Posts tagged troma

By Dan Kinem



If you couldn’t tell by the bad ass cover, Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake is about a crazy half-frog/half-human monster and his regular-sized frog minions fiercely and furiously protecting a mountain of gold at the bottom of a lake. Sadly, few plot outlines have promised so much, yet delivered so little.



The movie focuses more on the boring lives of the characters rather than showing any frog action. Kelly, our male lead, is telling his girlfriend all about when he was 11-years-old and found a strange bone fragment, a fragment that could obviously only belong to some bizarre half-human/half-frog-like creature. Kelly was the king as a kid, and just like myself, he also drinks nonstop bottled Coke and stashes beef jerky chunks in the front of his overalls. But, unlike myself, his only friends are his pet skunks and a crazy hillbilly hermit named Charlie, who has the ability to talk to goats.



Charlie is the only one who believes Kelly when he thinks something fishy is going on in the lake, but little does Kelly know, Charlie is hiding a deep dark secret. Occasionally, the frog-man will pop out and kill, but it’s always so quick you can’t tell what the hell is going on. I kept hoping you would get some crazy long-frog-tongue carnage, but instead, the monster chooses to kill with a spear. The only time you get any evidence that there’s even a monster doing the killing is when you see a green flipper under the murky water.

The movie focuses most of its energy on the bland story of Hermit vs. The Loggers. Charlie the Hermit will run around shooting at these loggers to try to get them to leave the woods, but all it does is piss them off. Around this point is where I started pulling a Tim (aka struggling to stay awake at 6 p.m.), but the possibility of maybe getting to see the monster kept my eyes open. Instead of the monster, all I got was real frogs, who would come out of the water to nibble and stare at people.



Finally, the legend of Shadow Lake is revealed: Years ago, a guy found a gold pebble and threw it into the lake. The water began to bubble and boil and Rana appeared at the surface and was super pissed off. He demanded more gold, so in order to appease the monster, the entire town threw all of its gold to the bottom of the lake. Now the monster lives every day of its life fearing someone will take the gold, while the decedents of the townsfolk (who call themselves “frog people”) give it more gold and feed it. Charlie is the last of these frog people left and continues to feed it, which all reminded me of that terrible movie, Lake Placid.

It does start to get good at the end, though, after one of the loggers shoots Charlie. Rana gets fucking ticked off and comes jetting out of the water and starts wrecking people. He blows through Kelly and his family’s front door, steals some chick, blows the entire house up, pounds some dude’s head into a tree, and disappears. Fast forward to the present day and Kelly has the genius idea to go looking for Rana’s gold. Big mistake. Of course, Rana is still alive and kicking and the second Kelly and his girlfriend find the gold, he comes chasing after them. Credits. So, after all of that, it leaves me asking the question: Why does a frog need gold?



Few movies have had so much potential, yet failed on every level. Rana was directed by one of the masters of the cheesy horror movie, Bill Rebane (Capture of Big Foot, The Giant Spider Invasion), but features too many boring side-plots to become so-bad-it’s-good. It does have some laugh-out-loud moments, however, like the use of “Swan Lake” during a shoot out near a lake. Talk about on the nose. And, of course, the plot itself, which is the one thing that makes me want to still recommend this boring, mess of a movie. It’s godawful, but I would still say it’s worth owning and watching at least once just to say you’ve seen a movie about a frog who loves gold.



The movie has had a bunch of different releases, most notably this big box release through Active Home Video and a clamshell through the Canadian distributor, Astral Video. The movie rights were later bought by Troma (no surprise) and the title was brilliantly changed to, Croaked: Frog Monster from Hell for a bare-bones DVD release. Stick with any of the VHS.

Someone also uploaded the whole movie to YouTube here.

(Source: vhshitfest.com)

By Dan Kinem



This is what’s so great about video. Who the hell wants to read a magazine when you can watch it? I, for one, love reading magazines, but I’m looking out for the Dabeedos out there (who physically can’t read). This was, plain and simple, a genius idea. It’s like taking Gorezone magazine and bringing it to life, and I can think of no better company than Gorgon Video/MPI to do so. If only it had gone on passed this tape…



Michael Berryman, of Hills Have Eyes fame, hosts this video smorgasbord that features everything from interviews, to short cartoons, to a performance by Gwar and their slaves. Starting it off right, Wes Craven graces us mere mortals with his presence. He comes across as very honest in this clip, too. He shares his opinions on the MPAA and how they have given all of his movies (except Serpent and the Rainbow) an X-rating upon first viewing and also talks about how his TV movie, Chiller, was screwed over at the last second and no one watched it. The interview takes place on the set of Shocker and shows some cool behind the scenes footage of him directing (which involves him remaining silent while other people do the work). You honestly can’t go wrong with a Wes Craven interview in the 80s, he was complete gold back then.

Next, KNB Efx is interviewed and they also talk about the MPAA and how most of their work doesn’t even end up on the screen. They even threaten the MPAA by saying they should be forced to watch Freddy’s Nightmares in hell, which is hilarious for so many reasons. KNB show off some of the effects currently being worked on, which is interesting to see. I think I even spied a Freddy Krueger effect (where Freddy morphs into someone else’s face), but they said it was “top secret.”

After that you get the fantastic Linnea Quigley talking about her work in film. If you claim to like horror movies and don’t like Linnea, get the fuck out. She is the ultimate scream queen and looks gorgeous in this video (and every video for that matter!). Her primary focus is on her Horror Workout tape and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. I could listen to her talk for days and she does a good job of making you love her, even if she does ramble on about moving to a farm to hoard tons of dogs or some bullshit.



Next was my main draw to this tape, which is the interview with Lloyd Kaufman and the look at past Troma films. Imagine my surprise when Lloyd shows up and has a beard! That was just the cherry on top of an already hilarious and interesting segment. I love any interviews he does, but for some reason, in this one he seemed to be talking even faster than his 1,000 words per minute norm. No matter what I think about the majority of Troma’s output (it sucks), you can’t help but love the story behind their studio and the way they run things. It was sad to see that, at this point, they had 30 full-time employees and now they have less than half that.



There’s a section that translates from magazines very well, and that’s the review. Rick Sullivan, of Gore Gazette magazine, hosts Rick’s Reviews, where he talks about the movies: Cameron’s Closet, Bad Taste, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and Vicious. He rates movies out of four “skulls,” which is really amusing cheese. He says, “From now on you can see me in Gorgon Video.” Rick Sullivan was never seen or heard from again. RIP 1955-1989.

Gwar has a musical performance, as do the Gwar slaves, who honestly steal the show. They are hilarious and seem so fucked up on drugs they can barely think. One of them has the hilarious quote, “We have to watch them enjoy all this necrophobic butt sex and they won’t even let us have any!” I’ve never been huge on the band itself, but their stage performance must be seen. As Michael Berryman puts it, “It makes Alice Cooper look like Sesame Street!”



Throughout the entire video Michael Berryman comes across as a crazy mixture of Hulk Hogan and Freddy Krueger. He is constantly making weird faces and delivers each line with such exaggerated emotion it’s priceless. He drops corny jokes like, “One of my favorites was Attack of the Giant Leeches. Man, it’s so good it just sticks to ya. Sticks to ya.” He’s just a G and that’s all there is to it.



Gorgon Video has always been a fan favorite among horror connoisseurs. Few other companies specialized in horror/gore as well as they did. Their releases were always top notch and there’s a reason Gorgon was the company that released 2009’s House of the Devil… because they’re the best! This video magazine is just further proof that they actually cared about their releases and wanted to please and honor horror fans. The tape nowadays is very rare and commands a decent amount of cash online, but if you can find one for a solid price, do it. There actually was a second Gorgon Video Magazine, but sadly it was never officially released. There are screener copies, though, which I would kill for (if you have a VHS copy, bootleg or not, please let me know). You can find bootlegs of both of these in the horror circuit and online for download. I watched it (and uploaded it to YouTube below, along with the first one), and, while still entertaining, it’s too long and the guests weren’t as interesting this time around. There’s even more cheese to be found, though, especially with the Gore-Met Chef. I wish this had gone on every two months like they wanted, but I am just glad at least two of them were filmed and exist for our viewing pleasure.

Thanks to Devin Connors for the tape.

(Source: vhshitfest.com)