I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

"Bog" is quite similar to, and instantly reminded me of "Croaked: Frog Monster from Hell". Both movies were filmed in the rural Wisconsin regions during the mid-70's ("Bog" didn't get released until the early 1980's) and they are both … well … abominable! That is to say, they're bad but somehow irresistibly charming, cheesy and entertaining as the same time. And, for some strange coincidental reason, these movies also just happen to have the two greatest taglines ever in the horror film industry! For "Croaked" the tagline was: "This time the frog dissects you" and the DVD-cover of "Bog" proclaims the tagline: "Who's the bait now?" That's good stuff. The film neatly follows the familiar monster-movie routine. Some type of ancient creature that has been lying dormant on the bottom of a desolate lake gets awakened in a banal fashion (local fishermen using dynamite instead of regular bait) and begins to devour everyone in the area. This particular beastie entirely drains the blood out of his victims' bodies and leaves the complete lake town community baffled and scared. The awesome Aldo Ray stars as the heroic and quite fearless local sheriff who can't prevent the bodies in his town from piling up and "Bog" also stars two other veterans in the roles of forensic scientists; namely Gloria DeHaven ("Summer Stock" and Marshall Thompson ("It! The Terror from beyond Space"). They can't seem to figure out what kind of dangerous species they're dealing with, but perhaps that's because they're too busy falling in love. The scenes in which senior citizens Adriana and Dr. Wednesday interrupt their investigation of the organic tissue under their microscopes in order to declare their love and affection for each other are unintentionally funny, misfit and rather awkward. It takes more than a full hour before we get a proper impression of the monster. Before that, we just hear it growl and have to derive from the petrified expression of its victims' faces that it must be one hideous beast. Still, it's plain obvious that "Bog" is an incredibly low-budgeted and amateurish horror romp, so likewise for the monster design. The creature actually even looks more imbecilic and less scary than the monsters in those zero-budgeted 1950's movies, like "Attack of the Giant Leeches", "The Beast from Haunted Cave" and "The Giant Gila Monster". The thing has enormous eyes and his arms look like an over-sized crab. According to the trivia section, the guy in the suit was 6ft7 and weighed nearly 250pds. One final remark I just have to make: I seriously wonder how many gallons of booze were consumed during the production of "Bog". The first victims, two fishermen and their wives, drink beers non-stop. Even during their police interrogations! And also every dialog with good-old Sheriff Aldo Ray ends with the words "I could sure use a drink right now…".

If you can not make your suit scary and it looks fake and crappy do not even bother shooting the film to begin with as then you will save yourself the heartache of having to read horrible reviews of your movie and you will have spared the viewers who sat through the movie the pain and agony of having to sit through it. Though when looking at the monster in this flick it sort of looks like the monster that was originally supposed to be in the movie "Predator" before they thought it looked to weak and they made the smart move and switched it with what is now a well known alien monster of the cinema. This movie has what it says, a bog with a monster that kills. Nothing to graphic which is another problem. You are making a b-grade horror movie, why make it so weak? The audience you should be trying to attract is horror movie lovers and in them you should target the one's that like lots of gore! So bring in the buckets of blood and chicken and cow livers for the kills as this audience if they get their gore will overlook a weak looking monster. What we get though is a rather weak monster killing, a rather strange plot twist, a rather humorous way to lure the monster out of hiding, and an ending that is typical with monster horror movies.

I first discovered this movie back in college in 1985. A bunch of friends and I were into bad movies. Well, BOG buries all the others. Yes, I know that Plan 9 from Outer Space is generally considered to be the worst, but believe me folks, BOG is worse. Here is why. Ed Wood didn't know any better. He really thought he was making good movies. He was using absolutely no- name actors (with the possible exception of Bela Lugosi) and was simply oblivious to how awful his films were. The folks that made BOG should have known better! My God, this movie is awful. There is no indication that the film makers are trying to make a comedy here, and nearly every frame of the film begs the question of why someone along the way didn't say "Wait a minute folks...we really don't want to continue with this."The acting is abysmal, the editing is ridiculous. An earlier reviewer mention the "shoddy use of freeze frame." No, this is just bad editing where the editor freezes the scene in preparation for the next edit. The problem here is that the splicing of the scenes was so poorly done that there is a longer than necessary pause before the next edit. Bad, just bad. BOG also includes the absolute worst double-take in the history of film. When the Dr. (Marshall Thompson) is informed about the creature, he does an absurdly exaggerated head- rotating, eye-blinking double-take, that doesn't even rise to the believability of a Looney Tunes short.Now having said all that, I can't encourage viewers enough to check out BOG. It has brought me hours of enjoyment and laughs, and of you are a bad film buff like me, BOG is a definite MUST-SEE!

There must be many different ways to look at BOG. I, however, can't find any of them. One has to wonder why the creators of this cinematic gem never chose to insert a "The" before the title, why an actress obviously plays two parts, or why the titular "bog" in question is actually a lake. Possibly the only defining moments in this film can be seen during the preview. Pay special attention to the cop who, completely off-cue, screams out "Look, look! Hey, look over there! Look!" Now there's some classic dialogue.