MONSTROID – IT CAME FROM THE LAKE (1980)
aka Monster, The Toxic Monster
Article 3891 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-31-2012
Posting Date: 4-9-2012
Directed by Kenneth Hartford and Herbert L. Strock
Featuring James Mitchum, John Carradine, Philip Carey
Country: USA
What it is: Bottom-of-the-fish-barrel monster movie

Pollution from a cement plant in Colombia creates a giant monster that lives in the lake.

Twice within the first five minutes of this movie, you are told that this is based on a true story. I’m guessing the true part involves there being a cement plant in Colombia; nothing else in the movie seems attached to anything resembling reality as I know it. Just to illustrate, here’s a memorable little sample of dialogue. Person A: “There’s something in the trees!” Person B: “Maybe it’s a goat!” Now I don’t pretend to be an expert on the indigenous animal life of Colombia, but I’ve never heard of the Colombian Tree Goat. But then, I’ve never heard of sharks that chew up people and then spit them out on land, so the speculation that the attacks on the bodies found on land could be shark victims also rings false. And then there’s the title. The suffix “-oid” means that it resembles a certain object, but really isn’t, so the title means that it looks, walks and smells like a monster, but isn’t one. But if it isn’t a monster, what is it? I could go on speculating, but I think I’ll just settle on the fact that the script was written with very little thought. Ultimately, this is a cheaply done, unfocused and uninvolving monster movie with little to recommend it, unless you really have to hear some silly snatches of dialogue.