Back in 1999, a fun little creature feature comedy called Lake Placid was released on the big screen. It's ever since been one of my favorite guilty pleasures. The movie had it all: giant crocodiles, funny cartoonish secondary characters, a nice little romance, and Betty White spewing out obscenities right and left. I don't think the movie made many waves upon its initial release, but it's subsequently become a minor cult classic.

Apparently, it has enough of a cult following that someone decided it would be a good idea to resurrect Lake Placid as a franchise, and lo and behold we now have the ingeniously titled Lake Placid 2 courtesy of Sony Pictures and the Sci-Fi Channel.

In this low budget mess, John Schneider of Dukes of Hazzard fame plays a sheriff in need of a $400 John Edwards-style haircut who has to take out what one assumes to be the spawn of the giant crocodiles from the first film, who were being cared for by Betty White at the end of the original. These crocs are now all grown up and in a frenzy because, well, it's mating season and the giant crocodiles' eggs need to be protected so that Lake Placid 3 can be made. In fact, the screenplay provides a blond biologist character whose sole purpose, other than to be the unfortunate recipient of the romantic affections of the sheriff, seems to be to make sure that these eggs survive so that a trilogy may be borne. To fill out the film's running time, we get introduced to a lot of crocodile fodder in the form of horny nubile teenagers straight out of a Friday the 13th textbook and carbon copy characters ripped off from the original Lake Placid. They're all fairly annoying, so you'll be glad to see them unconvincingly chomped apart by the CGI crocs. Betty White, unfortunately, isn't around for the fun, so the filmmakers bring in Cloris Leachman to play her sister, and she's probably the best thing this film has going. Leachman actually has a couple funny lines. If you've seen the first film, you'll know how this film turns out, as many scenes are ripped straight from the original. In fact, some shots are staged exactly the same here, especially during the opening minutes of the film.

For as bad as Lake Placid 2 is, it does have a certain b-movie charm to it, and if you're in the mood for cheesy horror, you could do a lot worse than this. Much worse. But at the same time, I don't see most regular movie-goers having fun with this.

I viewed the unrated edition of Lake Placid 2, but apparently a rated edition will be released as well. As a general rule of thumb, I prefer the unrated editions of films, and if you are at all interested in this movie, I'd suggest you'd probably want to see all the unconvincing gore and brief nudity this movie has to offer.

The DVD

Video:

The unrated edition of Lake Placid 2 is presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer. The image is clean with no obvious faults - which, considering the shoddy CGI work, may actually be a problem as the nice image quality only emphasizes how poor the supposed special effects are.

Sound:

Lake Placid 2 has an English 5.1 Dolby Surround audio track that is clear and strong - good enough to tell when lines were dubbed in by the actors. There are no other audio tracks on the disc, but subtitles are provided in English, Spanish, and French.

Extras:

Somewhat amazingly, there were several "special features" produced for this DVD, but they're all tongue-in-cheek in tone. Up first is a short called "Sex, Guns, and Croc-n-Roll" that purports to cover the making of this turkey and gives some behind the scenes footage to the tune of a generic rock soundtrack. "Sex, Guns, and Croc-n-Roll" runs about 4 minutes.

Next comes "Surviving a Crocodile Attack." Scenes of Lake Placid 2 are intercut with title cards giving survival tips for crocodile encounters. This also runs about 4 minutes.

Finally, there's an option to watch "LAKE PLACID 2: The 'Gnawed Up' Version". Talk about an excessively silly feature: This is the entire movie speeded up as if you had the fast-fast forward on, pausing to normal speed for some of the gore and nudity scenes. On second thought, maybe this isn't a silly feature, you could just watch this feature, which runs approximately 10 minutes, get everything there is to get out of this so-called movie and save yourself an hour of your life. Just think what good could come out of that hour!

Final Thoughts:

Lake Placid was a fun little creature feature romp. This so-called sequel is lacking compared to the memorable original as it rehashes its plot and characters. However, if you are in the mood for a made-for-the-Sci-Fi-Channel cheapie, you could certainly do a lot worse. You've been warned, though.

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