FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIE: MONSTROID (1980) IT CAME FROM THE LAKE Jim Mitchum John Carradine

Production began in 1971, but personnel, logistical and financial problems resulted in it being shut down.  After several stops and starts over the years, it was finally completed and released in 1979, as "Monster."  In 1980, as "Monstroid: It Came From the Lake."

"The story you are about to see is based on fact," Monstroid dutifully informs viewers before the action begins. "The incident occurred in June 1971 in Colombia." And what is Colombia like? Based on Monstroid's opening scene, it's a paradise wherein fully clothed dancing women entertain their sleepy husbands with semi-seductive dances. It's a great place to live… assuming you don't get eaten by shadowy lake creatures.  A pollution-happy cement factory managed by Jim Mitchum,

 

JIM MITCHUM 

a mustachioed capitalist who favors open shirts and has no time for pushy broadcast journalists apparently permanently assigned to cover mysterious happenings in small Colombian towns.  But there's another story brewing, one kicked into high gear by the moonlit murder of a bikini-clad night-swimmer by what looks like a down-market cousin of Godzilla wearing a Fu Manchu mustache.  And there, the film's excitement ends for a long, long stretch as the movie shifts its focus to more newscasts, the sonorous warnings of a local priest played by John Carradine,

 JOHN CARRADINE

the development of photos, and in one thrilling sequence, Mitchum's call back to home base to request sonar equipment. And then his co-worker's fulfillment of that request, in a one-two punch. Viewers fond of watching phone conversations captured in their entirety will be on the edges of their seats.  But after the miracle of sonar fails to prevent some drunken boatmen from falling prey to the monstroid, Mitchum decides to confront the threat head-on, force-feeding the beast a dinner of dynamite via a hands-on approach that the not-so-famous sons of lesser movie stars would never dare.

PHILIP CAREY

At last! Colombia is saved, and destined for no trouble whatsoever in the decade to come. Even the formerly confrontational newswoman has to give props, telling viewers via yet another live broadcast, "What you have just witnessed is not a movie of the week. It is not fiction… It is stranger than fiction, which the truth always is. It is something we will not be able to forget." She's wrong on all counts.

ANTHONY EISLEY

Directors: Kenneth Hartford (as Kenneth Herts) and Herbert L. Strock (uncredited); Co-Written by Hartford, Strock, Walter Roeber Schmidt, and Garland Scott.

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ED SPRINGSTEAD, JR.