"Bog" (1979) is an old school, B-title monster movie with a lot of the right elements and a few of the wrong ones.
On the side of "Creature Feature Right", the movie had a big, humanoid, lumbering monster with odd shaped claws that tore through doors like so much balsa wood and which could shake off bullets the way a bear shakes off honey bees. We're treated mostly to extreme close-ups of the most impressive parts of the creature costume and left with poorly lit or extremely far away shots of the full costume. This leaves our imagination to put together the full image. I like that they covered what were likely short comings in the suit in the way most low budget movies did, by not giving us a good look at it, but they missed an opportunity to give us a good idea of what it looked like when a sketch artist draws a picture of it. The characters pass around the sketch pad and look at it, each reacting to the horror on the page, but the audience isn't even given a brief glimpse of the monster's penciled image. Even I let people catch a glimpse of "Cat-man-Do" in "Indiscretions" after Old Tom (Mike Christopher) sketched him. And we hid the actor's/creature's face nearly the whole movie because we only had make-up for him on one day.
Another "right" is the cast. These aren't big movie names that everyone will know, but all recognizable faces if you watched TV at the time. They were seasoned actors (there's not one leading cast member who was under 40 at the time of filming.). And this is where the cast becomes a bit of a "wrong" too. I have nothing against adults playing adults, but movies like this tended to be for younger audiences and there was nobody for them to connect to in this flick. As for me, it made for a lot of characters I could relate to and I enjoyed that for a change. In recent years watching teenagers be stupid in the face of danger has gotten more annoying than entertaining. So, it's a solid cast, but a mixed bag on the fact that some audience members may find nobody relatable to root for.
There was also an odd love story included between the two doctors. Not odd in a real world sense, but unusual to have two mature characters actually be the central romantic characters in a horror movie. Usually you see that more in a Western. The other problem I had with the love story is that is sort of drifted in just to create a damsel in distress situation later. It wasn't necessary enough to warrant slowing down the action.
And that's this movie's biggest failing, even though it's one of the things I enjoyed the most about it. It got bogged down in the science. The two doctors were constantly discussing the creature's physical characteristics. How and why it sucked blood. Where it may have come. What animals it was like. I love science in my sci-fi, but this script had two problems. One, creature features generally have a very lose sense of science to keep the action moving. They don't get tied up in a lot of details. T.V. and low budget movies may use this dialogue as filler ( I know I have ) and that's okay IF, in the end the science all leads to at least one of two things:
1. Where the creature came from.
2. An effective method to stop it.
If either of these things resulted from the science talk, I missed it happen. So, while interesting in each incident, it built up to very little. So, too much science for a B-monster flick AND it turned out it was pointless science that didn't even help to resolve the problem.
The final and big "right" this B-monster flick had going for it? It seemed like one of those movies the whole town was in on shooting. Police and fire trucks were involved. We got a big confrontation between the monster and the townspeople. It gave the movie a scale that a smaller production like it may not of had without support from the town.
Overall, it makes for good late night or rainy day viewing if you like old school monsters. No flashy CGI here. Just a guy, in a suit, which you don't see much of, sucking blood out of townspeople and carrying off women.
This trailer is actually a pretty accurate representation of the movie. They do spend a lot of time asking, "What is it?" and never answering that question.
And the trailer for "Indiscretions", mentioned above.
If you like cheesy monster movies, we've got one for you!
Grab your DVD copy at www.hocfocprod.com/jackvslanterns
On the side of "Creature Feature Right", the movie had a big, humanoid, lumbering monster with odd shaped claws that tore through doors like so much balsa wood and which could shake off bullets the way a bear shakes off honey bees. We're treated mostly to extreme close-ups of the most impressive parts of the creature costume and left with poorly lit or extremely far away shots of the full costume. This leaves our imagination to put together the full image. I like that they covered what were likely short comings in the suit in the way most low budget movies did, by not giving us a good look at it, but they missed an opportunity to give us a good idea of what it looked like when a sketch artist draws a picture of it. The characters pass around the sketch pad and look at it, each reacting to the horror on the page, but the audience isn't even given a brief glimpse of the monster's penciled image. Even I let people catch a glimpse of "Cat-man-Do" in "Indiscretions" after Old Tom (Mike Christopher) sketched him. And we hid the actor's/creature's face nearly the whole movie because we only had make-up for him on one day.
Another "right" is the cast. These aren't big movie names that everyone will know, but all recognizable faces if you watched TV at the time. They were seasoned actors (there's not one leading cast member who was under 40 at the time of filming.). And this is where the cast becomes a bit of a "wrong" too. I have nothing against adults playing adults, but movies like this tended to be for younger audiences and there was nobody for them to connect to in this flick. As for me, it made for a lot of characters I could relate to and I enjoyed that for a change. In recent years watching teenagers be stupid in the face of danger has gotten more annoying than entertaining. So, it's a solid cast, but a mixed bag on the fact that some audience members may find nobody relatable to root for.
There was also an odd love story included between the two doctors. Not odd in a real world sense, but unusual to have two mature characters actually be the central romantic characters in a horror movie. Usually you see that more in a Western. The other problem I had with the love story is that is sort of drifted in just to create a damsel in distress situation later. It wasn't necessary enough to warrant slowing down the action.
And that's this movie's biggest failing, even though it's one of the things I enjoyed the most about it. It got bogged down in the science. The two doctors were constantly discussing the creature's physical characteristics. How and why it sucked blood. Where it may have come. What animals it was like. I love science in my sci-fi, but this script had two problems. One, creature features generally have a very lose sense of science to keep the action moving. They don't get tied up in a lot of details. T.V. and low budget movies may use this dialogue as filler ( I know I have ) and that's okay IF, in the end the science all leads to at least one of two things:
1. Where the creature came from.
2. An effective method to stop it.
If either of these things resulted from the science talk, I missed it happen. So, while interesting in each incident, it built up to very little. So, too much science for a B-monster flick AND it turned out it was pointless science that didn't even help to resolve the problem.
The final and big "right" this B-monster flick had going for it? It seemed like one of those movies the whole town was in on shooting. Police and fire trucks were involved. We got a big confrontation between the monster and the townspeople. It gave the movie a scale that a smaller production like it may not of had without support from the town.
Overall, it makes for good late night or rainy day viewing if you like old school monsters. No flashy CGI here. Just a guy, in a suit, which you don't see much of, sucking blood out of townspeople and carrying off women.
Grab your DVD copy at www.hocfocprod.com/jackvslanterns
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