CREATURE FROM THE HILLBILLY LAGOON

(a.k.a. SEEPAGE!)

A pair of backwoods hillbillies - Bubba (Adam Brown) and Barracuda - lark around on the bank of a quiet Southern lake one evening. Bubba chats inanely both to his simple friend and to us, the viewer, as Barracuda struggles with a huge barrel of toxic waste, trying to safely deposit it into the water.

But barracuda loses his grip - much to Bubba's annoyance - and the barrel spills into the lake. Its toxic substances cause Barracuda's arm to swell up in bouncing green blisters, then swim off downstream to cause more commotion.

A few days later, a nerdish group of college-aged researchers (the women are mostly overweight and bespectacled; the men are mostly skinny and bespectacled) arrive at the lake to investigate reports of toxic spillage.

All is uneventful for a while - some mild-mannered in-group bickering aside. But before long the redneck locals display umbrage at this intellectual invasion of their waters. After all, they have fishing to be getting on with - in-between in-breeding, boozing and swearing profusely. The locals are, typically, portrayed as largely being beer-bellied homophobes with the occasional gap in their dentistry.

But the college nerds stand their ground. Which is unfortunate for them, as both parties soon realise they face a much greater problem, in the guise of human-fish hybrid monster that emerges from the tar-coloured lake at regular intervals to eat whatever stands in it's path ...

LAGOON is pure hokum. It wears it's 50's sci-fi-horror B-movie influences on it's sleeve, yet feels more akin in vibe to the likes of the 80s make-over of THE BLOB and - in particular - THE DEADLY SPAWN.

The plot is wafer-thin - monster attacks humans, that's it - with no twists or deviations to rely upon. Instead, it serves merely as a springboard from one pair of breasts, or tasteless joke, or cheesy gore effect, to the next. And if you go into LAGOON expecting nothing more, you may well be incredibly entertained.

Because, although LAGOON suffers from the usual pratfalls of micro-budget filmmaking (lousy acting - aside from Brown as our occasional onscreen narrator Bubba; dumb script; hapless direction) it survives on sheer energy, a knowing sense of the ludicrous and a surprisingly effective use of atmospheric coloured lighting.

The FX are cheesy beyond belief at times, but enjoyably so. Ben Chester's creature outfit is (purposely?) lamentable - but it hardly matters. The film is fast-paced fun with nary a boring moment to speak of.

Switch your brain off, lower your expectation and prepare to be simply entertained. Good, unpretentious fun.

Shock-O-Rama's disc offers the film uncut in an anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer. Colours are vivid and images are sharp. All that bright lighting though - I had to turn my TV's contrast down somewhat to allow my eyes to cope with it!

The English 2.0 audio is equally reliable and consistent.

Nice animated menus do not include a scene-selection menu, but the film can be navigated through with your remote control handset via 13 chapters.

Extras kick off with a decent commentary track from director Richard Griffin (RAVING MANIACS; PRETTY DEAD THINGS), producer Ted Marr and actors William Decoff and Don Foley. It's an enjoyable if at times crowded talk, which is worth a listen for entertainment if not for educational purposes.

3 minutes of fairly throwaway deleted scenes follow.

Finally, we get trailers from SHOCK-O-RAMA, CHAINSAW SALLY, SKIN CRAWL, SINFUL, BACTERIUM, CREATURE FROM THE HILLBILLY LAGOON, CHANTAL, DARK CHAMBER and MILENNIUM CRISIS (co-starring Ted Raimi!)

There's also a link which when pressed gives you a US postal address where you can send away for Alternative Cinema's latest catalogue. But that's hardly an extra ... is it?

The disc is light on bonus features for a Shock-O-Rama release. Ironically, this is one of the more enjoyable titles in their roster. Best viewed with a few mates, and a lot of beers.

Review by Stu Willis