Absolutely Fantastic

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I'm not a Troma fan, in fact I'd go as far as to say that my opinion of the average Troma film is somewhat derogative.This early Troma title is very different from the others and yet succeeds in somehow being worse. Allegedly a horror comedy I can assure you in contains minimal horror and absolutely no comedy, looking at the cover I know that's probably hard to believe.Rana: The Legend Of Shadow Lake otherwise known as Croaked : Frog Monster From Hell is not about a giant frog as the cover art would suggest and is more a Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) type, except despite being made in the 50's the monster looked better then.With very little actually happening, looking terrible when things do and with little to no redeeming features Rana is actually worse than the cover would suggest and that's really quite impressive.Nice to know Troma was awful from day one.The Good:Funny cover artThe Bad:Daft conceptWeak horror, poor comedyDishonest coverOddly boringThings I Learnt From This Movie:An actual giant frog would have been considerably more interestingThis makes the Toxic Avenger look intellectual

I hadn't even heard about "Rana" a.k.a "Croaked: Frog Monster from Hell" until a friend of mine mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, but I instantly wanted to see it for a number of reasons. Number one: Hello! It's a movie about a giant killer frog monster! What more reason do you need? We've seen angry frogs before in the early 70's eco-horror trash fest "Frogs", but they were only normal sized and boring killer frogs! Plus, one of the taglines I encountered stated: "This time, the frog dissects you!" Best cheesy tagline ever! Number two: this is another accomplishment of the notoriously awful director Bill Rebane, who also made the insufferable creature features "Giant Spider Invasion" and "The Capture of Bigfoot". Of course, in my wild enthusiasm, I actually forgot that this thing is probably rare and ultra-obscure for a good reason. Could it possibly be any worse than the other Rebane stinkers, like the aforementioned ones and also "The Demons of Ludlow" and "Monster-a-Go- Go"? Oh yes, sire! This is bad film-making in the purest meaning of the term: long boring stretches of footage that is completely irrelevant, one-dimensional characters, inept dialogs and a total absence of excitement and bloody action. The titular monster is nowhere to be seen until late in the film, but unlike as in "Jaws", you'd wish they never bothered to show it at all once you finally see it. Speaking of "Jaws", there are multiple more heavy influences from that film, like the music and the underwater P.O.V. shots, but I can hardly hold that against Bill Rebane because practically all horror movies around that time imitated the successful gimmicks of Spielberg's summer blockbuster. The plot is narrated by a guy, as some sort of warm fireplace story to his girlfriend in their holiday cabin, and describes a traumatizing encounter of his own childhood. In the story, the narrator is an 8-year- old kid, living with his father near a swamp. After the mysterious disappearance of an anthropologist in the area, another much better looking anthropologist of the female kind comes to investigate. More and more people start to vanish in the swamp, like poachers, but obviously nobody believe the crazy old guy when he says that the legendary frog monster is to be blamed. Rana, as he/she/it is called, looks more like the inbred cousin of Creature from the Black Lagoon than like a frog or any type of amphibian whatsoever. "Rana" is pretty boring during the first hour, but then suddenly quite a lot happens in the span of only a few minutes. One of the characters stumbles over a skull with the eyes still in its sockets, there's a gunfight in slow-motion at the pier and the monster's claws can be admired as he crushes the head of a poacher into a tree. After these three minutes of outrageous action, everything gets boring and tedious again. Couldn't you have spread the a little, Mr. Rebane?

The version I saw was titled "Croaked: Frog Monster From Hell". Well, this movie did have some funny parts in it but not enough to sustain a 90 minute flick. In between each funny part you had to bear through 10 - 15 minutes of just talking, talking, talking. The plot involves an island, a lost treasure, a little kid and the adult he becomes that narrates the movie, a scientist, and some yahoos looking for the treasure. In certain scenes in the pond where Rana lives you clearly hear an oboe playing the Jaws theme. Rana turns out to be more like the creature from the black lagoon than he does a "frog monster". I won't spoil the ending but hopefully you can stay awake for it.

I thought the frog monster would be featured more in the movie. You only see the monster maybe 3 minutes in the entire movie! The times the monster is featured you don't see the monster most of the time. You see through his eyes, which was probably done for budgeting purposes. The movie mostly focuses on a old man who wants no one on the island. Frog Monster had potential but they dropped the ball! The box was very misleading. The Frog Monster attacks a scientist and her niece. Not a group of lovely young ladies as the movie box makes you want to believe. I'm usually a fan of these types of movies but this movie really struck out.