Bog is a 1978 American horror movie directed by Don Keeslar from a screenplay by Carl Kitt. The stars are: Gloria DeHaven, Aldo Ray, Marshall Thompson (First Man into Space, It! The Terror from Beyond Space) and Leo Gordon (Attack of the Giant Leeches).
The film was around Harshaw, Wisconsin. It was given a limited release theatrically in the United States by Marshall Films in 1983 and was subsequently released on VHS by Prism Entertainment Corporation.
When a local is fishing with dynamite in Bog Lake, something larger pops to the surface: a green bug-eyed monster awakened from a long sleep, which promptly begins killing fishermen who stumble across its lair. When biologist Ginny Glenn (Gloria DeHaven) discovers the creature’s evolutionary nature, the local sheriff decides to use various methods to destroy the beast.
‘Bill Rebane better watch his back. Despite the endless conversations and padding, Bog is a PG rated, Midwestern delight. Technical competence hits the dirt (butter knife edits, awful compositions) and things drag towards the end, but that’s all right. The regional silliness, library music pilfering, and kaput budget drop the film somewhere between a Monster Kid Home Movies outtake and the earlierNight Fright. Kill scenes are ridiculously dramatic. The monster suit fails on all levels. Frequent bursts of hilarity courtesy Mr. Ray and Chuck detach all strings; even if you fall asleep, you’ll feel pretty good about it.’ Bleeding Skull!
‘There’s no getting around the fact that Bog is a silly, ineptly made film, and at times it’s an awfully tedious one, too. But because it’s also one of those movies in which virtually everything seems subtly out of whack in ways that ordinary forms of badness can’t explain, I find myself positively disposed toward it nonetheless. The monster suit, of course, is terrible— really, abysmally fucking terrible— but Keeslar does seem to have at least some idea how to cover for such shortcomings. We never do get a long, close, unobstructed look at the Bog Lake Monster under decent lighting conditions, and a lot of movies have wrung substantial dividends from a similar coyness regarding their creatures. Keeslar gets the balance off, though. Instead of tantalisingly little, he shows us irritatingly little of the monster for the first half of the film, then goes too far in the opposite direction later on.’ 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting
We are grateful to Basement of Ghoulish Decadence and Critical Condition for some images.
