Lake Placid / YMMV

Best Known for the Fanservice: The third film is probably best remembered for former Emmerdale star Roxanne Pallett's full frontal nude scene.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Hector's telling of his odd nightmare to Hank, who is noticeably confused and annoyed by it.
Crazy Is Cool:
- Hector, full stop. He seems to be a sociopathic Jerkass but it turns out he actually does know his stuff about crocodiles and how to catch them.
- Reba from the third and fourth movies. Badass hunter who is not only entertaining to watch, but manages to kill multiple crocs by herself include a couple that are eating her (she survives). She does so using a knife. And she calls out other people for doing stupid things, too.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Betty White's character Delores Bickerman, but that's no surprise due to her entertainingly insane personality as the Big Bad of the first film who essentially raised the crocodiles into what they were and assists their killing sprees in spite of being an old woman.
- Reba from 3, 4, and Lake Placid vs. Anaconda due to being an entertaining badass who points out all of the stupid shit other people do. This is probably why she returned in 4, considering she seemingly died in the third one (along with the croc that supposedly did the deed).
- Brendan Gleeson as Sheriff Hank Keogh sets a bar for competence and humor that the various sheriffs who succeed him struggle to meet. Keogh is fourth in the credits, but feels like he might have been a better protagonist than Scott, Kelly, or Hector.
- Connor Brickerman from the 3rd movie is considered a nice Foil to his grandmother and great-aunt, retaining some likability and depths even as he takes up feeding the crocodiles.
- Ellie from the third movie gets some interest for being a rare Ms. Fanservice and Nice Girl combination for the franchise and being an Action Survivor in a franchise where most long-lasting characters are straight-up fighters or related to said fighters.
- Many fans agree that Brittany from 4 is surprising likable (eventually) and realistically affected by the attacks for a character who starts out as the Alpha Bitch. Re-watching the movie, it can be surprising to realize that she's only in the first fifty minutes or so of it.
Ho Yay: Quite a bit between Hector and Hank.
- Les Yay: In the fourth film, Elaine repeatedly holds hands with, leans on, or touches the shoulders of Chloe or Brittany, comments that Brittany has a "great ass", and is shown crying after Brittany's demise.
The Scrappy: Kelly, her constant nagging and negativity visibly annoyed the characters and tended to have the same effect on the audience. It also doesn't help that she's The Load who doesn't contribute any knowledge that would help them catch the crocodile considering that is the only reason she's present.
Sequelitis: Bet you didn't know there was a Lake Placid 2, huh? Or a Lake Placid 3 for that matter. Or a Lake Placid 4.
Shocking Moments: Anyone who goes into the first film unspoiled about the bear scene is in for a treat. It's on par with the Signature Scene from a similar film, Deep Blue Sea only less mean-spirited, depending on who you ask.
So Bad, It's Good: At no point does this film take itself seriously as a horror film, but this trope still applies somewhat.
Special Effect Failure:
- The obvious CG plane in 2, which periodically disappears between shots.
- The crocodiles also look too much like a video game. Especially in the sequels.
Squick: All of the crocodile's victims are eviscerated, and in one case decapitated, and therefore disgusting.
Surprisingly Improved Sequel:
- Lake Placid 3 is somewhat better than the second film. It's still nowhere as good as the original, though.
- Lake Placid: The Final Chapter is also agreed to be better than the second film but worse than the first. Whether or not it's better than 3 is a bit debated.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Compared to a lot of killer croc films. Lake Placid features great special effects by both Stan Winston and Digital Domain that, for the most part, hold up. The sequels however not so much, though they do admittedly look better than most Sci-Fi Channel Original films. Up until the fourth film, anyway.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- In the second film, there is a lot of potential for Ahmad to get fed up with his boss and turn on him, strike out on his own, or display some Hidden Depths that way, but it never happens. His boss Jack Struthers, and Larry, who provide a lot of the comic relief of the movie, are also treated as fairly disposable characters, after the first movies efforts to preserve the sources of humor and stay out of generic creature flick territory.
- In the fourth film, the Ambiguously Bi tension between Brittany and Elaine, and Brittany's Character Development not amounting to much due to her fate at the teeth of a crocodile.

YMMV / Lake Placid

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