Messy Nessie Movies

So, it's Friday night and here I am watching something called Beneath Loch Ness on Movies4Men.  Even by the standards of that channel, this movie is pretty ropy.  For one thing, apart from a few establishing shots of the castle and local railway station, it clearly wasn't shot anywhere near Scotland, let alone Loch Ness. I'm guessing that California was the main shooting location.  Moreover, whoever wrote has clearly never been near Scotland.  I mean, why are the Coast Guard operating on an inland waterway, (the clue to their role is in the name: Coast Guard)?  And why are they operating like some kind of paramilitary organisation (like their US counterpart), dropping depth charges?  Come to think of it, why are the local police wearing what look like Chicago PD uniforms?  Why do all the locals have Irish accents?  Except Patrick Bergin who, although actually Irish, musters a reasonable cod Scottish brogue. (Remember when Bergin had a career, back in the nineties?)

I have to confess that I only started watching this film in the mistaken belief that it might be the eighties schlock movie about the Loch Ness Monster directed by Larry Buchanan, the master of schlock.  But then I remembered that the Buchanan movie was called Loch Ness Horror.  Like the one I'm watching now, it was shot in California.  It also featured a life size mechanical monster, whereas Beneath Loch Ness uses some pretty mediocre CGI effects for its monster.  Anyway, it's finally finished now - they blew up the monster: I'm pretty sure the Scottish Tourist Board would be pretty pissed off by that.  The whole thing was really a Jaws rip-off, with Bergin more or less in the Robert Shaw role as a man obsessed with killing the monster in order to avenge his son, who had been eaten by Nessie many years previously.  Inevitably, he sacrifices himself to kill the creature in the end.  For some reason he puts on Braveheart-style face paint before a donning a diving suit and plunging into the Loch.  They really should have shown the Larry Buchanan film.  (I've now located a murky-looking copy of Loch Ness Horror online, so hopefully I'll be able to watch that in the near future).