n the early ninth century, berserkers wearing 11th-century Saxon armor attack a 20th-century building with 14th-century architectural flourishes, carrying off maidens in 19th-century shifts as they do so. Faster than it takes to cry "Huzzah!", these renaissance-fair renegades have the maidens on an altar, laid out for sacrifice in a way that would do 1930s Weird Tales cover artist Margaret Brundage proud.
Flash forward 1,200 years. A group of young, very good-looking American scientists at the University of Copenhagen is preparing to study the site of the long-ago berserker attack. Despite the fact that a temporal anomaly clearly exists at the site (thereby allowing for things and people from many different eras to exist there simultaneously, like something out of a movie with bad art direction), and despite the fact that the scientists are all named after physicists (Dyson, Teller, Oppenheimer, "Feneman"), it's revealed they are all archaeologists. The focus of their study will be the so-called "bog people": persons cast long ago into peat bogs, the high acidity and low temperatures of which preserve the bodies for hundreds of years.
At the site, the young scholars Ron (Steccato), Steve (Park), Suzy (Henggeler), Nick (Mosley) and Diana (Thompson) meet with overseer Max (Glenn). Their excavations are watched from afar by shadowy, shambling, rotting creatures. Remarkably preserved bodies are unearthed wearing remarkably unrusted gear. As the team searches for other places to dig, they stumble upon a devastated campsite. A traumatized girl named Tara (Rochon) is hiding within the wreckage. Members of the team go missing. Something is stalking them. Could it be that the fell bog people have come back to life to wreak havoc upon the 21st century?
For peat's sake!
Although Bog Creatures is a terribly written and executed film, it's hard to be mad at it. It doesn't pretend to be a better film than it is. It doesn't sell itself as being clever or innovative or postmodern, as does the rancid Le6ion of the Dead. Bog Creatures exists in a very narrow cinematic limbo. If it did pretend or actually try to be any good at all, it would be insufferable. Yet it's just a few notches shy of the "so bad it's good" category.
In among the bog-still stretches of mediocrity are one or two good scenes, including one moment of comic relief that, while not funny at all and pretty vulgar, is at least unlike any other scene of comic relief in recent memory. It would be unfair to point out that most of the performances are compost-rotten; given the dialogue, the actors do their best. How can one deliver "How do I know? Because I'm a scientist, and it's my job to know!" and make it sound good? The always delightful Debbie Rochon yet again proves herself worthy of the epithet "Queen of the Bs" in what is clearly the most complex role of the film ... "complex" in the way that a safety pin is complex compared to a paper clip, but the most complex role nonetheless. Rochon steals Bog Creatures, infusing the proceedings with some much-welcomed gusto. (Her fans will probably want to track down the DVD just for the behind-the-scenes featurette.)
The dreaded bog creatures themselves look like Swamp Things baked too long in a convection oven, and are as threatening as things lurking in Halloween haunted houses put on by more prosperous Jaycees organizations. Bog Creatures is ultimately about as frightening as that multipart Brady Bunch set in Hawaii about the cursed tiki.
