Two young men working for Professor Pratt (Stuart Lancaster) are on Loch Ness looking for Nessie. They see her head come out of the water and then go back under so they motor to where she was seen. Donning diving outfits they explore under the water. They find a sunken German WWII bomber complete with skeletonized crew. They also find a giant egg. Nessie attacks killing one of the men. The other makes it to shore with his prize. That night Nessie comes on shore looking for her egg. She kills the other diver but her egg is safely aboard Pratt’s VW bus along with Pratt. Since Nessie cannot get to her egg she goes back into the water to wait.
Professor George Sanderson (Sandy Kenyon) is working with a young American scientist, Spencer Dean (Barry Buchanan), trying to prove that Nessie exists. Spencer has a top of the line sonar system and plans on scouring the loch for any sign of the monster. They visit Jack Stuart (Doc Livingston) for advice on where to start. Jack was the first person to take a picture of the beast forty years ago. Jack’s granddaughter Kathleen (Miki McKenzie) is also on hand to meet the young and handsome Spencer.
Spencer ends up taking Kathleen with him while he is exploring the loch. When they return to shore empty handed it is dark and Kathleen heads for home. On the way she runs into the diabolical Pratt who holds her hostage so she can’t warn his rival Sanderson that he is in the area and that he has the egg.
In the meantime Jack and Sanderson are looking for Spencer and Kathleen but the military has, for some reason, cordoned off the area. Nessie tracks down Pratt and kills him. Kathleen takes Pratt’s van and the egg and heads back home. The military, Sanderson, Spencer, and Jack all end up in a showdown with Nessie.
“The Loch Ness Horror” was released in 1982 and was directed by Larry Buchanan. What more do I need to say? If you’ve ever seen a Larry Buchanan movie, you know what I’m talking about. Buchanan has a way of taking an interesting subject and making it totally blah. He manages to find the worst actors, the lamest scripts and directs them as woodenly as possible. He can take a bad movie, and make it worse.
A lot of that is here, as well as an intricate weaving of plots and sub-plots that get to the point where Nessie is only a piece of the story. Too bad, I wanted to see a lot more monster on people action, but Buchanan isn’t real good at that either. Buchanan’s films are real low budget so there isn’t much room for special effects. The monster was silly looking, but that was OK. I’m use to that. What the film didn’t have is much in the way of monster mayhem. It chomped down on Professor Pratt but that’s it. All the other monster killings were either off screen or just quick cuts and perhaps some blood. If you have a monster that supposedly eats people then I want to see it either chomping or swallowing.
The acting is atrocious. Buchanan’s son plays the lead. He sucked. The monster puppet did a better job acting. Sandy Kenyon who played Sanderson is probably the only one who decent as far as acting. Everyone else was basically horrible.
I do have to say that as far as Larry Buchanan films go this one was more entertaining than most. Even though all you saw of Nessie was her head and neck she was a little on the cute side. I guess some monster is better than no monster at all. If you were to compare this movie to either “The Loch Ness Terror” 2008 or “The Crater Lake Monster” 1977, this one would come in fourth but if you like really bad “B” movies this one is not the worst.
I did learn that Scotland looks an awful lot like Lake Tahoe.