LAKE PLACID

Directed by Steve Miner. Starring Oliver Platt, Brendan Gleeson, Bridget Fonda.

A THOROUGHLY B-movieish monster thriller which bears superficial resemblance to the likes of Godzilla and Deep Blue Sea, but possesses considerably more tongue-in-cheek humour than your standard no-brainer, Lake Placid is that strangest of creatures: a movie that only justifies its existence by virtue of its pure unredeemed awfulness. The dialogue has to be heard to be believed, the 'plot' might shame Ed Wood, and the acting leaves you rolling your eyes up to heaven . . . in short, it's a helluva lot of fun.

The plot alone will indicate just how preposterous the whole affair is: a gigantic man-munching 30-foot long ravenous crocodile dwells under the waters of a sleepy lake in Maine, and is understood to be responsible for a series of grisly deaths which tend to involve people's heads being bitten off. An intrepid palaeontologist (Bridget Fonda) and an ace detective (Bill Pullman) are dispatched to investigate the mysterious affair, along with an extremely eccentric professor (Oliver Platt) - they also make the acquaintance of craggy smalltown sheriff Hank Keough, played by Brendan Gleeson in his first major post-General role. The chemistry between the quartet is never less than lively, and the dialogue provides many moments of out-and-out hilarity, most of them apparently unintentional.

I am not intimating for one moment that Lake Placid is anything less than deeply dreadful: the first twenty minutes or so leave you in a state of disbelief, which only deepens as the film progresses. Nevertheless, it boasts a frivolous, off-hand tone which somehow dares you to like it, and once you're not overly concerned about the quality control, Placid becomes very difficult not to enjoy.

The entire cast are having a whale of a time in what must be the least serious roles of all their careers, with Gleeson commendably deadpan throughout, Pullman more expressive than usual, and Fonda her usual shining self. Oliver Platt gets to enunciate most of the best (worst?) dialogue, and consequently walks away with the honours, while the animatronic computer-generated crocodile looks none too terrifying and will have future generations giggling uncontrollably if the film ever survives to be shown on Saturday morning telly in the decades to come.

The phrase 'straight to video' was practically invented for this, and there's no compelling reason to catch it on the big screen, but connoisseurs of bad taste can look forward to the kind of movie that hasn't really been seen since the days of Man-Monsters From The Slimy Depths. On artistic grounds, the film fails miserably, but you should have a fair idea by now whether or not it fits in with your idea of fun. Its 80-minute duration is to be commended (more films this short, please)and, all in all, it had me grinning like the lunatic I most definitely am. The perfect antidote to a daily diet of existential French arthouse classics.

HHIIII

CRADLE WILL ROCK

Directed by Tim Robbins. Starring Susan Sarandon, John Turturro, Emily Watson, Bill Murray, Angus Macfadyen, Ruben Blades, John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Cary Elwes, Vanessa Redgrave.

AT LAST - an unapologetically, unrepentantly socialist film emerging from the Hollywood system, and featuring a glittering array of top-drawer talent. Something of a labour-of-love for radical Tim Robbins, Cradle Will Rock chronicles real-life playwright Marc Blitzstein (Azaria)'s attempts to write a socialist musical in Depression-ravaged 1930's New York, and the results are pretty intiguing, if short on mass appeal.

A progressive federally-funded theatre troup, led by Orson Welles (Macfadyen) are doing their level-best to stage Blitzstein's pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, while Nelson Rockefeller (Cusack) commissions radical painter Diego Rivera (Blades) to paint a giant mural in the lobby of his new skyscaper. Both projects invariably encounter suppression from a range of moneyed interests, and the film delves into the whole affair with as much thoroughness as a 135-minute duration can reasonably allow.

Robbins has fashioned from this tangled tale a thought-provoking and highly relevant piece of work - however, his description of the film as 'a comedy' is some way wide of the mark. Hampered on occasion by a po-faced, over-earnest tone, the film progresses at a none-too-hurried pace, and the impatient viewer is advised to exercise due caution before watching it.

However, the acting is almost uniformly top-of-the-range: Joan Cusack's anti-Commie witch-hunter and Bill Murray's failed ventriloquist are a delight to behold, Susan Sarandon's Jewish fascist is delightfuly cold and charmingly malevolent, Emily Watson starves on the streets with the tattered grace that's distinguished all her roles to date, and John Turturro's principled artist walks away with the honours.

No barrel of laughs, obviously, but by the time you see Bill Murray's dummy singing 'The Internationale' before a hysterically anti-Communist crowd, you realise you're witness to something pretty special - and in an age where the concept of socialism is little more acceptable Stateside than necrophilia, it makes you marvel at how lucky we are to have Tim Robbins.

The mysterious ideological censor who seems to scrutinise all Hollywood output has let one slip through the net - hallelujah to that. Tim Robbins, your country needs you!