ROLLING ON THE (MONSTER INFESTED) RIVER. The small cast of The Monster of Phantom Lake adds musical flavor in their stage adaption of the cult film.

The Monster of Phantom Lake, a musical adapted from the original film of the same name, directed by Christopher Mihm in 2006, is set to be performed at the Mabel Tainter Center for the Arts in Menomonie July 21-24.

The musical is a comic blend of cheesy 1950s-style horror and drive-in movie theater humor, all performed by 10 local actors and 14 musicians.

“Since this show has interest on a worldwide level, we wanted to hand-pick people to make the strongest cast we could,” said Michael Cook, director of the show.

“They actually have to believe they’re going to be eaten by a monster, and act terrified of it.” – director Michael Cook on The Monster Of Phantom Lake’s actors

The musical tells the story of five teens who go camping near Phantom Lake, where a shell-shocked ex-soldier has been transformed into a revolting monster by nuclear waste. As the teens go missing, a professor and his beautiful assistant work to stop the creature before it is too late.

Cook says one of the biggest challenges of directing the film was to get the actors to take the plot seriously.

“They actually have to believe they’re going to be eaten by a monster, and act terrified of it.” he said.

Cook has directed nearly 20 different shows so far in his career with the Chippewa Valley Theatre Guild and Chippewa Falls High School in addition to acting in Mihm’s movies, which is how he snagged the directing gig for this musical.

Though he has worked with many talented casts in the past, Cook says the group he’s directing for this show specifically is a dream to work with.

“These people have it,” he said. “They know what we’re doing and they know why we’re doing it.”

Adam Boll is the composer for the show and has spent nearly three years working on the songs for the production. He had gone with Cook to see many of Mihm’s movies and jokingly suggested that they turn one of them into a musical, and now here they are.

All of the music is inspired by 1950s classical musicals, sci-fi, and monster movies. Since the music is all original and completely new to the cast, Boll said getting them to learn these unique songs that haven’t been performed by anyone before proved to be challenging.

Boll says that the music he wrote for the production is difficult, but the crew has really taken it and made it their own, which simply adds to the musical’s uniqueness.

“All the songs have never been sung by anyone else before, which makes it hard, but the end result is really amazing,” Boll said.

With the premiere date less than a month away, both Cook and Boll have many supporters and donors to thank for the production’s success so far.

Boll said they had three different goals in mind when they first launched the Kickstarter for the show. First, they wanted to be able to raise enough money to simply put on the show somewhere, even if that meant in a church basement. Their second goal was the raise $6,000 in order to snag a high-quality venue and have the show recorded live and professionally edited. Lastly, if they could reach their goal of raising $12,000 in total, they wanted to put out an original cast recording with the help of Pine Hollow Studio, which luckily they were able to do.

“I think we were all pleasantly shocked by how well the Kickstarter actually did,” Boll said.

Tickets for the show are available online at monsterofphantomlake.com. The prices are $12 for children and students (with an ID) and $20 for adults and seniors. The show will be performed at 7:30pm July 21-23 and at 1:30pm July 24.