MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE
JAWS: THE REVENGE

Another year. Another NOWFF. I must say that NOWFF 12 was probably the most enjoyable NOWFF I've been to and not just because I was honored with the prestigious Sludgie Award for all my behind the scenes work this year - acquiring the prints for two of the movies, providing a ton of door prizes, providing the Super President cartoon short, inventing the "AAB-Gamma" clapping game that Count Gore so eloquently explained during his X FROM OUTER SPACE intro, and, of course, writing for this website. Pardon me while I take a brief moment to pat myself on the back. Okay, the moment has passed. Also, let me just say that I never truly realized just how overtly gay MEGAFORCE was. Even though I re-watched MEGAFORCE again to put together material for the comedic Michael Buffer-esque intro I did for the film, it wasn't until I actually sat there in a theater with an audience watching this movie did I ever truly realize just way gay it really is. Its like if Joel Schumacher made a G.I. Joe movie. EVIL BRAIN FROM OUTER SPACE is a movie I've seen one too many times. Horror host Ghastly Ghoul did such a wonderful job with his pre-taped GIANT GILA MONSTER intro that it's a shame we had to spoil the moment by actually running that awful movie. VIVA KNIEVEL and INVISIBLE INVADERS were the only films at the fest this year that I'd never seen before. I actually enjoyed INVISIBLE INVADERS more than I ever imagined I would have. On the other hand, I hope and pray I will never have to endure the agony that is VIVA KNIEVEL ever again! Finally, let me pass along to you one of the little bizarre factoids that I wrote about in the NOWFF 12 program book: Guilala was the title monster of THE X FROM OUTER SPACE which also starred Peggy Neal who also starred in TERROR BENEATH THE SEA with Sonny Chiba who co-starred in ACES: IRON EAGLE 3 along with Lou Gossett Jr. who was in TOY SOLDIERS that also featured R. Lee Ermey who appeared in MURDER IN THE FIRST starring Kevin Bacon. Yep, even the goofiest movie monster of all time is within six degrees of Kevin Bacon!

THE SCHLOCK NESS MONSTER

It all started back in early March when I was searching Ebay for a reasonably priced poster of the 1981 flick THE LOCH NESS HORROR which usually runs for upwards of $60 dollars. By typing the phrase "loch ness horror poster" I didn't get what I was looking for, but stumbled upon something even better as I got a listing for the "poster" of a forthcoming "horror" movie called BENEATH LOCH NESS. This immediately sent me scurrying to IMDB to look up this BENEATH LOCH NESS movie. Well, needless to say I was pleased with what I found. There was no actual description of the film's plot or when it would be released in the US, however the movie had already been released in Scotland with the longer title of THE EVIL BENEATH LOCH NESS. The reader feedback consisted of nothing but angry comments from pissed off Scots about how they hated this movie and, in some cases, how they hated America for making this movie. From what I gathered, seems this tale of a man-eating Nessie, a concept alone being enough to tick the Scots off since the Loch Ness Monster is such a beloved, benevolent, national icon, was filmed almost entirely on location somewhere in California and featured mostly American actors doing bad Scottish accents. It would be an understatement to say this did not go over well with the good people of Scotland, at least the ones that actually paid to see this movie. How negative were these comments? So bad that the director of the film, Chuck Comisky, sent in a review himself to basically say that it wasn't his fault that his work got chopped up by the UK distributors of the film. By chopped up, he meant they cut out the 8 minutes (YES, 8 WHOLE MINUTES!!!) of the film that was actually shot in Scotland. Right, like the inclusion of those 8 minutes would have pacified the Scottish movie-going public much less made it a better movie. For crying out loud, as the reader comments note, the people in this movie drive on the right side of the road despite the fact that in Scotland you would be driving on the left and they pay for things with American dollars! Suffice it to say I had to see this movie! Unfortunately, I would have to wait until its home video release on June 18th.

Now before I go into the details on my experience watching this movie, let me back pedal for a minute and mention the movie that led to my discovery of this film - THE LOCH NESS HORROR. As I stated, I was searching for a print of the movie's poster, which is quite gorgeous actually and probably suckered a lot of unsuspecting people into the theater. I was far too young at the time it came out to see this movie, but I distinctly remember my mom holding my hand as she walked me out of the movie theater and right past this poster that immediately captured my imagination. I was one of those kids who just loved dinosaurs and anything with dinosaurs got my attention. Amazingly, as we drove home from the theater, a spot played on the radio promoting the film that made it sound fantastic. I really wanted to see this NESSIE gone JAWS film, but of course that wasn't going to happen because the film had an R rating. Finally, many years later, I would be able to see it one Saturday afternoon on the USA Network. After watching the film, I've come to the realization that the reason that radio spot made the movie sound so good was because you couldn't actually see any footage from the film. Wow, talk about bursting a bubble!

I'm not going to dwell on this stinker much because quite frankly it bored the bejeezus out of me. In fact, boring would be the operative word in describing it. It's one of those movies where people talk about what they're going to do and talk about what they did and talk about what they think is going-on and what they have to do to stop it, but we hardly ever seen them doing the stuff they're talking about. The action mostly consists of people boating, scuba diving, driving, or just standing around and then every 10 to 20 minutes the Loch Ness Monster eats someone. Toss in a crazy Highlander and a Nazi subplot (Don't ask.) and you still have 90 minutes of pure tedium. Seems the reason Nessie is pissed is because someone stole one of her eggs or something like that and so she has decided to get all-out DEATHWISH on those that wronged her and anyone else that gets in the way. I won't even bother wasting time describing the scene where Nessie actually leaves the loch and treks through the forest apparently using her "Nessie Sense" to zero in on of the bad guy just so she can chomp on his head.

Unfortunately for moviegoers, THE LOCH NESS HORROR was a Larry Buchanan production. One of these days I'm going to have to write a column solely dedicated to the works of Larry Buchanan. To keep from getting sidetracked, let me just state the titles of a couple of movies that were brought to us by the artistic vision of Larry Buchanan: ATTACK OF THE THE EYE CREATURES, ZONTAR-THE THING FROM VENUS, MISTRESS OF THE APES, and MARS NEEDS WOMEN. If you have ever seen any of those movies, then I need not say another word about the quality of a Larry Buchanan film. If you have never seen any of the movies listed, consider yourself lucky. Long story short, the Loch Ness Monster in THE LOCH NESS HORROR looks like a Mardi Gras float and keep in mind you never see anything other than the monster's neck and head. The only "horror" in this movie is that which the audience experiences when realizing they paid to see a film that features a dinosaur that any Boy Scout troupe could build in a garage for about $40. To top it all off, Nessie's roar will leave you dumbfounded. The creature's bellow is the exact same noise a STAR WARS Tie-Fighter makes. I kid you not. And for some reason, Nessie blows smoke when on land and bubbles when underwater. If you ever get the urge to watch this movie, fight it with every fiber of your being or you'll be sorry!

Which bring us to BENEATH LOCH NESS. The back of the video box features a blurb likening this film to ANACONDA, LAKE PLACID, and DEEP BLUE SEA. This is roughly the equivalent of making a Bigfoot thriller and comparing it to CONGO or hyping a legal comedy with a soundbite that says something like, "If you thought TRIAL AND ERROR and JURY DUTY were funny!" Oh yeah, we're already off to a bad start and I hadn't even left the video store yet! As mentioned previously, the director of said opus is Chuck Comisky, a former f/x supervisor turned first-time director. If you've ever seen SPAWN or KOMODO, then you know this is never a good thing. James Cameron being the exception that proves the rule. To my surprise, this movie did not let me down as it gave me more cannon fodder than any other recent release I've seen since MEGIDDO even though it isn't quite as enjoyable as that bit of nonsense. BENEATH LOCH NESS is gleefully incoherent and utterly ludicrous, two qualities I can really appreciate.

As our movie opens, a scientific team is exploring the nether regions of Loch Ness. Let me go right ahead and state that there isn't a single scene set underwater in this movie that looks like it was actually filmed underwater. THE ABYSS, this is not. If not for the smoky trick photography used to simulate the murky depths, you'd think they were on an asteroid in deep space. The scientific team is lead by the crusty yet loveable Prof. Gus Egan, an elderly Scottish scamp of a scientist, who is out to prove his theory that Loch Ness was and possibly still is a prehistoric breeding ground. Just as he finally sees his life-long dream come true by unearthing some fossilized dinosaur eggs, an underwater earthquake/plot device occurs. In the ensuing quake, Gus is sent to his watery grave as he descends uncontrollably into a deep trench never to be heard from again. Moments later, we see what appears to be the torso of a digitally created creature swim through some nearby opening in the loch that was just created by the quake, I think. Whether the creature actually caused the quake somehow or just happened to be waiting patiently on the other side for an opening is never explained and is the first of many questions in this film that will go unanswered. To say the least, the team is heartbroken by the demise of their beloved Gus. I too was especially sad to see Gus perish because he's the only character in the whole damn film whose name I remember. That might be because they make references to Gus or Prof. Egan non-stop throughout the rest of the movie. Heck, you could do a variation of the X FROM OUTER SPACE "AAB-Gamma" clapping game based on every time someone says the name "Gus."

Cut to California where we find Lysette Anthony, one of the only name actors in this film assuming you consider Lysette Anthony a name actor. Either way, she's sporting an incredibly unflattering hairdo that strikes me as what Wendy O' Williams hair would have looked like if she had been a Romulan. Anyway, Miss Anthony, we'll just refer to her that way throughout the rest of this review since I don't recall her character's name, is a bitchy programming executive for The Expedition Channel which apparently funded Gus' Loch Ness research. As Miss Anthony explains in further detail to the head of the network, Prof. Egan theorized that aquatic prehistoric creatures survived the ice age and lived in the deepest trenches of the ocean. Supposedly there are passageways in Loch Ness that connect to the ocean thus making it possible that these prehistoric creatures could swim into the Loch leading to the sighting and legends of the Loch Ness Monster. I cannot believe I just bothered to write all of that! Like any good programming exec, she comes up with a way to exploit a tragedy by pitching the idea for a TV special about whether or not Gus' demise was a tragic accident or the doing of some insidious unknown creature lurking within the Loch. The exec goes for it but insists this guy named Howell, or is it Powell, again I forget the character's name, head the research team in putting together the evidence and what not for the special. This choice does not sit well with Miss Anthony for unspecified reasons.

We now cut to, get this, Afghanistan, thus clearly indicating that this film was obviously filmed prior to the tragic events of 9/11, where Howell, or is it Powell, is doing research of some sort. They never really state what his research field was or what the hell he's doing in Afghanistan. Howell, or is it Powell, looks an awful lot like b-movie kingpin John Allen Nelson and spends virtually the entire movie wearing this dopey cowboy hat, so from here on out I'm just going to refer to his character as Hat Guy. Anyway, Miss Anthony calls Hat Guy about working on the special and they get into a catty argument about why he doesn't want to do it until she tells him of Gus' death. Apparently Gus was his Obi-Wan so he agrees to aid with the special out of respect to Gus although I'm not sure how participating in a TV show designed to exploit a loved one's death would in any way honor their memory.

Hat Guy arrives in Scotland just in time for a loch-side service for Gus. There will not be a funeral because they never recovered Gus' remains. He then meets with the American research team who all share memories of Gus, but he annoys them by voicing his opinion that Gus died for no good reason chasing after a stupid myth. Then they go to the local bar and essentially repeat the same scene, but toss in the female college student/redhead/operator of the 24-hour Loch Ness webcam who he promptly tells to bugger off in not so many words. The young woman playing this part looks so much like the lovechild of Molly Ringwald and Jenna Elfman it's frightening.

The next day, they return to the scene of Gus' demise. The team is hoping to find one of the fossilized eggs Gus had just come upon moments before the quake while Hat Guy only hopes they find Gus' body so that they can give him a proper burial. Personally, I'm with Hat Guy on this one. One of the greatest regrets in my life was that I personally never got to meet the great Prof. Gus Egan. From everything they say about Gus in this movie, he was not only one helluva scientist, but one helluva guy too! It's a damn shame that so many rotten people roam the Earth yet such a swell fellow like Gus is taken before his time. Getting back on topic, they don't find Gus, but do find one of the eggs.

Meanwhile, the webcam girl and a couple of her buds are planning a prank that they hope will somehow result in getting their website some massive hits. It basically involves them floating a fake Nessie right in front of a Loch Ness tour boat so that all these people on the boat will be fooled into thinking they've seen the monster and they'll tell the press and people will then instantly log onto the Loch Ness webcam. Good in theory, but there's a major problem with this idea. That being the fact that their fake Nessie looks even less realistic than the one in THE LOCH NESS HORROR and they're planning to do this in broad daylight so there won't even be any darkness to obscure the obvious fakeness. They also have a friend on the tour boat with a camcorder who keeps reporting the location of the boat and repeatedly asks things like "How long until you're in place?" via a walkie-talkie. None of this raises the suspicions on anyone on board the boat who are all seated within inches of one another. Well, the movie never established that they were smart college students.

To get right into the action, something huge begins to send the research team's sensors off the charts. There is no shortage of scenes in which people look at various sensors where the creature's approach is signaled by lines spiking, bars elongating, and/or blips flashing on-screen. This would also be a good time to mention that there is never a single moment of anything even remotely resembling suspense anywhere within the 90 minute running time of this movie. A shadowy computer effect is seen swimming. Pay attention and you'll notice that certain shots of the monster are recycled over and over throughout. The scientists on the surface yell at the divers about something enormous that's heading right for them. The female diver panics while the cocky male diver begins humming the JAWS theme. At least he knows how cliched this scene is. Finally, the digital beast darts past them causing them to go reeling, but are otherwise unharmed. They snatch one of the fossilized eggs and hightail it back to the surface. What a menacing monster! Two victims wide open and it doesn't even bother to kill one of them! We come to find out that the creature buzzed the tour boat and rammed into the college kids fake Nessie in the process, this last part takes place off-camera, but BY-GOLLY the filmmakers are ever so nice to tell us about it. One of the college kids doesn't return to shore. Unfortunately, it wasn't the annoying red-headed gal who wisely chose to supervise everything via walkie-talkie from a canoe near shore, but one of her lapdogs whose mangled remains float underneath the glass bottomed tour boat for only about a split second to help keep the film's PG-13 rating. While the people on the tour boat are mortified, the research team celebrates their find and the pics they got of whatever that thing was that swam past them and Hat Guy comes to the realization that Gus was really onto something after all.

We now return to the local pub where upon entering, Hat Guy is approached by the film's only other name actor, Patrick Bergin, who babbles incoherently about how that was no accident on the Loch, but the work of the monster before being rudely brushed aside by our hat-wearing hero. Poor Patrick Bergin! In about a decade he's gone from tormenting Julia Roberts in SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY and tormenting Harrison Ford in PATRIOT GAMES to dressing and acting like a homeless, Scottish Kevin Kline and playing the crazy Ahab character in a goofy monster movie. On second thought, working with a CGI Nessie is probably not all that different from working with Queen Julia The Horsefaced! Anyway, the locals give the Americans a hard time. There's actually a lot of that in this movie. Seems the Scots don't like us Yanks hanging out at Loch Ness searching for a mythical monster. If this attitude is true to life, then I can better understand the mentality that led those Scots to write those angry IMDB reviews. Hat Guy then hears about the kid getting "maimed" on the loch (Getting bitten in half is now simply classified as being maimed, eh?) and jets off to the hospital where the webcam kids give him the video the guy on the tour boat shot of the monster passing-by.

Meanwhile, two of the researchers decide that the locals need to be warned that there's something dangerous in the loch and go meet with the local constable. Enter actor Vernon Wells, who is best remembered as the mohawked, leather thong-wearing villain in THE ROAD WARRIOR, playing the constable. At times, his fake Scottish accent is so exaggerated and mannerisms are so overplayed that I suspect he may have thought he was in a Monty Python flick and not a straightforward monster movie. Upon being told the tale of Nessie's sudden craving for human flesh and how he should warn everybody, the constable reacts by laughing heartily at the stupid Americans, declaring that there is no such thing as the Loch Ness Monster, wishing all those damn American scientists would just go away, and stating that the stupid kid got killed when he got swept into the rotors of the tour boat while playing a juvenile prank. Where's Richard Dreyfuss to utter the immortal line, "This was no boating accident!" Still, it is hard not to understand the constable's point of view.

Back on the loch, a group of American-hating locals who engage in the craft of "boomfishing," by which they light sticks of dynamite and toss them into water to gather up whatever dead fish float to the surface after the explosion, are doing some nighttime fishing. I neglected to mention that Hat Guy and the Scuba Gang had a run-in with them earlier in the film where they basically uttered the same hate-filled rhetoric that all Scots seem to direct towards Americans in this film. The moment they started insulting them about wasting time hunting down a non-existent monster, you just knew they were going to become a Nessie snack. Well, you can take a wild guess what their "boomfishing" disturbs and what happens next. But again, the monster attack takes place off-camera. Just as the creature springs forth from the water, we cut to the next scene. For crying out loud, if you don't have the budget to show the monster attacks then why even bother making a monster movie? As for the boomfishermen, they're only mentioned in passing in one scene later when the constable makes reference to some local fishermen who didn't return the other night.

Miss Anthony finally makes her triumphant return to the movie after more than a thirty-minute absence. Her scene arriving at the train station awaiting Hat Guy to pick her up is priceless. Apparently, this was one of those 8 minutes of footage actually shot in Scotland only Miss Anthony wasn't there when it was filmed. It's actually Lysette Anthony standing in front of an obvious blue-screened matte painting of a real Scottish train station. This scene is unreal both literally and figuratively. Back on topic, she's there to see what evidence they've collected so far for the TV special. She's shown the photos and the footage of the creature and she completely dismisses it all as being fuzzy, blurry, and inconclusive despite the fact that if anyone in real life got footage of the Loch Ness Monster like this it would make it onto every newscast worldwide. Upon being shown the fossilized egg, she declares it to be a worthless rock. At this point, apparently Lysette Anthony figured that she might as well just ham it up and starts going into Susan Lucci overdrive as she bursts into hysterics about how this show is going to be a disaster and along with it her career and her life. After she storms out of the building with Hat Guy in-tow, the crew along with every single person watching this movie unanimously declare her to be a bitch. Our lead actors engage in an outdoor shouting match during which Hat Guy says something about this being personal between the two of them to which she responds by telling him that the biggest mistake she ever made in her life was marrying him. NO! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NO! Of all the movie cliches this film had to toss in, did they have to include the divorced couple who still have feelings for one another and when reunited during a traumatic experience will rekindle their love? I swear, if anyone ever utters a line about not closing the loch because it's the busy tourist season, I am going to scream! Anyway, getting back to the rapidly unfolding soap opera, when she tries to use the phone, he snatches it from her, so she slaps him, and he responds by planting a big kiss on her, which seems a-okay with her. Oh, if only the GONE WITH THE WIND music had begun playing this melodramatic scene would have been complete.

After a totally pointless scene where their sensors once again detect something really big swimming around in the loch (We get it already!), Hat Guy and Miss Anthony venture to the constable's office to try to persuade him to quarantine the loch by showing him the same evidence that she herself had just dismissed minutes earlier. The constable tells them that the image in the photos is just the fake Nessie the webcam kids were planning to fool everyone with and that there was no way he going to close the loch because this was their busy tourist season.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRR
RRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I'm better now. Patrick Bergin's character finally resurfaces. His character's name is Blay. Hey, Gus wasn't the only character whose name I remembered. For no other reason, I'm can recall Blay's name because later on the constable makes a really lame Captain Bly joke at his expense. Blay, a former diver in the Royal Navy turned town recluse/loon, tells our insipid…I mean intrepid heroes the story of his encounter with the monster 17 years earlier. Seems he had taken his young son boomfishing on the loch in his skimmer named The Taggert (I can remember the name of an inanimate object but not the names of the two main characters?) and the monster took exception to this, sinking their boat. I'm beginning to detect the subtext of an anti-boomfishing message in this movie. PETA should be pleased. Anyway, his son's remains were never found and nobody believed him about the monster. The story floating around was that he was drunk and blew up the boat killing his son. No evidence supported this, so charges were never filed, but it ended up costing him his job, his wife, most of his sanity, and possibly his hygiene from the looks of things. He became a social outcast so he went to work on oil rigs in the North Sea for a long time, but had now just recently returned (What impeccable timing!) and vowed to get even with the creature. Well, I guess since they've tossed in so many other clichés they may as well throw in some MOBY DICK for the hell of it. Blay concludes the scene by subtly asking if he could ever try on one of their state-of-the-art diving suits.

Toss in yet another run-in with the constable that succeeds solely in padding the film and we move on to yet another diving sequence where this time, in one of those amazing coincidences that can only happen in a schlocky b-movie like this, they find the wreckage of The Taggert. This leads Hat Guy to conclude that Blay's story was true. Okay, pardon me for using my noggin, but how exactly does finding this exonerate Blay and prove that he was really attacked by the monster? All it proves is that the guy's boat sank which was already pretty much a given. Why must I be so damn analytical? Anyway, I heard them say something about wanting to try and to block the passageway that opened up after the quake to trap the monster in the loch in order to either capture it, kill it, study it, and/or prove it exists. I'm so confused. My head hurts.

It's at this point that the movie finally crosses the bad movie goal line with a sequence of such monumental stupidity that it alone is worth the price of the rental. A couple hiking along the shore discover the carcass of a plesiosaur that seems to have beached itself in a desperate attempt to escape the loch or possibly the movie. Let me not let this moment pass without making note of the atrocious visual effect that brings this scene to life. Let's just say the dinosaur image has a ghostly blue tint outline to it and leave it at that. Jump cut to the police station where the constable has called an impromptu press conference which consists of Miss Anthony, Hat Guy, one of their cohorts with a camcorder, Blay, and about 5 other nameless reporters. The constable, grinning like an idiot, gleefully declares, even though he had previously insisted that there was no danger in the loch, that there is no longer any danger because what they believe to be the Loch Ness Monster has been caught. He then opens the door to the room where the creature's carcass is on a slab to give them a quick glimpse before closing the door and informing the press that a specialist is going be flown in to study the corpse. While all this is going on, Blay is screaming like a madman about how he's seen the monster up-close and this ain't it. Our heroes back up Blay's ravings by repeatedly insisting that that the creature they've been tracking in the loch is much larger than the corpse in the next room. After unveiling the single greatest scientific discovery of the 20th and probably the 21st century as well, the constable shoos everyone out of the building then pulls our heroes aside to tell them that there is no reason for them or any other scientists to hang around Loch Ness anymore.

Hold it! Hold it! Stop tape! That thing in the other room isn't a shark. IT'S A FREAKIN' DINOSAUR! Yet, the filmmakers are so inept that they have the constable play the whole scene like he's the mayor of Amity insisting that the shark has been caught and there is nothing more to worry about. Despite his assertions that Nessie is a myth, he doesn't even seem to be in awe of what's in the next room. He's just happy that the Loch Ness myth can finally be put to rest and the rumors of a killer creature in the loch can come to an end. IT'S A FREAKIN' DINOSAUR! He's celebrating that he'll finally be able to get rid of all those pesky scientists once and for all. No! A dead dinosaur washes ashore and every single cryptozoologist, biologist, paleontologist, zoologist, marine biologist, and every kind of "ologist" on the planet is going to descend upon you! Hell, Charles Darwin would probably rise from the dead just to get a piece of this! Not to mention the fact that every single media outlet in existence would be doing round-the-clock live remotes from the loch! Yet Constable McDumbass thinks this is the final chapter in the Loch Ness Monster saga? IT'S A FREAKIN' DINOSAUR! By God, I love this movie!

Later that evening, our heroic research team break-in to the police station, which apparently closes after dark, to make a closer inspection of the dead Nessie. The corpse of greatest zoological discovery in recorded history is being kept in an unguarded building, inside a non-refrigerated room, behind an unlocked door with a window on it. Oy vey! Turns out this dinosaur died when something bigger took a huge bite out of it and they come to the conclusion that whatever is out there is a predator of Nessie. Yes, folks, the Loch Ness Monster is real and it's killed off in a minor sub-plot. First Gus, now Nessie! This movie keeps killing off the only likeable characters!

From there, they leave to meet up with Blay where they discuss their findings and quote biblical references about the Old Testament sea monster, Leviathan, which Hat Guy, completely out of the blue, claims was probably just a "carnosaurus" that had survived into ancient times. They all decide that the man-eater in the loch must be a carnosaurus, known as the T-Rex of the sea, and hypothesize that it must have survived extinction and have been living deep in the trenches of the North Sea and swam into the loch through one of the underwater passages that the late great Gus constantly theorized about. I missed the aquatic portion of Walking With Dinosaurs so I can't vouch for whether such a dinosaur ever existed and I'll leave the dinosaur/Leviathan theological argument to others, but will say that Hat Guy doesn't strike me as being bright enough to make such profound pronunciations. While this discussion takes place, a group of pagans partaking in some druid ritual out on the water become a midnight snack. The research team repeatedly estimates that the creature is about 60 feet long. Judging by the grossly out of scale CGI monster that leaps from the water and swallows this small group of pagans with one gulp, I'd speculate that the carnosaurus should be rampaging through downtown Tokyo instead of lurking around a Scottish loch. If the beast is this gargantuan it also begs the question why our heroes would continue to venture out onto the loch in a measly rowboat as much as they do in this film?

Good lord, how long is this review?* It's getting to be Jabootu length! Fortunately, we're approaching the film's climax. Long story short, a bunch of witnesses saw the pagan-eating and so the constable's finally convinced he's got a big problem. After arguing again, the constable has Hat Guy jailed overnight for no other reason than he's a bloody wanker and then talks to his superiors by CB where the decision is made to close the loch while they depth charge the hell out of it. Blay, in a Quint moment, tells the constable that he's the only one who can catch or kill this thing to which the constable simply pleads with him to go home. Ahab, I mean Blay, then goes home, puts on his kilt and Braveheart makeup and shows up at the researchers headquarters armed with a spear and forcibly persuades them to suit him up in diving gear so he can go hunt the monster. Miss Anthony bails Hat Guy out of jail where the constable forces them to sign several legal documents stating they will be gone in 24 hours. Yes, he has filed a restraining order on behalf of a body of water. Sadly, this is the constable's final scene in the movie so we don't even get the reward of seeing his sorry ass get it's much deserved devouring. Upon getting back to base and finding out about Blay's Dr. Serizawa impression, Hat Guy decides that he himself will suit up and go down to talk sense into him. This is noteworthy not only because he'll have to remove his hat, but also because it was briefly brought up earlier that Hat Guy hates the water even though he claims to have invented their specialized diving suits. I'll buy that for a dollar! So Hat Guy is a paleontologist, a cryptozoologist, a diver, a lover, an engineering genius, works for a TV network, and was best friends with Gus? Well, he's a regular Buckaroo Banzai isn't he?

* To answer your question, it is 7,103 words in length. -Ed

To put the film's finale in fast forward, which is probably the only way I can accurately describe it since the direction is so incomprehensible that much of the time you have no idea what is actually going on. Hat Guy meets up with Blay beneath Loch Ness (*rimshot*) who has set up a net rigged with explosives in a web-like fashion across the opening of the passageway that leads in and out of the loch with hopes that the monster will get blown up upon contact. The duo must have formed a suicide pact since that is the only explanation for why they foolishly stand within a few inches of the rigged net the entire time. Meanwhile, the Loch Ness Baywatch are dropping depth charges, Miss Anthony is channeling Susan Lucci again, and the monster is just swimming around aimlessly. The creature hits the net, but the charges were either duds or made from stuff Blay bought at a fireworks stand because it's pretty much a non-explosion. The monster is annoyed, people above and below the water yell a lot, and one of the depth charges doesn't detonate, but comes to rest neatly on top of the passage opening. How convenient. The monster plows through the net setting off the charge thus caving in the opening and trapping Blay and Hat Guy inside the passage. Upon losing radio contact, everyone presumes the worst, but Miss Anthony decides she's overacted enough in this movie and underplays the moment.

In the underwater passage, time and logic stand still as neither man panics over their current situation. Despite the fact that Blay's oxygen meter is almost empty and surely Hat Guy's tank only contains and hour or two of air, he actually suggests that since the passageway should lead out into the ocean, they should essentially just walk out the other end. I kid you not. That should be what? A couple hundred miles at least? Then, the twosome just start casually walking out to sea. It seems both they and the filmmakers completely forgot that the angry, carnivorous monster is still lurking about. After walking all of about five feet, they happen up on a nest of real carnosaur eggs proving once and for all that Gus' theory about the loch being a breeding ground was true. God bless you, Gus! Blay immediately goes into a violent frenzy and begins stabbing the eggs with his trusty spear while Hat Guy pleads for calm. Cue the monster's CGI eye opening. I guess it needed a nap after all that excitement. Blay spears one of the eggs and taunts the carnosaurus with it while screaming about how you killed my kids so now I'll kill yours to which the monster stares ominously and gives a toothy grin. Hat Guy, the dashing hero he is, exits stage left while the monster, rather than eat Blay, chooses instead to simply mosh him. Blay's suit is damaged and he begins to depressurize, but before dying he detonates this last C-4 explosive he had which looks suspiciously like a smoke detector. A big underwater explosion occurs which apparently killed the creature even though it wasn't shown anywhere near Blay when he detonated the explosives. I swear to God there is no possible way to accurately describe how incoherently filmed and edited together this entire series of events is filmed. You simply have to see it yourself to believe how poorly it's all staged.

After much time has elapsed, everyone above ground is almost as distraught as they were when Gus bought it. Far away, a biker riding along an oceanside road spots a man in a dive suit passed out on the beach. Back at the loch, everyone is still standing around looking as if they're now starting to get over their loss, when suddenly Hat Guy just walks up from behind and surprises them. Everyone rejoices, but you know deep down they'd rather it have been Gus that came back. Any explanation as to how the hell he survived is never offered. Did he actually walk the distance without running out of air? Did the explosion blow him through the tunnel at high speeds? Did anybody ever explain to the makers of this film that there's a fine line between suspension of disbelief and insulting the audience's intelligence? Hat Guy tosses the research team a backpack containing one of the eggs that he somehow managed to carry back with him. Everyone once again sings the praises of the greatest human being to ever walk the face of the earth, Prof. Gus Egan, while Hat Guy and Miss Anthony joke about going to work in the desert (Get it? Its called comedic irony!) and talk about possibly patching up their failed marriage. Without warning, the film cuts right to the closing credits thus ending this obtuse movie on an awkward moment. Personally, I kept expecting Gus to pull an Ed Harris and turn up alive at the bottom of the loch, but that was not to be. While there may not have been a brain cell to be found anywhere in or around this particular film, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the hell out of this piece of schlock!

Every last one of you should jog, don't run or walk, to your local video store and rent BENEATH LOCH NESS. Or you can be a cheap bastard and just wait for this movie to debut on the Sci-Fi Channel sometime in the next six months. I don't know for a fact that it will air on the Sci-Fi Channel, but it just has that look and feel to it. Besides, the Sci-Fi Channel is eventually going to have find some movie to put in heavy rotation in place of KOMODO, which has become to the Sci-Fi Channel what JAWS is to the Turner networks. And if the movie does well on home video, maybe it could turn into a franchise. The first sequel could be about Canada's Ogopogo called Beneath Lake Okanagan. Admittedly it doesn't have quite the same ring to it as BENEATH LOCH NESS, but if they can keep cranking out TURBULENCE sequels and make five LEPRECHAUN movies then stretching this premise into a franchise shouldn't be all that difficult. Besides, when you've started BENEATH LOCH NESS, you have nowhere to go but up!

IN MEMORY OF GUS 19?? - 2002

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY & I PAID TO SEE DEEPSTAR SIX