Directed by Brett Piper, starring Matthew Crawley, Steve Diasparra, Richard Lounello, Ken Van Sant and Erin Waterhouse.

A low budget homage to 1950s creature features, this is the fun tale of a crater in the USA that is crammed with creatures and plants mutated by a glowing meteor in a cavern.

The film features a large variety of bug-beasts, a horned reptile monster and the titular three-eyed giant (who seems to be inspired by the big mutant dude from Bert I. Gordon’s 1957 movie THE CYCLOPS). The Triclops is played by a guy in makeup but most of the other monsters, including a cool giant scorpion, are stop-motion.

The animated critters are the creations of director-animator Brett Piper, who has almost singlehandedly been keeping the art of live action stop-motion filmmaking alive with such productions as A NYMPHOID BARBARIAN IN DINOSAUR HELL (1990), ARACHNIA (2003) and QUEEN CRAB (2015).

Brett produces his movies on tight budgets, so don’t go expecting a multimillion dollar epic with famous actors, but, if you’re a stop-motion monster fan, this is going to be a diverting, critter-tastic way to spend 80 minutes. And the film also features some lava, which, in my opinion, all lost world-type movies must have!

Finally, here’s an illustration by Jamie Chase, inspired by this movie…