[Nerdspresso] Lake Placid: A Croc Pot of Crap Movie Magic

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By Jeff Stanford, Special to Southpoint Access

Sometimes you just want to see a foul-mouthed Betty White feed a cow to a 30-foot crocodile. Lake Placid made an odd entry into cinemas back in 1999. Was it a horror movie? A comedy? A Jaws rip-off featuring a giant crocodile terrorizing the denizens of Maine?

To be honest, it was a mediocre mishmash of all three, but time has been good to this flick. Now streaming on Tubi, Lake Placid is a prime example of what happens when smart people make a dumb movie.

Written by Ally McBeal creator (and Michelle Pfeiffer’s hubby) David E. Kelley and directed by B-movie maestro Steve Miner, Lake Placid doesn’t take itself too seriously which is its biggest strength and its greatest weakness. Too silly to be scary and too intense to be a comedy, this monster movie clumsily navigates a thin line between cheesy and terrible. The filmmakers may not have known what kind of movie they were making, but the cast was totally in the zone.