25 Years of Lake Placid: The Killer Croc Franchise That Won’t Die By I have a soft spot for Steve Miner’s 1999 giant crocodile caper . Much like its monster movie rivals of that year, and Deep Blue Sea, it’s endearingly cheesy at times, positively reeks of the 90s, and just about manages to balance CG and practical effects effectively. Miner headed back to a lake once more, having helmed Friday the 13th, Part 2 and 3.
This time, a different kind of hulking killer mutant emerged from the water. When a man gets eaten alive by a mystery creature, the local Game Warden and a paleontologist from New York team up to investigate what exactly made a snack of a human being. Yep, it’s a big croc with a big appetite.
The monstrous shenanigans are bolstered by comedy-inflected characters, including a foul-mouthed performance that goes a long way to explaining her resurgence in popularity going forward. 90s Everyman Bill Pullman does the job, with Oliver Platt and Brendan Gleeson providing sass and sarcasm (and a questionable accent in Gleeson’s case). While it is a fun creature feature at the height of that particular renaissance for them, it is far less beloved than those I mentioned earlier.
Yet somehow, the Big Croc series has risen from the murky depths far more often than either of those franchises in the years since. Not that this is a good thing. The follow-ups to Lake Placid have been largely stapled to the name and concept, with little care given to the appeal of the o.