Movie 144: Loch Ness Terror aka Beyond Loch Ness

A young boy watched his father and some other being eaten by Nessie. Years later people start getting munched at Lake Superior. The boy, now a grown Cryptozooligist, goes to the Lake to take out the monster.

Another syfy original! This ones not terrible though, unless the couple of minutes I missed at the start were really bad. It’s also far from great.

There’s a possibility that the watchability of these drek films is down to the number of recognisable sci fi actors that are in it. This one has a whopping 4! At the start you have Doctor Carson Beckett from Stargate Atlantis as the father who is munched. A guy who runs the bait shop at Lake Superior is that cool scientist dude that’s in Eureka sometimes. His uncle is the Doc from Battlestar Galactica. And finally, one of the two cops is General Hammond himself Don S Davis. Thankfully it wasn’t his last film though because that would be a bit depressing.

A quick look on IMDB there tells me that the main guy, Brian Krause, was in Charmed. I stopped watching after the first couple of seasons so maybe he joined after that. Or I just don’t remember him. So 5!

I have a bit of an issue with the basic premise. I live maybe 40 miles from Loch Ness. Nessie doesn’t eat people. I’ve never heard of Nessie eating someone. Nessie is nice. For a plesiosaur. I’ve also never heard of her going on holiday in Canada. It would be a pretty massive swim for one thing. They are a bit smart with the fact that they used the underwater tunnel to the sea theory though.

The acting isn’t amazing, but its not terrible either. This film really falls down on the special effects front though. There’s a combination of practicle “sock puppet” little Nessie (she has babies) heads and CGI monsters. The big problem is that the two are different colours, the CGI being grey and the puppets being quite red. So the cuts between the two are far from convincing. Also something went wrong with the creature design as she doesn’t look right. The back legs are all weird.

Also, Plesiosaurs have big flippers. The monster here has feet. That’s not a plesiosaur then.

It’s somewhat standard slasher fair to start with, then standard monster movie after that. Nothing amazing, some truly weird weapon effects and generally sciency stuff that’s sometimes right sometimes really strange.

From what I’ve seen so far, if someone held a gun to your head and said you HAD to watch a SyFy Original you could do worse than this. But I wouldn’t hunt it out either unless your some kind of B Movie completist. On the plus side I’ve heard that Evil Beneath Loch Ness is MUCH worse. I’ll be watching that sometime soon btw.

OH and using Lake Superior as Loch Ness and then just using it again for the rest of the movie? Lazy and fuck. It’s not the worst double, but it’s too bloody small.

Next up: Snow Day