In monster movie Beyond Loch Ness, the legendary Loch Ness Monster somehow manages to travel all the way from Scotland to Canada to wreak bloody havoc on a small lakeside town. Scotland’s most famous cryptid is usually interpreted as a pretty benevolent creature in TV and film. Take, for example, the shy and retiring Nessie that saved Ted Danson’s life in 1996 family film Loch Ness or – more recently – the cutesy creature who appeared in Disney’s whimsical, Billy Connolly-narrated animated short The Ballad Of Nessie.
Nessie isn’t always nice, though. In the 1975 Doctor Who serial Terror Of The Zygons the creature is re-imagined as a cyborg alien monster while in self-proclaimed schlockmeister Larry Buchanan’s 1982 B-movie The Loch Ness Horror, Nessie acts more like a freshwater version of the shark from Jaws. Another addition to the evil Nessie subgenre is Canadian made-for-TV horror movie Beyond Loch Ness – a Syfy original directed by Paul Ziller, the same director behind such titles as Ghost Storm and Yeti: Curse Of The Snow Demon.
Alternatively known as Loch Ness Terror, Beyond Loch Ness stars Brian Krause of Charmed fame as James Murphy – a cryptozoologist who witnessed the Loch Ness Monster eat his father some 30 years earlier in Scotland. In the present day, a suspicious sighting brings James and his cache of military-grade guns to a small community on the Canadian shores of Lake Superior. Soon after, Nessie – who, in this film, has legs so can stalk her prey on land – starts gobbling up locals left, right and center.
As James investigates he enlists the help of local bait shop owner Josh (Niall Matter, 90210), whose uncle was one of Nessie’s victims and explains she is one of the few plesiosaurs that survived from the prehistoric age. As if having a people-eating dinosaur on your doorstep wasn’t bad enough, James and Josh soon discover Nessie has been breeding a bunch of baby Loch Ness dinosaurs that also enjoy dining on humans. According to James, it’s typical for these creatures to travel to landlocked lakes when they spawn, although Beyond Loch Ness doesn’t spend too much time explaining how a beast like Nessie did so undetected.
To be honest, Beyond Loch Ness isn’t a great movie; the CGI dinosaur Nessies are bad and the science is questionable at best. But for monster movie fans and those who find Syfy’s signature low-budget horror efforts - see Mansquito, Piranhaconda or any of the Sharknado films - good fun, there are worse ways to spend an hour and a half.
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