The Crater Lake Monster is the titular main antagonist of the 1977 B-horror-monster film of the same name. It is a plesiosaur that survived the Cretaceous mass extinction where its egg was dormant at the bottom of Crater Lake, California, hatching when a meteorite heated the water. It terrorized the habitats of the nearby town, eating off the people who approached the lake.
Biography[]
In a cave near Crater Lake, California, Dr. Richard Calkins and his colleagues Dan Turner and Susan Patterson discover ancient cave drawings depicting people fighting off a creature resembling a plesiosaur. Suddenly, a meteorite crashes into the lake, destroying the cave system and the drawings while the three are barely able to escape. Sheriff Steve Hanson sees the collision and radios the incident before returning to his patrol.
Months later, when Turner and Patterson return to the lake to examine the meteorite, a birdwatcher is attacked by a creature that emerges from the shore. Later, Jack Fuller, a senator who rents a boat from Arnie Chabot and Mitch Kowalski, is pushed over the canoe by the monster. When Mitch and Arnie retrieve the boat from the middle of the lake, Fuller is gone and all that remains is stains of blood. They take it to Hanson, who takes the case with the canoe as evidence along with numerous dead animals around the shore of Crater Lake. A second boat is then rented by performer Ross Conway and his wife Carla as a backup way to town after their car breaks down. The monster pursues their boat to the shore, where Ross empties a can of gasoline and sets the boat ablaze to fend it off. During an argument between Arnie and Mitch, they discover the severed head of Fuller, which is taken by the Sheriff, warning them to stay away from the lake.
The next day, the Sheriff chases after a man convicted of armed robbery in the nearest town, escalating in a shootout that kills the clerk and a customer at the local diner. While chasing the suspect off a cliff near the shore of the lake, as Hanson takes shelter behind a tree to reload his gun after shooting the suspect in the knee, the monster snatches the man and drags him underwater. Hanson does not hear the attack happen, only confirming the man's death based on a bloodstain on a nearby rock. Later, he is notified by the autopsy of Fuller's head about a possible large animal existing in the lake as the culprit based on the teeth marks. He decides to return the next day to the spot where the man went missing during a low-tide, noticing large footprints. The monster appears and takes little damage from the Sheriff's pistol, only barely escaping in his car from the feral creature. He then encounters the three scientists, explaining how the meteor heated up the lake enough for an egg to hatch at the bottom. The Sheriff then explains his plan to kill the creature before more lives are put at risk.
During a town meeting in the diner, as the Sheriff discusses his plan on how to stop the monster, Ferguson runs in injured, showing that the monster had followed him on to land. They run outside to see the monster smashing its way through a barricade of hay and farming vehicles towards the cavern. As the Sheriff started up a bulldozer, Arnie stops him at gunpoint, explaining why the monster should live. The Sheriff convinces him that nothing will stop the monster without killing it, and Arnie hops in the back. As the monster approached them, Arnie panics and jumps off, only to be caught in the monster's jaws. The Sheriff uses the bulldozer to slam into the side of the monster's neck continuously until it succumbs to its deep wound.
Trivia[]
- The people of the town, including the paleontologists, refer the monster to a dinosaur, even though plesiosaurs are not dinosaurs.
- Crater Lake was formed from the eruption of Mount Mazama less than 8,000 years ago. It would be scientifically impossible for a 65-million-year old plesiosaur egg to be preserved in perfect condition on the lake floor.
- Additionally, it should be noted that plesiosaurs gave live birth rather than laying eggs.