Kraa! The Sea Monster (1998)
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Big Alien...Bad Attitude!
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Kraa! The Sea Monster is a direct-to-video 1998 giant monster film produced by Full Moon Pictures under their Monster Island Entertainment label. It was released on VHS on July 9, 1998.
Plot
The evil Lord Doom dispatches a giant monster mercenary, Kraa, to conquer the Earth. A station belonging to the Planet Patrol, an intergalactic peacekeeping organization, detects his arrival. Curtis, a new recruit, uses her psychic abilities to pinpoint Doom's location: the dying planet Proyas. Before they can intercept Kraa, Doom targets the station with a pulse cannon, leaving it in critical condition. In their place, they dispatch the only agent in the area, the tiny alien Mogyar. He crashes through the roof of a restaurant in New Jersey, where he meets a waitress, Alma, and a well-learned biker, Bobby. They head to Alma's apartment, where Mogyar rapidly learns English and explains that he was trying to land in Naples, Italy, where a research project at the Atomic Fission Research Institute contains the key to a weapon which will allow him to destroy Kraa. A black ops team bursts in to arrest the humans and cage Mogyar, taking them all to a black site.
Kraa zeroes in on Mogyar's location after Doom alerts him to the alien's presence, causing much urban destruction along the way. Mogyar escapes containment as the military prepares to evacuate the site and helps Alma and Bobby escape through the vents. The Planet Patrol buys them time by remotely driving Mogyar's mothership into Kraa, knocking him over. After learning the institute in Naples was destroyed in a mysterious explosion, Mogyar decides to build the weapon from scratch. With an estimated $20 million price tag on the parts, they impersonate Bridger, the leader of the black ops team, to enlist the employees and equipment of the Harvest Point Nuclear Facility. Bridger quickly learns of their plans and sends his team in. The weapon, a laser cannon, malfunctions as Kraa approaches. Bridger captures Bobby, while Mogyar knocks out the agent send to capture him. Curtis uses her powers to hold off Kraa, while Alma gets the drop on Bridger, allowing Bobby to repair the cannon. As it fires, Lt. Able uses the last of the Planet Patrol station's auxiliary power to refract the beam, recharging the station. It turns its main weapon on Kraa, killing him. The Planet Patrol travels to Proyas and arrests Lord Doom after a brief scuffle, although his minion Chamberlain quickly produces a key to the cell.
Staff
- Main article: Kraa! The Sea Monster/Credits.
Staff role on the left, staff member's name on the right.
- Directed by Aaron Osborne, Dave Parker (Planet Patrol and Lord Doom sequences)
- Written by Neal Marshall Stevens
- Produced by Kirk Edward Hansen
- Executive Producing by Charles Band
- Music by Carl Dante
- Cinematography by Joe C. Maxwell
- Edited by Poppy Das, Gregory Sanders
- Production Design by Erin Cochran
- Assistant Directing by Franklin A. Vallette, Keith Shaw (Planet Patrol unit)
- Special Effects by Michael Deak
Cast
Actor's name on the left, character played on the right.
- R.L. McMurray as Bobby Macek
- Teal Merchande as Alma James
- Robert Garcia as Bridger
- Robert J. Ferrelli as Monroe
- Jeff Rector as Team Leader
- Jeffrey Meyer as Team Member
- Colton Scott as Captain Ruric
- Alison Lohman as Patrolman Curtis
- Anthony Furlong as Patrolman Garth
- Candida Tolentino as Lt. Able
- J.W. Perra as Mogyar
- Michael Guerin as Lord Doom
- Jerry Lentz as Lord Doom (voice)
- Jon Simanton as Chamberlain
- Leon W. Grant as Wheeler
- David Wall as Landerson
- Deborah Hatch as Scientist
- John Fedele as Kraa
Appearances
Monsters
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Weapons, Vehicles, and Races
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Gallery
- Main article: Kraa! The Sea Monster/Gallery.
Reception
Kraa! The Sea Monster received little attention from kaiju fans upon its release, as Full Moon's previous giant monster movie, Zarkorr! The Invader (1996), had been viewed as so underwhelming. In its column "The Video Eye of Dr. Cyclops," the horror magazine Fangoria condemned the thin script: "About a half-hour's worth of spoofy plot has been stretched across Kraa's 69-minute running time, along with a lot of sub-par FX and a record number of out-of-focus shots for a (supposedly) professional made movie."[1] Stomp Tokyo concurred, noting, "Special effects aside, this material could have been entertaining, but the whole movie is just so inept. The Planet Patrol sequences are so hilariously separate from the Earthbound action that after a while they begin to take on the quality of a Greek chorus. None of the dialogue in the film consists of anything but the most overused cliches, with half-jokes thrown in every 20 minutes or so, until we get the ending joke ripped off from every episode of I Dream of Jeannie."[2]
Video Releases
Full Moon VHS (1998)
- Tapes: 1
- Audio: English
Full Moon DVD (2003)
- Region: 1
- Discs: 1
- Audio: English (2.0)
- Subtitles: None
- Special Features: Six trailers for other Full Moon Pictures films
Videos
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Trivia
- Proyas, the "dark planet," may be named after Dark City director Alex Proyas.
- Kraa's name appears to come from a story in the 1961 Marvel comic book Tales of Suspense #18, "Kraa the Unhuman!"
- The diner where Mogyar lands is next to a theater playing the previous film from Monster Island Entertainment, Zarkorr! The Invader.
- Kraa destroys a building advertising GODZILLA (1998).
- The 1999 Full Moon Pictures film Planet Patrol was comprised of footage from Kraa! The Sea Monster, Doctor Mordrid, Subspecies, and Robot Wars.
References
This is a list of references for Kraa! The Sea Monster. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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