Monstroid



AKA: Monster
AKA: The Toxic Horror
AKA: Monstroid: It Came From The Lake

An American cement manufacturer is forced to send “troubleshooter” Bill Travis down to their factory in Chimayo, Columbia to try to combat some bad press. Not only has their factory been polluting the waters of the local fishing lake which the town relies on for their survival, but several people have also mysteriously disappeared near the lake over the last couple years, and between the nosey news reporter and the angry local activist, rumors have been spreading that the company is responsible for some sort of monster roaming around the lake. So Travis heads down there expecting to negotiate with the locals and run off the reporter. Except…uh…looks like those rumors of a monster may not be totally made up after all.



So I’ve decided that my mini-theme this month (at least until I can find something to watch for Thanksgiving) shall be: Movies Based on History. Are any of them actually going to be based on history? Highly doubtful. As evidenced here, where the movie claims not once, but twice – Yes, TWICE! – during the opening credits that it’s supposedly based on a true event that happened in Columbia. Did it? Absolutely friggin’ not. There’s no story about some type of toxic sludge monster, real or imagined, attacking anyone in Columbia at any point in time. Didn’t happen. The only thing actually true about this story is that evil, corrupt corporations exist, and that they can, and will, exploit whoever the hell they can and try to cover up their wrongdoings from journalists because they don’t want bad press. That’s it. That’s the only truth to this movie.

And with that out of the way, let us continue on with the write-up, as per usual….


Yes, yes, we SAW IT. Now shut up about it.

Okay… So…. Wow. I’m gonna be honest right off the bat. Ol’ Monstroid here is pretty bad. Like, woof, what a slog. But considering its rough history that probably shouldn’t be all too surprising. The production was started in 1971, but between the casting issues caused by actors continually dropping out, the changes in writers, and a director getting credit for directing a film that most of the cast even admits was largely shot by one of the film’s writers, Herbert L. Strock (director of other B-Movie schlock such as I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, and The Crawling Hand), I’m actually surprised it ever got released at all. But for some reason the filmmakers soldiered on and we got…whatever the hell this is. If you need an idea of just how bad it is, it’s very first appearance on DVD was in 2007, not as a stand alone feature, but as an episode of Elvira’s Movie Macabre, in which the titular Elvira hosts crappy films and occasionally cuts in to make sarcastic comments about them. Meaning that Monstroid’s first introduction into the modern era was made solely so that someone else could make fun of it. THAT’S the kind of film we’re working with here.


Yup. Exactly.

The film’s primary issue is its complete and utter lack of focus. In a movie that’s supposed to be about a monster terrorizing people at a lake, the movie constantly gets sidetracked with around half a dozen different side plots that mostly feel like they were only introduced to fill more time. For instance, one of the corporate big-wigs is having an affair with his much younger secretary. But he dumps her because he wants to have an affair with the mayor’s daughter, who is even younger than the secretary (ick). So we get to watch a whole dialogue exchange about their break up. But then he catches his secretary skinny dipping one night at the lake, so they proceed to get their bow-chicka-bow-wow on, but, oh, that was a mistake, and he says they’re through and leaves her at the lake, only for her to be devoured by the monster not long after.



Now, was any of that necessary to the plot? Hell no! The only part that was relevant was the part where she got eaten, which could have easily been a scene unto itself, dumb-ass ex boyfriend NOT required. And to make matters worse, the movie is so grimy that it tries to make you feel like the whole thing was her fault. As if her death was some sort of righteous comeuppance for her behavior. Because after all, how dare she be upset that she was taken advantage of by some douchebag who then dumped her for a younger, foreign model. As if HE was the one somehow wronged in this equation, so for that she gets nom-nomed upon.



It’s like the movie doesn’t understand how horror movies are supposed to work. Not only do we not want to watch long, useless dialogue exchanges, but part of the thing that makes horror films cathartic to watch, is knowing that the bad guys are supposed to face their karma at the end. For instance, in a PROPER film, the CEO of the cement company would have shown up at some point, made some big BS speech about how they’re a good little company and there is absolutely, positively NO monster, and then promptly gotten himself eaten. Nom Nom. Scream Scream. Good riddance and all that jazz.


As is proper.

But you can really tell this movie was written from a distinctly male, American perspective. Because despite being about an evil corporation who is KNOWINGLY polluting the water (one of the employees says as much), just about everyone else in the movie is portrayed as some sort of bad guy. The female journalist just trying to do her job by showing the pollution and how it’s affecting the locals? She’s constantly spoken down to or threatened. The activist Víctor Sánchez, who just wants the plant to stop polluting his country and killing all the wildlife? In any other film he’d be the hero, but THIS movie hates him so much that they blow him up!


Jeebus…



And then there’s poor María Reyes, who witnesses her husband getting eaten at the beginning of the film. What was her great crime that the movie felt necessary to punish her for? Well, I guess it was for the mere act of daring to say that something crawled out the lake and ate her hubby. For some reason THAT gets her labeled as a witch and the locals wait a whole two years before trying to turn her into a roasted marshmallow.



Why did they make the jump to witchcraft instead of surmising that a crocodile might have eaten him (they’re critically endangered in the area, but they DO exist in Columbia)? Who the hell knows. Some of them seemed perfectly willing to blame a freshwater shark for the incidents (since when do sharks crawl out of the water?), but I guess thinking a known local predator might have committed the act was out of the question.


I mean, seriously, how would a shark have pulled this off?

But they’re all just examples of plot threads in this movie that are little more than a lot of endless talking, and ultimately end up being completely and utterly pointless to the overall story. In fact, I think the only side plot that DOES properly tie into the rest of the movie was the one involving the two teens who keep roaming around the lake, hell bent on proving the monster exists by getting a picture of it (Well, the boy is determined to prove it exists. He sort of just drags his poor sister along for the ride). At least THAT was actually related to the damn monster! But that whole thing was also essentially a textbook case of child neglect and endangerment on top of everything else, so it still winds up being a kinda sucky plot point too.


Go HOME, children!

But even when the movie DOES remember that it’s supposed to be about a monster, those scenes end up sucking too. For starters, the design for this poor creature is just… Well, it’s just very sad, is what it is. That blob-like thing you see on all the posters? Yeah. Turns out that doesn’t exist. The poster is a lie. Instead it looks more like a green, scaly Plesiosaurus with a mustache. Except instead of fins or flippers it actually has functioning arms and feet. To the point where it can pick people up and hold them so that it can gnaw on their lower extremities. Which kinda sounds cool. But trust me, it’s not. Probably because the legs make it look –amazingly – even dumber than it already does. So for the most part you really only see brief glimpses of its head, where it ends up looking like a very fancy sock puppet, and you don’t end up seeing its limbs past the first couple scenes. At which point the movie starts calling it a ‘serpent’, conveniently forgetting about the feet and arms we clearly saw earlier. Considering how cheap the overall film looks, they were probably too expensive or complicated to operate or something.


But here’s a foot as proof that they do exist.

It also doesn’t help that all the scenes the monster is in are almost painfully boring. The first one isn’t so bad. The monster surprises an unsuspecting couple at night, terrifies the wife, eats the hubby, then saunters off… You know, pretty standard stuff as far as monster movie openings go. It does, however, establish an annoying pattern of behavior, wherein almost all the women who encounter the creature immediately scream, stand still, and then just… fall the hell over. In the first case the wife straight up just passes out. Which…okay, fine I guess. She did just watch a mustachioed lizard eat her beloved, after all. But in the second encounter the lady just sits there and yells, as the creature slowly – and I mean SLOWLY – lumbers towards her to polish her off. She doesn’t even try to get up or even crawl away from it. She just sits there in a sexy pose and waits to die. One instance of the tired “trip and wait there until the monster comes to get you” cliche I might let slide. But twice? In a row? That’s just lazy and irksome.


Monster’s running off with your guy. But that’s okay. You just have your catatonic moment. That’s fine.

The worst part though, is the climax…if you can call it that. Because this is probably the one of the most tedious endings to a monster movie that they could have conceived of. Basically, the ‘heroes’ (read: evil corporate bastards) hijack a helicopter and decide to go fishing with the carcass of a dead sheep that they’ve rigged with explosives. The idea of course, being that the monster will eat the sheep (they don’t even know if it likes sheep) and then they’ll hit the detonate button and – KABOOM! – no more monster. Except for some reason the wire has to be absolutely straight to work. And I guess the one guy was really nervous and his hands were really sweaty or something, because he fails at the ONE JOB HE HAD and drops the detonator into the lake.


Or the pool. Because clearly they drop it into a pool.

Do they move on to Plan B? No. Of course not. The idiot then jumps into the water after the detonator and then swims around looking to find it. Does the monster eat him? Again, no. Of course not. Because that would make too much sense. Instead the creature is ‘distracted’ by some law enforcement officer driving a boat around it, which almost sounds like an even dumber idea to me than the idiot jumping into the water. What’s even worse though, is that these fools let a freaking crowd of onlookers form at the side of the lake. Which in a GOOD monster movie would have provided a veritable buffet of possible victims for the creature to chow down upon. But whatever, I guess. I’m not the city of Chimayo’s Safety administrator.


Guess they figured it looked to derpy to pose a real threat.

Anyway, 6 of the last 8 minutes of the movie consist of the swimming idiot diving in and out of the water of the lake looking for the detonator in a swimming pool, while some nameless guy in a boat drives round and round in the water around something that’s supposed to be the monster, but looks more like a skinny turd, all while occasionally cutting to the monster, who just looks confused by the whole ordeal. Much like the audience. Then it’s KABOOM! Hurray! We’re all saved! Let’s thank our corporate overlords! Kiss kiss. Hug hug.

And then the movie cuts away to some time later and shows us the most frightening thing of all: A pile of giant eggs sitting by the water’s edge. Suggesting that the people who made this movie were deluded enough to think that it was good enough that they could curse us all with a sequel.


Not a sequel! NOOOooooo! *drops to knees in despair*

But thankfully Monstroid wasn’t successful enough to inflict its horrors upon the masses more than once, so you only have to put up with the atrocity that is the one film. Which, if you weren’t paying attention, is essentially a giant slog of a mess. It’s slow. It’s boring. The monster looks pitiful. And it’s filled with so much pointless talking you’ll want to shove a pencil in your ear. Really the only thing it’s good for is to marvel at the pathetic monster design and stare in awe and sadness at how desperate and low one can sink as you realize that John Carradine took any role that was offered to him in his later years. So unless you’re interested in seeing all THAT, then I think you can skip ole’ Monstroid. Unless you’re just obsessed with monster movies. But even then, this probably isn’t going to be worth it.

Monstroid is available on a variety of streaming services.

Monstroid is also available on DVD, usually either as part of Elvira’s Movie Macabre, or as a double bill with some other movie. Though it has been released by itself in other, non US territories. But – Surprise! – the US ones are out of print. So if you’re really that desperate to own a copy, good luck with your search.

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