Platypuschow 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

Julian R. White Okay, so the cover art and poster are complete lies for this film. It's a classic swamp thing type movie. From the art you would think it's a movie about a giant Frog right? No, it's just some green guy walking around making Frog noises. I found it funny the monsters name is supposedly "Rana", which is the name given to the creature by Native American tribes. The word "Rana" is simply the Spanish word for Frog. How very creative (not!). I was disappointed, this was one of the worst, most boring creature features I think I've ever seen. It just dragged its feet for way too long, the acting was horrendous and the monster design could not have been more basic.

Coventry 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?

dharmabum Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake is one of the most truly horrible visions ever put on film. The excruciating acting and horribly conceived script take it to a rare level of high comedy.The plot involves a kid who finds a frog bone. The bone turns out to be from some kind of vague fossil frog or something, so a paleontologist shows up to look around this isolated island. Meanwhile, a bunch of true wizards are trying to swim to the bottom of Shadow Lake to find a buried treasure. There's a fair bit of bad early 70's music, and obscure scenes of the kid fishing and playing with deer. Jerry Gregoris, the film's producer, plays crazy Charlie, who tells the kid of a strange creature who lives in the lake, "half man... half frog... half, I dunno WHAT! They called him Rana...". People get killed by this guy running around in the Creature from the Black Lagoon's suit after someone dumped a gloppy bucket of green paint on it. Eventually Rana gets what's coming to him and the horrible secret at the bottom of Shadow Lake is revealed.Scenes such as the kid, Kelly, feeding baby deer, fishing and trying to be cool in front of the paleontologist's beautiful (ha!) assistant are ugly. Even uglier is the adult Kelly narrating the tale while he makes out with his somewhat sleazy girlfriend. Watch for the scene when crazy Charlie's goat takes a tumble in the background.This film is for the truly sadistic. If you somehow manage to find a copy, view at your own risk.