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The Bog
(Arctic/Lake/Creature) 2**skulls
* No Blood * Not Particularly Violent * No Strong Language *
* No Nudity * No Sexual Situations * Not Gory *
1983/Color/87 Min./Prism Entertainment & Marshall Films & Bog Productions & Nelson Communications/Rated PG
Director.............Don Keeslar (The Capture of Grizzly Adams)
Screenplay.......Carl N. Kitt
Music................Bill Walker
Producer...........Michelle Marshall
Executive Producer.....Clark Paylow
"Walk with Me" Sung by Pat Hopkins
Special Effects by Richard Alban & Gerald Winchell
Dramatis Personae
Ginny Glenn/Adriana..Gloria DeHaven (Summer Stock, Thin Man Goes Home)
Sheriff Neal Rydholm.Aldo Ray (Evils of the Night, hock'em Dead)
Dr. Brad Wednesday...Marshall Thompson (Fiend Without a Face, Crashout)
Dr. John Warren......Leo Gordon
Deputy Jensen........Ed Clark
Wallace Fry..........Robert Fry
Kim Pierce...........Lou Hunt
The Bog Monster......Jeff Schwaab
May Tanner...........Carol Terry
Alan Tanner..........Glen Voros
Terry Taylor.........Leroy Winbush
Bill Beckley.........Dan Killian
Hotchkiss............Don Daniels
Deputy Corbett.......Charles Pitt
Deputy Siegel........Chris Harris
Deputy Macweeney.....Glen Hopkins
Critique: That was only 87 minutes? Elderly doctors may be turned on by the elderly doctor make-out scene and medical students might enjoy the paradoxical and inaccurate discoveries and theories of the star struck doctors. Other people will become angry, bored, and somewhat amused. The dialog is as weak as the siren on this poor town's fire engine, as weak as the convictions of its stammering menfolk, as weak as the doctor's propane torch weapon, indeed (for a final weak analogy), as weak as the outboard motor in Boggy Creek II. The angry and aging monster lynch mob in the Sheriff's office is reminiscent of the classically funny octogenarian lynch mob in Zombies' Lake. Notice how the characters are named after those in Boggy Creek II, an appropriate tip of the cap to BCII director Charles Pierce, who could have written this awful script himself; only he would have made a much funnier movie of this plodding, tortured, carcenogenic rubber froggy-man of a movie. Typically snappy editing: before any indication of trouble, a frightened Terry asks Chuck, "What's happening?" The wisewoman, Adriana, apparently had a different sound man than the other characters and can't be understood. Likewise, the medical babble is a waste of words, indeed, backyard production values all around. The freeze-frames at the ends of shots are laughable. The Sheriff's musings on the ice age are a riot. Indeed, it's so bad, it's worth a look. Poor Wisconsin!
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