Imagine if Wes Anderson made a retro monster movie while tripping on psilocybin and high on Adderall.
That was my thought early on while watching “Lake Michigan Monster,” writer-director-star Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ first feature, an evolution and reinvention of every schlocky black-and-white monster movie from the 1950s that you used to watch on Saturday afternoon TV.
To say this film caught me by surprise would be an understatement.
For many, “Lake Michigan Monster” might seem like a higher-brow attempt to purposefully create a genre movie that is the epitome of the old saying, so bad it’s good.
To me, it represents something more.
It’s like watching the birth of a new form of cinema right before your eyes.
Lake Michigan Monster
4.5 out of 5 stars.
Run Time: 78 minutes
Now available on Apple TV’s Arrow Video Channel and iTunes
“Lake Michigan Monster” is the story of Captain Seafield (Tews), a salty seaman with a tragic past, whose father was killed by a dastardly creature in the murky depths of a land-locked body of water.
Seafield assembles a team – weapons guru Sean Shaughnessy (Erick West), sonar specialist Nedge Pepsi (Beulah Peters) and trusty foot soldier Dick Flynn (Daniel Long) – to help him find and destroy the beast.
“Lake Michigan Monster” is unlike any movie you’ve ever seen. It exists to enthrall viewers with an array of DIY special effects, wonderfully odd camera angles, inventive lighting tricks and subversive zingers that leaves you doubled-over with laughter.
At the center of the maelstrom is Tews, whose irreverent creation, Seafield, comes off like the bastard spawn of Captain Ahab and Ace Ventura.
Even trying to talk to Tews about his first movie is difficult, if only because the man is just that damn funny and always seems to be in character.
During a recent phone interview with BVB: Blood Violence and Babes, Tews explained how he came up with the idea.
“Well, John, I was sitting with my friend, Erick West—who of course plays, (inflection) Sean Shaughnessy!—and we were on the shores of Lake Michigan, and it was raining that day,” he began, a hint of nostalgia coloring his voice.
“We were, as I said, on the shore, and we were smoking cigarettes and drinking sweet red wine, it was very romantic, but at one point I turned to my companion and I said, ‘Erick! Wouldn’t it be something if a mermaid were to wash up on the shore here, and we were the only ones around to see it?’ Of course, at the time, we thought nothing of this bizarre hypothetical, but that was the moment when I realized this lake of ours, Lake Michigan, it’s filled with this sort of air of mystery and intrigue. You know, it’s just this big old lake down here. You can come down here, and no one can bother you. I started thinking, we’ve got this lake here, this free location, you can come down and kind of do whatever you want. Why don’t we shoot a movie down here about a Lake Michigan monster, and from there, the idea just started to grow.”
To create something unprecedented and unlike any other movie ever made, Tews said he called on a host of influences to help inform his singular visual style.
There’s the scratchy, grainy beauty of Guy Maddin’s “My Winnipeg,” the absurdist wonder of Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic,” the handheld aesthetic of early Sam Raimi and the blistering humor of classic Monty Python.
When asked whether it was a fair assumption that “Lake Michigan Monster” was made on a shoestring, Tews didn’t hesitate, even as my own laughter almost drowned him out.
“Yes, I financed most of the movie through pizza delivery tip money, actually. I was delivering pizzas at the time, so I financed a lot of it that way. And then of course, everyone worked pro bono, so I cashed in all my favors with friends and family, and made them work on this movie with me, and no one got paid,” he explained, completely deadpan.
“Let me tell you, John, that’s a good way to save money on the budget.”
Tews shot his movie from March 2017 to September 2018, a relatively short schedule for a self-financed first feature. Even he sounded surprised that it worked.
“If you can convince a large group of people to go along and come on a wacky voyage with you, with no clear-cut plan as to how it will all unfold, more power to you,” Tews said, chuckling. “It worked out for ‘Lake Michigan Monster.’ It was definitely more successful than I ever thought it would be.”
Tews said he stuck to a specific mantra while filming.
“We wanted to create a sense of a spooky atmosphere throughout, but at the same time we don’t want to bore people. And then, on top of that, just, you know, shot selection. How can we make any shot more interesting?” he explained.
“If you want to make a powerful, striking image, it doesn’t cost money, that’s just like imagination. I think we made some pretty colorful images that you remember on the cheap, and again it helps with this black and white, grainy, scratchy style, too. We just always wanted to bombard the audience with imagery as much as we could to sort of hide the fact that this movie cost nothing, to kind of trick them to keep watching.”
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.
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This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2020.