Tracy, Children of the Corn) try to persuade fellow Druid and now Christian minister, Ted Ellison (Bruce Glover), to help them.
Part of their effort includes Travis and Franks killing Travis's son, Kenny, in order to raise him from the dead through Druid magic and make him a Warlock-killing Druid warrior.
Also, Kenny and Ellison's daughter, Samantha, are crazy in love. So, there's that.
Anyhow, the writing is laughable, and lacks consistency at times.
For instance, in one scene, Franks tells Will there's a ritual that can slow down the Warlock, and he starts to show him how to perform it. Will is skeptical, claiming it's just a lot of hocus pocus. He doubts there's magic, basically. This, by the way, takes place after Will killed his own son and used Druid magic to bring him back. And he had been trying to convince Ellison, who has been trying to turn a blind eye to everything, that various signs taking place (i.e. dead birds dropping from the sky) is proof that evil is about to commence. And now, he doubts there's magic! What a way to stay consistent with your beliefs, Will! I mean, seriously?
In the scene were Kenny wakes up after being killed (his dad shot him point blank with a shotgun, by the way), he naturally starts panicking. The last thing he saw was his own father pointing a shotgun at him. When he awakes, he starts running around the room yelling. As this is going on, Franks (again, himself being a Druid who was with Will when he shot Kenny) starts yelling "what's wrong with you?"
Are you kidding? The writers couldn't think of better dialogue for this scene? This kid was just shot by his dad, and he wonders what's wrong!
Sands plays his character with much less enthusiasm as before. He's even more uninteresting than he was in the first movie, making we wonder if he's only appearing as the Warlock again to fulfill a contract. He's just lifeless and monotone.
Even an evil character can have expression, substance, and dare I say, emotion. He just doesn't have much, if any, of those things. There are several times where he just stands and stares blankly at nothing as though he's concentrating on something. What that would be, I don't know! Maybe he's watching the stain Warlock: The Armageddon is leaving on his acting career.
But the skin crawling gore is certainly there just as it was in the first movie. It's enough to make the audience cringe, and cringe scenes comesup unexpectedly.
Fans of the first movie should be left satisfied if that's what they're looking for in this movie. The gore is all the movie has going for it. The rest seems rushed, poor, and not thought through very well.
And speaking of the first, Armageddon is only connected to the first with the presence of the main character. Otherwise, the two have nothing to do with each other in regards to plot. For those who liked Warlock can certainly watch the sequel, and find it enjoyable. But it certainly doesn't try as hard as the first.