MONSTROID: IT CAME FROM THE LAKE (1979)

When John Carradine is in a film, it's either going to be very good or very bad. With a title like MONSTROID "It Came From the Lake," you can well imagine which side of the equation this thing falls on.

During its first four minutes, the film tells us twice that it's based on actual events. If that's true, then in June 1971, the Colombian village of Chimayo was terrorized by a huge, ridiculous-looking lake monster ostensibly created by industrial pollution from a nearby cement plant. The film's heroes kill the monster in broad daylight—by blowing it to bits using a dead lamb they filled with dynamite—as numerous people watch (and take pictures) from the shore, and with a TV news crew filming every moment. So it's odd that no record of these "real-life events" exists. I'm guessing MONSTROID was fact-based in the same way that FARGO was.

MONSTROID contains many classic elements of grindhouse fare: bad acting, tons of padding (mostly in the form of helicopter footage), macho one-dimensional heroes, female characters who are little more than eye candy, racist stereotypes (in this case, of the Colombian people as ignorant, gullible peasants), numerous screenwriters credited, and the overall look of a home movie shot in someone's back yard.

During filming, John Carradine told a crew member, "This is the worst piece of shit I've ever worked on, and I've worked on a lot of pieces of shit." I can attest to the second part.