Kraa! The Sea Monster (1998)

Kraa! The Sea Monster Directed by Aaron Osborne, Dave Parker Producer(s) Kirk Edward Hansen Charles Band (executive) Written by Neal Marshall Stevens Music by Carl Dante Distributor Full Moon EntertainmentUS Rating PG Running time 69 minutes (1 hour, 9 minutes) Aspect ratio 1.33:1 Rate this film! 2.00 (3 votes)

“	Big Alien...Bad Attitude!	„
	— Tagline

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 Kraa

Weapons, vehicles, and races Planet Patrol Station 1645 Mogyar Mogyar's mothership

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." 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."

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

Kraa! The Sea Monster teaser Kraa! The Sea Monster trailer

Trivia

• Proyas, the "dark planet," may be named after Dark City directed by Alex Proyas.
• Kraa's name is a direct reference to a character from a story in the Marvel Comics comic book Tales of Suspense #18 (June 1961), "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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