RANA: THE LEGEND OF SHADOW LAKE aka CROAKED FROG MONSTER FROM HELL for some reason.

There are a lot of things that suck in this world but RANA: THE LEGEND OF SHADOW LAKE is not one of them.  Basically RANA is a low budget CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON.  There is a lake.  In this lake is a monster.  According to Indian legend if you throw gold into the lake you will get cool stuff.  But if you pee in the lake instead of getting out and using the bathroom which is the polite thing to do you will be harpooned.  The legend goes something like that.  Maybe that is not entirely true.  I wasn't paying that much attention when they were explaining the legend of Rana.  Either way I figure gold or not if you get anywhere near Rana you will get yourself perished. 

Apparently Rana doesn't like bad actors getting anywhere near it's lake of doom.  The dialogue is terrible.  You can tell that this was probably the writers first script.  The acting?  Nonexistent.  Imagine making a movie in your backyard and having your friends and relatives play the characters.  It's kind of not good.  But despite all of this I can easily say that this movie rocks.  Why, you ask?  Because I have really terrible taste in movies.  Also like ALIEN FACTOR you can see that this film has heart.

The movie is about a monster in a lake that kills people but there is a little more imagination here.  The lake is suppose to be rich with gold but the lake is bottomless.  Rana's hands burns everything they touch.  You can see steam coming from it's hands when it walks around on land.  That insinuates Rana is some kind of demon possibly.  This isn't your typical creature from a lake movie.   RANA does have spooky atmosphere even though the hokey music will take you out of the mood.  The fact that the movie was filmed in the seventies and on location at a real lake adds to it authenticity.  This kind of a scary movie.  There are some jump scares that are pretty effective too.  I think I jumped three times which never happens especially in big budget horror.  Once I even saw it coming and it still made me jump.

I saw this movie back in the day when I was like ten on the USA network.  A friend of mine found it on DVD under the title CROAKED distributed by TROMA.  Why would TROMA change the title.  The original title is much better and doesn't insinuate that this is a film about a giant frog monster.  If you saw this back in the day then you might actually like it.  It's nice for the nostalgia factor.  It is one of those contradicting films that has more negatives than positives yet somehow it is still good.  I wouldn't change a thing.


Jason