Bog

[PackBacker]

"Bog" 1983

Directed by: Don Keeslar

Screenplay by: Carl Kitt

Starring: Gloria DeHaven, Aldo Ray, Marshall Thompson

Tagline: Bog... A Creature From The Glacial Age Awakens To Kill... Kill... And Kill Again!


Rating: 1/10

Plot: A mysterious monster from the depths of Bog Lake is killing everyone in its path. Is it a mosquito, a walking tumor, a cheap rubber suit, or a sex crazed sixty year old pathologist?

MAJOR SPOILERS INCLUDED


Review: I watch a lot of bad movies. A lot of times they at least provide entertainment, some fake blood, and some decent nudity. Then there are films like this. "Bog" is horrid. From the wooden acting, to the extreme close-ups, to the sixty year olds making out, and capped off by one of the worst monsters I've ever seen on film, "Bog" is wretched. It has etched itself a solid entry in my all time top five worst horror films. That is quite an achievement.

So our film opens on Bog Lake. A yokel is fishing with dynamite. His boat gets bumped, he falls out and the mystery begins. The screen then rolls the intro credits accompanied by a horrid love song. We also get a small film image surrounded by a big blue outline. This wasn't even state of the art in the seventies. Classy.

We resume action with two yokel couples who are vacationing at Bog Lake. The men are beer guzzling idiots while the women are nagging billboards for divorce. Yokel couple one hops in the abandoned boat and the other fishes from shore. The first yokel woman dies from an extreme camera close-up best I can tell. The boat comes back to shore...and yokel woman #2 bites the dust when the men run off to check things out. How does she die? Super extreme close up to the face...with a red filter! The bodies (or badly made-up blow up dolls) are later found floating in the lake by the bumbling sheriff's department.

Autopsies are performed on the victims...and it was found that they were drained of blood. Not just drained of blood but by a sharp object down the throat into the aorta. Do you know how freaking crazy that is? It could possibly be achieved by endoscopic guidance under full anesthesia...maybe. While theories are thrown around there is another death by extreme close-up when a deputy buys the farm.

The two yokels stock up on guns and ammo to hunt down the killer. They run into a fellow bumpkin who takes them to see the crazy lady who lives by the lake. She looks like Joan Rivers looks on the inside. She mumbles about the creature for about eight minutes in a horrible monotone voice. A noise outside the shack like a large croaking frog startles the bumpkin. He runs outside and apparently is slaughtered right outside the door. He shoulda listened to Joan Rivers.

The film then takes a 180 degree turn. We are subjected to the true horror of this film. The town doctor and pathologist working on the case have a love scene. They are both easily in their fifties. The extreme close-up strikes again...this time focusing on the frenching geriatric romantics with a gag-inducing love song playing. B flicks are supposed to feature scantily clad bimbos running for their lives. This film couldn't even get that one right. Imagine Bea Arthur and Andy Griffith getting jiggy and you've got that scene in a nutshell.

The sheriff, who appears to be a very open alcoholic, decides to drop a whole bunch of explosives in the lake to kill anything there. The crazy lady by the lake makes another appearance and mumbles more unintelligible words. Corky the deputy plants the charge and the sheriff sets it off by attaching the leads to the car battery!? Instead of bothering to look for a dead monster, the cops set off down the road in their stylish station wagon.

The yokel husbands, armed to the teeth, stay behind. A flurry of gunshots brings the cops back in time to see one being dragged under the surface of the water. Corky the deputy soon also meets an off-screen end. A team is called in to drag the lake for bodies and a roadblock is erected to stop the rising body count. Our lovebird doctors continue their research. At one point they think its a mosquito, then a walking tumor, and then a metallurgic monstrosity. "These are mucus producing cells with a crystalline shape!" So it's a cancerous, metallic mosquito that can produce a whole bunch of snot....we're getting warmer, doc!

The roadblock is not very effective. Two bikers ride through THE MIDDLE of it. They ride down to the lake and one becomes food for the mosquito/cancer/metal/mucus monster. We get our second look at the monster. It looks like a tennis ball that has just come out of a drooling dog's mouth. The horror! Shortly afterwards the scuba divers discover an apparent cluster of eggs and then become victims eight and nine. The egg sac is soon taken back by the monster which now sports big crab claws and leaves behind a soapy residue.

The doctors have come up with a plan- build a "blood scent generator" to lure the monster out. Yeah we could do that or we could just chum the lake, drop some napalm, force Joan Rivers to tell us where it is, or just fondle each other in the storeroom. More old people kissing ensues... The "blood scent generator completed, our heroes set up a red fog machine and crank it up. Finally our monster arrives. The sheriff runs directly to it in an act of complete stupidity. He is soon slaughtered by a man in a rubber suit. Our creature appears in full view. What is revealed is one of the worst monsters I've ever seen. Rubber suit of a fishy like creature with bulging tennis balls for eyes. The crazy lady yells "it's a trap!", runs away, and for no reason is shot dead by a deputy. The monster is subdued by being sprayed with white foam (?) and is placed in nets. I'm more perplexed now than ever.

An icthyologist is called in to help ID the creature. Blood samples are compared between the creature and our crazy lady (who was still murdered by the police for no apparent reason. Apparently their blood is almost identical (even though the monster's blood is lime green). That gives me some theories on Joan Rivers...she's really a homicidal mucus-producing, metallic, cancerous fish creature!
The theory they come up with is that the creature injects its blood into a female so they want to have sex with the creature and can reproduce. What?!?! That's a brilliant theory because there is still ONE DAMN CREATURE. Does this mean the crazy lady laid some damn eggs after getting boned by fish man? These doctors were smoking some big amounts of crack and probably needed to get some fish action themselves.

The creature, of course, awakens from its slumber and grabs our female pathologist to develop a new fish sex partner. Discovering the lab on fire, our doctors notice a shoe. They leap to the only logical deduction- fish man has her and is headed to bog lake! Everyone jumps in their cars Dukes of Hazard style and we are treated to dark shots of the creature as it grunts like a pig. The final confronation is brief as the creature is soon run over by the police station wagon and bursts into flames. We close on an underwater view of the egg cluster and a title card: The End ?

Bravo. It takes a lot of drugs and talent to make a film this bad. How drunk/stoned do you have to be to pitch the idea of a mucus-producing/metallic/cancerous fish man that transfuses its blood into human females so they will have sex with it to propogate offspring? My bet is that was a two week binder to come up with that idea. Obviously they also drank all their budget so they were left with creating a monster out of Salvation Army reject clothes and tennis balls. Instead of blood and gore, we got death by extreme close-up. Instead of attractive air-headed actresses, we got tonsil hockey playing fifty year olds with Gloria DeHaven actually playing the role of the pathologist and the crazy lady. She musta drank more than everyone else involved.

The editor of the film (if there was one) should be shot. This is the most poorly edited film I've ever seen with awkward cuts, missing dialogue, and sloppy pacing at every corner. In fact, everyone involved with this film should have been publicly horse-whipped. I just can't wait for the sequel, or more likely the Hollywood remake! Knowing how original the industry is today that's probably not too unlikely.