The Crater Lake Monster is a 1977 B-movie horror movie directed by William R. Stromberg for Crown International Pictures, and featuring Richard Cardella.

In Crater Lake, Northern California, Dr. Richard Calkins is informed by his colleague Dan Turner that he and his girlfriend Susan Patterson have made an incredible discovery in a nearby cave system.

The three go down and Calkins is shown a system of cave drawings, including what appears to be a depiction of people fighting a Plesiosaurus, thus providing evidence that dinosaurs existed at the same time as humans did.

However, a flaming meteorite crashes into the lake just overhead, resulting in a cave-in that destroys the cave system and the drawings, while the three scientists are barely able to escape alive.

Two friends, Arnie Chabot and Mitch Kowalski, running low on money, decide to start a boat rental service.

The chase eventually leads them down to the shore, where the Sheriff shoots the suspect in the knee, before stopping to hide behind a tree and reload his weapon.

When the sheriff returns the next day to the location where the robbery suspect went missing, he finds several massive footprints before the monster suddenly emerges.

Arnie and Mitch ultimately take the scientists' side in favor of keeping the monster alive, saying it'll bring in a significant amount of money for the town.

When it reaches its head down to try to pick up Arnie's body again, the Sheriff drives the bulldozer forward and repeatedly slams into the monster's neck, finally killing it.

They pulled their support for some key scenes (that would have explained a lot and plugged some of the obvious holes), added a canned score that really sucked, and turned it over to some hack to edit.

Stromberg voiced his disapproval of the editing decisions by Crown that he was not privy to, which made the passage of time confusing and damaged the movie's pacing.

[5] Buzz McClain from Allmovie wrote, "With virtually no budget (not even for a competent tripod to hold the camera steady) and using amateur actors, the movie employs the most laughable devices to render the impression of a raging dinosaur—an immobile rubber head, for instance—and the most unpredictable shuffling of scenes of tension and humor.

"[7] Keith Bailey from Radio Times gave it 1/5 stars, terming it "so slow and shoddy, it makes some of the worst 1950s monster movies look like masterpieces".