A young woman travels from her Manhattan homeland to Bohemia in the wake of a political power-shift, with high hopes of reclaiming her ancestral castle(which was seized during the communist takeover decades earlier). During her visit she falls madly in love, and many long-buried family secrets are slowly brought to light. Meanwhile, a mysterious creature of regional lore haunts the paludal depths of a nearby lake.
If you're on the hunt for a monster movie with a bounty of thrills and chills, you'd best just back off now...SAVAGE LAGOON is not what you're looking for by a long shot. On the flipside, however, this is a very ambitious oddity driven primarily by characters which are intimately written, and in most cases believably played by the cast. The central romance story is also quite appealing, and things move along nicely for the first two-thirds....then, suddenly, it becomes an increasingly hand-carried mess. The final twenty minutes of SAVAGE LAGOON are a Gordian-knot of shoehorned afterthoughts and unceremonious quick resolves. It ultimately feels like a compressed version of a substantially longer film, a shortcoming which, unfortunately, proves markedly injurous. A shame, as there's an interesting idea beneath the untidiness, and the project does bear fleeting sparks of ingenuity.
I wish I could wholeheartedly recommend this film, because I felt a unique creative pulse in the mix...it will be interesting to see what these folks bring forward in the future, hopefully with better resources.
4/10