Lake Placid is a 1999 horror-comedy film released by 20th Century Fox and directed by Steve Miner. Starring Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, Brendan Gleeson, Oliver Platt, and Betty White. This is a fun creature-feature flick involving a GIANT killer crocodile that migrates and finds his way into a lake that surrounds a sleepy and secluded town in Maine. It had been a minute since I’ve got around to exploring some horror on this blog and I wanted to stay in the summer horror vein and landed upon this one. After a grisly and mysterious incident involving a scuba diving fish and game warden, the local game warden along with the town’s sheriff and a very stuck up and prissy visiting paleontologist look for clues in and around the lake. After reading some reviews online and hearing what some people had to say about this movie, I’ve came to the conclusion that it is way more polarizing and opinionated than I ever figured it to be. This is just a fun summer creature feature flick that doesn’t take itself TOO seriously and doesn’t ask you to either. Horror fans though, I love them but we’re all a funny breed. You see some people in the horror community sometimes die on a hill defending an awful movie, and other times you have people tearing apart certain horror films with no real reason behind it. I’m not saying this movie is a ‘Dances with Wolves’ or a ‘Titanic’ or some shit, but it’s not trying to be! It’s a silly creature feature with a giant crocodile and some recognizable faces and it’s quite a bit of fun!
Bill Pullman, who played the game warden here, is one of those kinds of actors that I don’t really recognize the name but the second I see him in something I know who he is. He was one of those guys that seemed to tear it up throughout the 90s and then just slowly fell more and more into the background and kind of disappeared. Good for him though, make that money and don’t spend too much time in Hollywood, who can blame ya? Bridget Fonda is the same way; she played the whiny paleontologist here. She tore it up in the 90s and completely fell out of the movie scene in the 2000s to focus on raising a family with legendary film composer, Danny Elfman. Just kind of ironic that they played basically the 2 leads in this film and almost shortly after this you started seeing them in things less and less. Not blaming Lake Placid here either, I highly doubt that this movie would garner enough negative backlash to force them out of working in Hollywood, but it is sort of ironic. Brendan Gleeson killed it with what he was given per usual, kind of weird seeing him playing a rural, small town, American cop knowing that he’s an Irishman with a pretty thick accent, but hey he made it work. Wasn’t the biggest fan of the “haha, he’s a fat guy” humor he was given throughout the film, but eh whatever. I think Oliver Platt and Betty White were the stand outs for me in this movie though, Platt came in about halfway through and Betty was only seen every now and then throughout, but they had some of the most comedic and on point pieces of dialogue in the film. Platt was some sort of rogue crocodile chaser named Hector who studied and went to confront various large crocs and croc infested waters, he also said a bunch of off kilter and at times downright offensive comments randomly to people throughout the movie. He caught me off guard a couple times and killed me with his comments, but he also taught me some random tidbits of crocodile history and anatomy throughout so kudos.
Betty White was the local crazy old lady (when wasn’t she?) who lived closer to the lake than any of the town’s residents and had formed some sort of bond with the crocodile because she fed him (even her own livestock). I think this may have been the beginning of Betty White’s cussing era, where people thought it was so funny to hear a sweet old lady curse, because she used profanity so much in this movie to a hilarious effect. Betty White was a national treasure dude. She was America’s grandma for like 30 freaking years no joke, so when I see her pop up randomly in things I’m watching, I get a little hype for it. The crocodile looked pretty dang good and realistic in this movie most the time too which was awesome considering this was the time they started using a lot of CGI in films and they hadn’t worked out all of the kinks yet, so when you go look at some CGI heavy movies from the 90s from a modern lens they don’t always hold up (i.e. Alien 3). They used practical effects as much as they could with the croc in this movie though, he was a giant molded puppet and had a team of puppeteers controlling his movements, and if you know me or have ever read my blog in the past, then you probably already know I’m quite a fan of practical effects artists. One gripe some could make, but it didn’t really bother me, was the lack of croc in the film. He wasn’t seen on screen a whole, whole lot but I think that is to be expected. With movies like this you generally save the reveal of the creature for the right moments to build up the tension and that’s what they did here to pretty good effect. When you did see the crocodile, you knew he was there to cause chaos, and the brutality and kills were made all the more shocking and cool because you didn’t see it too much throughout the movie. You can easily lessen the tension and make your monster look less frightening in these kinds of movies by making it too visible too often and I think people sometimes forget that when it comes to creature features.
All in all, I think this is worth the watch if you’re looking for a horror movie in the summer and you’re willing to turn your brain off and just watch and have fun. This isn’t a movie to be analyzed or overly dissected honestly. Think Jaws but with a massive crocodile instead of a massive shark, a lake instead of the ocean, and more intentional humorous dialogue and moments. You get humor, you get lessons over crocodiles, and you get some gore and frightening moments, what more do you want here? I’m not saying it’s an award winner or a needle mover within the horror genre, but I am saying it was a damn good time. I enjoyed myself and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Check it out now on Shudder or AMC+ with a subscription or rent it for cheap off Prime if you’re interested!
