The B-Movie Shelf

A team of young eco-terrorists set out to reveal the secrets of an area removed from modern day maps and hidden behind electric fences. However, once they reach the center of the lake, they discover an island that harbors an abandoned facility with a horrific legacy: the island is home to a deadly predator eager to feast on those dumb enough to ignore the warnings. REVIEW: Lake Placid: Legacy is the latest in a long line of SyFy Channel-made TV sequels to the original 1999 creature feature Lake Placid. Luckily I love SyFy-made movies, and their Lake Placid sequels are pretty much my top favorite things they've made, so while I understand that a lot of people may not like the low budget direction the series ultimately went in, I love that shit. This latest entry in the franchise however, is quite different from their other Lake Placid sequels, on many fronts. To start, it has nothing at all to do with any of the other SyFy Lake Placid sequels. This entry comp...

Giant crocodiles go head to head with giant anacondas. The new town Sheriff must find a way to destroy the two species' before they kill the whole town. REVIEW: SyFy's Lake Placid sequel series is one of my favorite Made-for-TV movie franchises. Their Anaconda sequels however, I really don’t like much. Lake Placid vs Anaconda, sadly, falls closer in line with the Anaconda sequels for me than their Lake Placid ones. Lake Placid vs Anaconda is definitely more Lake Placid-centric, with Anaconda ties to it, then an even mix. It even has Yancy Butler returning again from Lake Placid 3 and 4 (this time being upgraded to town Sheriff because nobody else wanted the job after the events of the last several movies - ha!) and Robert Englund is also back again, somehow surviving his death in the previous Lake Placid movie. On the Anaconda characters side, there are no returning characters but we do have the daughter of John Rhys-Davies' character taking his place...

Reba the poacher is back, now an E.P.A. Agent. Black Lake has turned into a crocodile sanctuary, surrounded by an electric fence. When the fence gets left open one night, a high-school field trip bus unknowingly enters the park. It's up to Reba and the new town Sheriff to save the kids from becoming crocodile chow. REVIEW: When it comes to SyFy Channel B-Movies, I'm hard-pressed to find a franchise I enjoy more than the Lake Placid one. The second movie is one of my all-time personal favorite SyFy Originals, and even though the third movie was a big step down from it, it still manages to be a fun time in the end, despite the issues I have with aspects of it. Lake Placid: The Final Chapter (hahahaha, yeah...right...) easily beats both of them in my eyes and remains my personal favorite entry in this series of TV sequels. This one has Yancy Butler returning from the third movie, being the only character at this point to continue on to a future installment...

A game warden moves his family to Lake Placid, twice the site of deadly crocodile attacks. Locals assure him the crocs are gone, but his mischievous young son finds a few baby crocs and begins feeding them. Over a year they grow into very big adults and start attacking the game warden's family and nearby town. REVIEW: Lake Placid 3 picks up a short time after Part 2 (though no mention as to why there's a new Sheriff or what happened to John Schneider's sheriff character from that movie), and has SyFy regular Colin Ferguson playing a relative of Betty White and Cloris Leachman's characters, arriving in town with his wife and young son to clean out the house on the lake that was previously occupied by both older ladies, and to get it on the market to sell. Compared to John Schneider from Part 2, he's pretty generic and boring as a lead, but luckily alongside him in the movie is the far-more entertaining Michael Ironside as the new town Sheriff and the...

Man-eating crocodiles return to the lake, protecting their nest and wreaking havoc on the locals. REVIEW: Unlike SyFy's Anaconda sequels, SyFy's Lake Placid 2 and its following sequels are actually a hell of a lot of fun, and are among my favorite of the SyFy Original Movies. While we do get a mention Betty White's character and the fact that she fed and raised a couple crocodiles, there's not only no other mention of anything from the first movie but the events themselves seem to have been totally forgotten about by the town's residents and have been regulated to being nothing more than mere urban legend (how that could happen in such a short time period makes no sense to me), which definitely annoys me, along with a few piss poor horrible CG shots here and there, but those issues aside, Lake Placid 2 was a blast. Joining Cloris Leachman in this  is Smallville and Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider as the new town Sheriff trying to stop th...