That probably should have been a warning. Still, I am nothing if not stubborn or a glutton for punishment.
Tonight’s movies are Blood Tide (1982) and Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues (1985). Both feature monsters lurking in isolated places. Both have some potentially interesting ideas. Both are also fairly terrible.
But I finished them this time. That has to count for something at least.
Blood Tide (1982)
I will start with the better of the two, though that is not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Blood Tide (and sometimes "Bloodtide" in the same credits) follows Neil (Martin Kove, "Karate Kid" and "Cobra Kai") and Sherry Grice (Mary Louise Weller, "Animal House"), an American couple who travel to a remote Greek island searching for Neil’s missing sister Madeline (Deborah Shelton). They eventually find her living there with Frye, an American treasure hunter played by James Earl Jones. Frye has been exploring underwater ruins around the island and, because treasure hunters in horror movies apparently have no sense of self-preservation, uses explosives to open a sealed underwater chamber.
Something had been sealed inside. The local villagers knew this, because of course they did.
Soon young women are disappearing, an ancient sea creature is loose again, and the villagers return to traditions involving human sacrifice in an effort to appease it.
There is a decent monster movie buried somewhere in here, but hell if I can find it.
The cast alone should have helped. James Earl Jones, José Ferrer, Martin Kove, Lydia Cornell, and Mary Louise Weller. It's a surprising cast, and they really should have produced something better.
James Earl Jones does what he can with Frye, and José Ferrer could probably make a grocery list sound important, but there is definitely a sense that everyone showed up, collected a paycheck, and enjoyed the Greek scenery. To be fair, the scenery is gorgeous.
The movie itself has the right elements. We have a remote Greek island, an old convent, pre-Christian artwork, underwater ruins, a sealed chamber, a monster that once required human sacrifices, and villagers who remember more than they are willing to say. This should be fantastic material for an old-school monster story.
Instead, the movie is slow, the creature is barely developed (both in plot and in makeup effects), and much of the suspense never really goes anywhere.
I do like the central idea. Frye discovers that some things were sealed away for a reason. The image of an underwater chamber marked with an ancient symbol is exactly the kind of thing I want from this sort of movie. Madeline’s strange connection to the island also suggests something older and more interesting than the movie ultimately develops.
There is also something almost charmingly old-fashioned about *Blood Tide*. This feels much more like a 1970s horror movie than something from the early 1980s. The Americans travel to an isolated Old World location, ignore local warnings, disturb an ancient evil, and discover that the locals have preserved traditions for reasons outsiders do not understand.
In the end, the scariest thing about this movie is the full-on kiss that brother and sister Neil and Madeline share.
.jpg "Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues (1985)")
Then there is Boggy Creek II, which I feel I should point out is the third Boggy Creek movie.
Charles B. Pierce wrote, produced, directed, and stars in this sequel to his much better 1972 film The Legend of Boggy Creek. Pierce plays Dr. Brian Lockhart, an anthropology professor at the University of Arkansas who takes several students into the Arkansas wilderness to investigate reports of a Bigfoot-like creature living around Boggy Creek.
I mean, there are a lot of reasons why this movie should tick all the boxes. Cryptozoology professor. College students. Remote Arkansas swamps. A local monster legend. Early 1980s technology (loved the computer!), colorful (yeah, that's word I am going with) locals.
You could build a perfectly good NIGHT SHIFT adventure out of that setup in about five minutes.
And somehow this movie is remarkably dull. Sometimes painfully so.
Lockhart and his students head into the woods with camping equipment and a sonar-based detection system while Lockhart narrates previous encounters with the creature. These stories appear as flashbacks and involve farmers, fishermen, stranded motorists, and one unfortunate man in an outhouse. Eventually the group meets Old Man Crenshaw, who knows considerably more about the creature than he initially admits.
It turns out Crenshaw has captured a young creature, which explains why the adult has become more aggressive. Lockhart eventually realizes that the monster is not some rampaging beast. It is a parent trying to recover its child.
That is actually a decent idea. The monster is not evil. The humans caused the problem.
Unfortunately, getting to that realization takes much longer than the movie’s 91-minute runtime.
Maybe it because it goes from dull flashback to dull flashback. Or maybe because we get Professor Lockhart confidently explaining everything while his students follow him around. The professor is also astonishingly self-assured for a man whose research methodology seems to consist primarily of driving into the woods and waiting for Bigfoot to appear. I suppose tenure was easier to get in the 1980s.
And will someone PLEASE get Chuck Pierce (yes, his son) a goddamn shirt?
Monsters Where They Are
My intended theme for this October was 1980s horror. But the theme I found has been "Horror Comes Home." I picked these movies because they matched my intended theme and completely failed on my found theme. These movies are more akin to the 1970s style of horror, going where the monsters are. Often in some remote location, be that the Arkansas backwaters or Greek islands.
I have likely given these movies far more thought than they deserve.
October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
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