While tagging beavers for the Maine game commission in Black Lake, two men are attacked by something. One of the men, the scuba diver, gets bitten in half. The other man, who happens to be the local sheriff, survives. He manages to pull the top half of the scuba diver into the boat. The local coroner finds a large tooth in the corpse and calls the New York Museum of Natural History. They send Kelly (Bridget Fonda), a researcher who’s never worked in the field before.
Kelly and a rather odd assortment of law enforcement and game commission officers set out to explore the lake and its new guest. The team includes Jack Wells (Bill Pullman), a game commission warden; Hank Keough (Brandon Gleeson), the sheriff who survived the first attack; and Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt), a paleontologist who think crocodiles may be gods. Other assorted people who may or may not be potential croc bait also tag along for the trip.
When Jaws-like imagery is used on the box art to promote a movie about an abnormally large predatory animal, one would hope that that movie doesn’t take itself too seriously. In its initial publicity trailers, Lake Placid was promoted as a straight-up horror film about a large crocodile that feeds on people. In actuality — and to my relief — writer David E. Kelley (from TV’s Ally McBeal) knew the film’s premise is preposterous and treats it with an almost campy sense of humor, while delivering a few scares to keep the audience off balance.
If viewed from the beginning as a dopey exercise in horror, Lake Placid is an enjoyable, if short, comedy/horror film. The dialogue between the main characters is funny, but with a dry sense of humor that doesn’t hit you over the head. In fact, it’s when the movie tries to be funny — like giving “Golden Girl” Betty White a role that requires her to spout obscenities — that it misses the mark. If you’re expecting something that will scare the daylights out of you and keep you from swimming in freshwater lakes for years, you’ll be extremely disappointed.
3.5 out of 5.0 stars
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