Ju jin yuki otoko (1955)

A Japanese Abominable Snowman movie… Hell yeah I was going to watch this. Before I go any further though I do need to point out that for this review I watched the movie under it’s original title and cut. There is a butchered version for the American market under the title Half Human. Basically, it got the Godzilla treatment with much of the original film cut out and inserts with American actors cut in to make it “relatable” to the market. Don’t watch that version, it is terrible, but check out the original instead if you are interested after my review.

Things kick off with some folks waiting for a train as a storm blows outside. A man walks in and starts to interview them. They are apparently survivors of an expedition and have a story to tell. Then it jumps back in time to some friends skiing and having fun on Mount Fuji. They never say this but that is where the movie was shot. A pair split off to check out a cabin while the others head down the mountain. A huge snowstorm blows in and they are all trapped. Later a search party finds one of the men’s bodies, but the other is missing.

It jumps back to the survivors at the train station before continuing in another flashback. This time it is the next summer as the sister and friend of the missing man have joined an expedition. It is looking for both the missing man as well as a legendary creature who lives in the mountains. This group is followed by another lead by a local carnival owner who wants to capture the creature. Shenanigans ensue as the creature seems to stalk them. Later they all meet up with a local mountain tribe that worships the snowman as their protector/god. The monster does somethings and the humans do some even worse things. It all leads to a finale that had me a bit bummed. See the creature wasn’t so bad. Yeah, this is another of those movies where we have a misunderstood creature that is less a threat and more of a victim of the humans around it.

I wanted to like this one. The creature effects work are good with the suit and the performer under it doing a fantastic job. That shouldn’t be a surprise since this is from the director, Ishiro Honda, and the studio that brought Godzilla out the year before. Instead of a monkey suit being repurposed it is clear some thought went into the making of the snowman. While vaguely apelike it does come off as something different. I also think that the fact we don’t have lots of cardboard buildings getting smashed and that the performer interacts with the cast in many scenes also makes it a bit more fun. Don’t get me wrong I dig Kaiju movies, but this shows the quality of their work much more. I suppose I’m a sucker for a rubber suit in a monster flick.

But there is one huge and glaring issue with Ju jin yuki otoko and that is the pacing. Clocking in at ninety four minutes there is way too much padding. There are long stretches of characters walking, talking, storms blowing, and them admiring the scenery. Don’t get me wrong the movie is beautifully shot. The black and white photography of the natural surroundings borders on art. But as much as I appreciated how it looked it was at times painful to sit thru. There is a cool story here and we do have some fun action as the story ramps up to the finale but it takes far too long to get there. Toss in the fact that the story jumps around in a nonlinear fashion and the added complication of subtitles (again I watched the Japanese version) and this is a movie you must pay attention to and that can be a chore.

I didn’t hate Ju jin yuki otoko and am glad to have checked it out. For me, the creature design was worth a watch by itself, and I consider myself a fan of Honda. But I fear that the casual viewer might find this one too much of a slog to sit thru. That said this is still a far better flick than Half Human.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Devolution by Max Brooks

I’m a huge fan of Max Brooks, especially World War Z, and was excited to see that he had put out a Bigfoot book. Yeah, I know that I’m late to the game, but this is the hazards of not regularly going into bookstores anymore. Not because I don’t want to but mostly because I can’t find them anymore! I suppose I could set up an Amazon alert for my favorite authors but that isn’t as much fun as scanning the shelves. Okay time to stop being an old guy and get to the reviewing.

The book is set up very similarly to World War Z in that it is presented as a series of interviews as our author is doing some investigative journalism into the loss of a small high-tech community called Greenloop. Basically this was a bunch of hippy electric car driving city people who wanted to live in harmony with nature. That means not keeping a lot of food depending instead on constant drone deliveries of groceries. In addition their power is all solar and their heat is from biofuel aka. their own poop. Get the picture?

When Mount Rainier erupts, this book is set in Washington state, the roads are cut and the internet goes down. This leaves Greenloop disconnected from the rest of the world, including their weekly food deliveries. Because of the disaster being so close to cities their small community is also not on the radar of the authorities and their rescue teams. But they aren’t alone in their isolation as a family of Bigfoot creatures are trapped with them! If that wasn’t spooky enough these large primates are very aggressive and when their normal food sources dry up the humans are on the menu! Of course being so green and progressive the inhabitants of Greenloop never thought to bring guns or any other weapon to protect themselves. Cue the carnage!

I’m not going to go any farther with my synopsis because to do so would spoil it. This is a fantastic book that is a breeze to read. The story unfolds quickly and starts to setup the creepy stuff right away. Brooks knows how to tease the reader just enough to keep your eyes on the page without getting to the payoff too quickly. That makes for a neat build up and a satisfying yet open ended resolution.

I thought the manner that Brooks told the story was very clever and similar to the equally great World War Z. The journal entries from Kate let us know what was happening in small community which is important since it is quickly established that the authorities found the place abandoned. There are also interviews from her brother Frank, who feels guilty about letting his sister live in his place and has a crusade to find out what happened to her. It is thru this character that our author/journalist finds out about the place to begin with.

Then there is the park ranger who talks about the rumors and the history of the area as well as giving us the payoff of what they found when the rescue team finally arrived in Greenloop. There are also a few bits added in from other sources about the behavior of the creatures that serve to establish or tease what is about to happen in the next journal entry from Kate. This is such an excellent read I don’t know what else to say.

Devolution is a huge recommendation from me. My only warning is that it may grab you and keep you up way too late reading. I found myself doing the “just one more chapter and then I’ll go to bed” argument. I read the book in two sittings only because I did have to eventually put it down so I got some sleep before work the next day… or rather later in the morning. If you like cryptid stories you will certainly want to check this one out.

 

Ó Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Bigfoot: Man or Beast? (1972)

Time for another bit of seventies fun with this Bigfoot documentary. This is an earlier entry into that unique cryptid fascination that caught me up when I was a kid, I’ve never actually watched Bigfoot: Man or Beast before. Thanks to a good friend who hooked me up with a copy on VHS I get to fill in that gap.

There isn’t a narrative, well sort of maybe, I guess. After starting off with about half an hour of people talking about their experiences and encounters with the legendary Sasquatch, we then spend the remaining hour or so with a researcher named Robert W. Morgan. He serves as both the host and narrator. He is leading a team into the woods doing some research. This leads to a lot of him talking about theories and where they may look. There is some drama with a forest fire that forces them to abandon all their hard work, but it is mostly stock footage of nature and trees burning.

This second bit seemed awfully familiar, but I know that I hadn’t seen this before. Then after a bit of poking around I found that a lot of the Morgan stuff had been edited into the In Search of Bigfoot a few years after this came out. Even the release date for Bigfoot: Man or Beast? is a mystery. It seems to have gotten a very limited release in seventy-two but got a wider release in seventy-five, which explains the copyright mark from that year. That means it was only a year before being reused for In Search of Bigfoot.  These drive-in guys knew how to hustle and get the most out of what they paid for, that is sure.

Now that I’ve given you a bit of background and explanation, I suppose I should hop into reviewing the movie. You should know that I’m a huge nerd for this sort of flick, having been caught up in the excitement of it all when I was a kid growing up in the seventies. I’m one of the few people you will meet that sings the praises of Ivan Marx’s The Legend of Bigfoot, which is honestly a nature documentary with a guy talking about Bigfoot as they go along. Not a thrilling movie for sure, but I dig it.

Robert Morgan

Maybe it is the lack of nostalgia since I’ve only just seen this one, but it was really boring. The pacing is terrible with long stretches of a narrator droning along with seemingly unreleated footage rolling in the background. The encounters are basically people sitting on couches talking about what happened to them instead of the cheesy fun reenactments from something like The Mysterious Monsters or Legend of Boggy Creek. I’ve heard all of these stories before and some of them are very creepy, but they manage to suck all the energy out of them with how the filmmakers present the tales here.

We get all the classic tropes of the Bigfoot documentary like tracks, the Patterson Gimlin film, and the crippled foot proving that no one could fake a particular set of tracks. If that sounds familiar it is because many of the same faces that are in this movie as experts also appear using the same basic material in the much superior The Mysterious Monsters. Guys like John Green, Robert Morgan, and Grover Krantz all show up in both. Watching this movie made me want to watch that one instead. Not a great sign.

I’m glad that I’ve finally watched Bigfoot: Man or Beast? and am able to scratch it off my list. But I won’t be going back to this one as there are much better options. If you haven’t seen any of them, please pick one of the other movies I’ve mentioned in this review. On the other hand, if you are a veteran of Sasquatch documentaries then maybe you will get something out of checking this one out. Just keep expectations low.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Throwback Thursday - Gone Squatchin'

note: This was another article that I wrote for Grindhouse Purgatory. I've always been a huge fan of Bigfoot movies and decided to talk about some of my favorites.  

Exploring the Shelves: Gone Squatchin’

by John Shatzer

It is time to dig into the collection again for some hidden gems. Since I’m a child of the ‘70s (yeah I know that I mentioned that last time…) it was a pretty obvious choice that I’d get around to doing some Bigfoot movies sooner or later. Why not make it sooner? It’s time for Exploring the Shelves to go Squatchin’.

One of the first Bigfoot type movies that I ever saw was The Mysterious Monsters from 1975. This one is also known as Bigfoot: The Mysterious Monster.  It is one of those great “documentaries” from Schick Sun and is narrated by the Peter Graves (remember him from my last Exploring the Shelves… Beginning of the End). It is played completely straight, so much so that I always wondered if the people making the movie believed in Bigfoot. We get reenactments of supposed sightings along with various vaguely scientific examinations of the evidence.

This movie has a special place in my heart.  I remember watching it on TV when I was growing up and it is the first time that I remember being really scared. There is a scene where a Bigfoot breaks thru a window and grabs at a woman. I swear to God it was a year before I would turn my back to anything other than a solid wall. I’ll readily admit that I might be a bit biased in my opinion of this movie, but I love it. It has such an awesome cheesy vibe to it that I can’t help but watch it at least once a year. This was one of the first VHS tapes that I tracked down when I started heavily getting back into collecting movies again in the late ‘90s. From the terrible looking costumes to the faulty logic, it is a great time. I mean they attempt to prove Bigfoot is real by using the scientifically accepted fact that the Loch Ness monster has been found… The ‘70s were such an innocent time or maybe I just was. Perhaps my perspective is off on this one, but I’ve always considered The Mysterious Monsters to be the gold standard of the ‘70s Bigfoot craze. 

Time for another classic from the decade of the 1970s. This time I popped in The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) from director Charles B. Pierce. This movie also is a series of reenactments of supposed sightings of the Boggy Creek monster. This time instead of playing like a documentary there is an offscreen narrator that ties them together and it follows a more traditional story structure. There are some creepy moments, especially towards the end when a family is attacked by the creature over a couple of nights.

Legend of Boggy Creek is another fun bit of ‘70s drive-in cinema. We never get a good look at the creature, but it certainly seems like Bigfoot. I’ve always been fascinated by how the movie is put together. Pierce took a series of supposed encounters with the creature and using a manufactured wraparound actually tied them together into a cohesive storyline. Most of the time when a movie tries to do this it fails miserably, but it works here. That said there are a few spots where they are obviously padding the runtime with some shots of nature including some close ups of trees with wildlife sounds loudly playing. If you are going to watch some “classic” Bigfoot movies, then this is a must see.  I don’t like it as much as Mysterious Monsters because it of the padding, but it is still pretty good. 

Speaking of padding a movie out with some nature footage I think the time has come to talk about Ivan Marx’s The Legend of Bigfoot (1976). Many fans consider this movie to be a big tease. It is presented in the form of a documentary but the majority of the movie is really nothing more than footage of the wilderness and the creatures that live there. Marx cleverly repackaged shots of squirrels, rabbits, and such as a Bigfoot documentary. The narration loosely ties the footage you are watching in with possible habitats and migration of an unknown ape like creature aka. Bigfoot. 

The Legend of Bigfoot is admittedly slow and doesn’t deliver any real Bigfoot “action”, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it. The footage that Marx captured of the Pacific Northwest is beautiful. The narration over the animals he caught on camera is very well done and entertaining in its own way. The fact that they managed to exploit the Bigfoot craze and trick audiences into maybe learning something only makes me like this more. I get it when fans get angry about being fooled, but then again isn’t that the heart of a good exploitation movie? 

Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1977) is an interesting movie.  While The Legend of Bigfoot is treated like a documentary, The Mysterious Monsters is sort of a documentary with reenactments, and The Legend of Boggy Creek is nothing but reenactments Sasquatch tries to be all this and more.

It starts off with some nature footage, tosses in some news clippings to prove Bigfoot is real, and then gives us a voice over from a science guy. He is leading an expedition to a part of the Pacific Northwest that a fancy computer has predicted to be the home of the Sasquatch. We are introduced to his motley collection of companions in yet another voice over and off they head into the woods. The rest of the movie is part nature footage, part staged drama (including flashbacks!), and finally part documentary complete with philosophical musings played over the same song in a loop.

I had to include Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot. The movie is slow at times but is packed with so many tropes of the genre that it is a must see if you are going to check out Bigfoot movies. Frolicking racoons, goofy looking furry suited extras, and that groovy ‘70s tunes come together to make something that isn’t good but is fun. Yeah I know it doesn’t make much sense but it is worth checking out if you like this sort of thing… 

The Snowbeast!

Obviously, Bigfoot was big business in the ‘70s so of course TV had to get in on the fun. Hell, Bigfoot showed up on the Six Million Dollar Man! Of these many appearances I chose my personal favorite from 1977 Snowbeast. Here you have the hairy protagonist terrorizing a Ski Lodge by killing off a few of the guests. It is up to a former Gold Medal winning skier and his friends to kill the creature so that once again everyone can enjoy the slopes without fear of being murdered.

Since this was made for TV, there is no nudity or gore, though until the next decade that wasn’t a big component of Bigfoot movies so not a big deal. All the deaths are more implied, and it works well. This is further solidified by some killer dialogue and great performances from the cast. You get to see some familiar genre actors like Bo Svenson and Clint Walker who get to have fun chewing up the scenery.  The creature itself isn’t seen much and when you do see it is clearly a guy in a suit. But they handle that well enough that it isn’t a distraction from the fun. Snowbeast is a public domain movie and easy enough to find if you want to watch it, and really you should.

The ‘80s might have been dominated with Slasher movies but there were also Bigfoot movies. There are a couple that I need to talk about. First up from 1980 is Night of the Demon. Here again we have a familiar story about an investigator who hauls a group of people into the woods to explore rumors about the Bigfoot. Though since we first meet him in the hospital all torn up and the movie is explained in flashbacks we know this isn’t going to end well.

Bigfoot on VHS!

In many ways this movie took Bigfoot and shoehorned the big fella into a slasher style plot. Here Bigfoot isn’t portrayed as some mysterious creature roaming the woods. Nope this time he is a bloodthirsty killer that prowls around adding to a growing body count. Tied in with that is a subplot involved how he came to exist, which of course has that typical ‘80s sleazy feel to it that we all love. There are lots of kills, some bloody and some implied. This includes the one kill that convinced me I had to see the movie when it was at my local Mom and Pop rental store. I mean when you stroll in on a Friday night and ask the clerk what is cool and he responds, “have you ever seen a Bigfoot rip a guy’s dick off” it gets added to the must watch list. Or at least it did for me. Sadly, other than that one kill the rest of the movies has that mediocre made for VHS rental feel to it.

Next up is a sequel to the earlier drive-in movie The Legend of Boggy Creek.  Time to talk about Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues (1985). This time around director Charles B. Pierce casts himself as a professor of anthropology that takes some students into the swamp to search for the creature. They not only come face to face with it, but also have to deal with a rabid dog and a crazy local that has one of the creatures locked up in a closet! To lighten up the mood the professor tells the students some stories, which gives them an excuse to do some re-enactments like the original. 

While I love the original Boggy Creek this one fails to live up to the original. Instead of a series of encounters that are short and tend to hide the deficiencies of the movie here we get a main story and a couple of re-enactments. That means we spend way too much time focused on the professor and his students. The acting is weak, and the scripting/dialogue is bad as well. Also, the creature is shown way too much and is clearly just a guy in an ape costume. I don’t know how Pierce missed so badly with this one, but he must not really of understood what made the first movie work. There are a couple interesting bits, mostly in the re-enactments of previous encounters, but if this weren’t a sequel to a movie that I enjoyed so much I don’t know that it would have made the cut and been included on my list. It is certainly not worth a second look, once is enough. 

I know that someone is going to call me out on skipping the ‘90s. In general horror was in a rut and I honestly can’t think of a single Bigfoot movie that I’d want to mention from that decade. Though I’m sure someone will point out one that I missed, but that is part of the fun of doing an article like this.  So I’ll skip right to the ‘2000s.

Scream Queen Tiffany Shepis meets a bad end
in Abominable. 

In a decade that thanks to The Blair Witch Project was dominated by found footage movies we did get a nice batch of Bigfoot flicks. Most of them were made for the Sci-Fi channel or at least with it as a potential outlet. This lead to many poorly done CGI crap fests that kept Lance Henriksen working for a few years. There were so many movies to choose from but the only one that I really have a lot of affection for is 2006’s Abominable.

A man named Preston returns, with his nurse, to his home on a remote mountain for the first time since a terrible accident. An accident that left his wife dead and him in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. The only thing around for miles is his cabin and the one next door. The peace and quiet is shattered by a group of young women that show up at the neighbor’s cabin. Thru a strange series of twists only Preston sees one of the young women get taken into the woods by someone or something. With the phone lines down and his nurse thinking he is just stressed-out Preston watches helpless as Bigfoot mercilessly stalks the women next door.

This is Bigfoot meets Hitchcock’s Rear Window. You have a character that is stuck in a wheelchair watching a houseful of young pretty girls getting picked off by a Sasquatch. Of course, no one believes him and try as he might to convince them the body count rises. You get good kills, some tension, and a wicked ending. Toss in a few cameos from genre vets and you have a solid, entertaining movie. 

As I mentioned earlier found footage movies were and to some extent still are the rage. Let me be clear that I’m not a huge fan of found footage movies. They always come off cheap and are a crutch for filmmakers that don’t have the resources or talent to shoot a traditional movie. It also doesn’t help that they all follow the same exact formula. You take a group of characters, isolate them, have odd things happen, and eventually everyone dies. I mean that must happen otherwise the footage wouldn’t be just found, and we would have a voice over or something. So right from the start there are no surprises. In fact, the only thing that surprised me is that it took so long for this kind of movie to take advantage of the subgenre of Bigfoot flicks. Welcome to the new millennium where everyone had a camera and is wandering around the woods getting into trouble with the Bigfoot.

First up let's talk about Willow Creek (2013). This movie follows a young man named Jim. He has decided to make his own documentary about Bigfoot and drags his girlfriend Kelly along with him for the trip. They decide to head out to Willow Creek where some famous footage of a sighting had been shot decades before. Along the way to the woods we see them visit and joke around with some locals. It is clear that they aren’t taking things seriously at all. They eventually wander into the woods armed with some vague directions. What do they find? Well, what do you think they find?

Like I said I’m not a big fan of found footage flicks, but Willow Creek I was excited about. It is directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. The man has made some good dark comedies like Shakes the Clown. I was interested in checking out what he could do with a movie like this, and I wasn’t disappointed. It has some pacing issues in the beginning as the characters and situation is setup. I didn’t really care for the characters of Jim and Kelly as they keep doing stupid things like wandering in the woods without having a clue as to what they are doing. The fact that it sticks so closely to the formula was also sort of boring. But the second half of the movie more than makes up for this. 

There is an extended sequence of them sitting in a tent at night with something prowling the woods around them that is nerve wracking.  We hear all sorts of noises that are clearly getting closer to them as time passes. Eventually things start getting tossed on the tent and maybe something is pushing or grabbing on it. If you have ever been in the woods at night you already know how creepy it is and this nightmarish situation just keeps going and going. It was genuinely scary. I appreciated how the sequence created tension with just sound and the idea that something was out there with them. I found myself along with the characters straining to hear what was going on, which set me up for some great jump scares. 

After morning comes the characters try to leave, but of course are lost. Night comes again and things end how you would expect them to. Is Willow Creek a great movie? No but I’d say that it is solid. I bought a copy from iTunes and feel like I got my money’s worth which in my experience with found footage movies is the exception to the rule. 

The Lost Coast Tapes (2012) is more of a mixed bag. It too is a found footage movie. Here we have a host/journalist that used to do one of those ghost shows (or something similar I suppose). He is involved in some sort of hoax that discredits him and heads off into the woods to get his reputation back by doing a legitimate investigation. Only this time he heads out as a skeptic to disprove a hunter’s claim that he has a dead Bigfoot in his possession. After much walking and creepy sounds at night the characters find out that there might be something to the claims after all.

Like Willow Creek these characters seem intent on dying. They keep wandering deeper into the forest and towards the danger. I also wasn’t terribly fond of the characters in this movie, especially the main character Sean. Then again that might have been on purpose. There are a few scary moments in this one, but for the most part I found most of the movie to be slow. We don’t get a great deal of tension created which sort of killed the atmosphere for me. I have a rule that when I start a movie I always stick around to the end and with The Lost Coast Tapes I’m glad that I did. The ending is a unique twist on the Bigfoot mythology and is hinted at throughout the story. So, there is a bit of a payoff that might make it worth watching if you are really into these kinds of movies (Bigfoot and found footage).

Can’t talk about Bigfoot movies without mentioning at least one of the odd entries into the subgenre. There are all sorts of strange Bigfoot movies out there. They range from family friendly fare like Harry and the Hendersons all the way to Bigfoot porn. I’m not going to talk about either of those, but instead chose The Beauties and the Beast from 1974. It wasn’t until researching this article that I realized this came out before The Mysterious Monsters. The action opens with a scientist sort of guy standing in the shadows talking about Bigfoot and how he might be real and what he might be up to. Well as it turns out he is sneaking around the woods watching girls get naked and grabbing them… sometimes anyway. I mean he kind of leaves others alone for no reason.

This is the worst of the movies that I decided to watch and mention here. The story is all over the place with Bigfoot, Hippies, softcore simulated sex (think Cinemax), criminals, and probably a few things that I missed. There are plot holes like some of the characters talking about a hermit that implies some part of the movie is missing. Really, I checked the runtime on IMDB to see if my copy had been cut up! Oh, and there is a bit with coins and recently released criminals coming to claim them that is confusing. I mean one throwaway line of dialogue doesn’t really cut it. The best part is that Bigfoot is kind of a hero at the end of the movie and wanders away with the hermit. Only what the hell happened to the women he kidnapped and sealed in a cave? 

The Beauties and the Beast isn’t for everyone. In fact, the only reason I even mention it is because it is such an odd exploitation movie with a Bigfoot connection that I would feel remiss in not talking about it. This one is a mess and is only for the hardcore movie nerd.

This was both the easiest and hardest article that I’ve had to write for Grindhouse Purgatory. The reason for both was the volume of Bigfoot movies that I could cover. I love these kinds of movies and have stacks of them in my collection. It was easy to find what I wanted to watch and write about, or so I thought. I quickly realized that I had far too many on the list to make it feasible for an article. So, I had to start cutting them down. First to go were the ‘90s movies including Search for the Beast which I only like because David Friedman had a small part in it. 1970s “classic” Bigfoot starring John Carradine also didn’t make the cut. I even pulled out my favorite regional filmmaker Bill Rebane’s The Capture of Bigfoot! Hard choices had to be made. If you think that I’ve overlooked something, feel free to email me a gutmunchers@gmail.com.  I’d love to hear from you and talk Bigfoot movies. 

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Bigfoot vs. Megalodon (2021)

nothing in this poster happens!

This title had me thinking I was going to watch some silly CGI fest. You know like Sharknado only with Bigfoot. That isn’t what I got at all. What we have with Bigfoot vs. Megalodon is an animated movie, and I use that term very loosely, that takes place in space. What the hell did I get myself into?

Let me see if I can explain the “plot” of Bigfoot vs. Megalodon to you. It is far in the future and humanity or rather what is left of it has just finished a war with lizard people. Though they look like your classic grey aliens. The evil lizard dudes are now led by Stalin and Crowley… yeah, they use a lot of names like that. Somehow a genetically modified Megalodon survived in the now barren and ruined depths of Earth’s oceans. I guess the Nazi’s did stuff to him. With the help of an ass kissing robot, he steals a ship and starts doing stuff. The lizard dudes want to capture him because of his DNA being weaponized to turn humanity into lizards too.

There is also a princess and her clone boyfriend that talk a lot about having sex and making babies. They also have Bigfoot on the ship with them as he is part of their alliance as well as the princess’ clone sex toy’s best friend. There is some nonsense about Bigfoot getting lured in by Crowley and betraying his friends and then the shark is also around. Stuff happens and then we get left with the idea that they are going to make a sequel. God, I hope not. If you haven’t noticed what we don’t get is any versus action. I don’t think that Bigfoot and the Megalodon share a single scene together!

This movie, and I not even sure I should call it that but for the purposes of this review I suppose I will, is dreadful. The story is impossible to follow with dialogue that sounds as if it was written by a teenage boy. The action seemingly jumps at random between scenes and characters and comes off as choppy. I was paying close attention, both to figure out what I was watching and as a way to stay awake. This might be the most boring attempt at storytelling I’ve ever watched, and I’ve been at this for a long time.

New word... crapimation!

The above isn’t helped by the way the movie is animated. Have you ever played a nineties video game and seen those lame cut scenes? Imagine if you had to watch over an hour of those masquerading as a movie! The character models used are horrible looking, all of the humans are mostly seen in their armor, so they don’t have to try and animate their faces. When we do get to see the princess out of her armor she stands in a static pose for a long time as the camera rolls round. She doesn’t move for the entire scene. When they do try to animate the Aliens, the mouths don’t match the dialogue. Oh, and the Bigfoot… sweet baby Jesus that is just horrible.

What we have with Bigfoot vs. Megalodon is a movie that has zero plot, terrible dialogue, and inept animation. That isn’t a recipe for success. I haven’t disliked a movie this much in a very long time. Frequent readers to the site will remember my rants earlier this year when I plowed my way thru both the Witchcraft and Camp Blood franchises. I would much rather watch any of those again then sit thru this dumpster fire. Don’t be fooled by positive IMDB ratings this is trash.

 

Ó Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

Demonwarp (1988)

How have I never seen this movie before? Seriously! It has Bigfoot, aliens, zombies, and George Kennedy. What could be better than that? I’ll tell you… nothing! Okay I’m excited here but I’d better do some plot synopsis before continuing. 

George Kennedy plays Bill who we see playing trivial pursuit with his adult daughter. Bigfoot breaks in, knocks him out and kills her taking the body with him as he goes. Then we see another group of kids show up at the same cabin armed to the teeth. They think that it is for a weekend of fun, but one of them has set this up as a hunt for a monster trip. They run into Bill who tries to warn them off. It doesn’t work and pretty soon Bigfoot shows up and kills some folks. We also get to see a random hiker and a couple pretty ladies fall afoul of the big hairy murder machine. 

It turns out that there is an alien who has a priest leading a cult that worships him. They make zombies out of most folks but can also mutate people into Bigfoot so they can go out and get more victims aka. Zombies. The alien uses the zombies to fix his spaceship while the priest sacrifices some ladies, topless of course, on an altar because the alien enjoys eating their hearts. Okay movie what the hell!

This movie makes zero sense, is completely insane and I loved it. There is always something happening on screen whether it be nudity, gore, or George Kennedy. Demonwarp is just a hell of a lot of fun. Clearly some of the characters are just there to get killed and George Kennedy is hardly in the flick as they only had him for a few days. But none of that matters because they give me everything that I want out of an eighties horror flick. Cool monsters… check. Pretty ladies in various stages of undress… check. Some decent kills also check. I give them extra props for the volume of mullets in this flick. 

The creature design is on a budget. Bigfoot is a basic dude in a gorilla suit affair, though the mask has some neat animatronics. The zombies are just masks, and you can even see where the skin is poking out from under the green makeup. The alien looks pretty good and there are a couple Bigfoot transformation scenes that are handled well on the cheap. Clearly this isn’t a big budget affair so manage your expectations but for the resources they had the filmmakers do a good job. 

I also wanted to point out that in addition to George Kennedy we also see some other familiar faces such as Billy Jayne and Hank Stratton. Both are best known for their television work but Jayne was in Cujo and the Burbs so that is something. The lovely Michelle Bauer also makes an appearance and yes, she is topless for most of the movie. Yeah, I know that makes me sound like a creepy and she is a good actress with charisma but anyone that recognizes her name had that question on their minds. 

This is a fun reminder of the sorts of goofy flicks that got made in the eighties for the video market. I never got around to renting/watching this until recently and I’m ashamed of myself. It was always on my radar, but I just never pulled the trigger. I highly recommend that if you haven’t done so yet you also watch Demonwarp. 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

Bigfoot at Holler Creek Canyon (2005)

Let us end the Bigfoot marathon fun with another movie I found on Amazon Prime. Here we have a group of kids headed off to a cabin in the woods for Spring Break. Seriously when has that ever worked out well? I watch enough horror movies that I’m never going anywhere for Spring Break! Though I really am too old for that anyway so no big loss. After running into an obnoxious shop

owner, some shoplifting kids, and a redneck who really enjoys eyeshadow they make it to the cabin. After a party/acting like a dumbass montage we get a couple of things. First up they get naked and have sex… in the woods. Again, have they never seen a horror movie? Oh, and something is watching them. I mean other than the shop owner who is being a creeper with a video camera. Eventually we find out that there is a Bigfoot in the woods and that it has decided to start killing people. The locals all end up dead and then it starts on the kids. We eventually get down to our survivor girl who kills the monster. Or does she? Really? Of course she didn’t kill it. Have you ever seen a horror movie?

I’m having some fun with the plot synopsis mostly because I had fun with the movie. Holler Creek Canyon knows exactly what it is and doesn’t shy away from that. We get pretty people going into the woods, meeting up with scary locals who are just a bit creepy. They make some bad decisions and pair off for some naughty activities. Much skin is shown, both male and female, and then the creature shows up. From that point on we get blood spraying, heads squished, guts torn out, and legs shredded off at the knee. But the best is a callback to Night of the Demon, which I’ve already covered for this marathon. Yes, ladies and gentlemen there is some violence towards the wang, though unlike Night of the Demon it is off screen.

Ranger Rik Rules!

A couple other things of note here. I thought they were doing some stunt casting when I saw Ron Jeremy’s name on the poster. But instead of the normal cameo he has an actual part here with several scenes and is rather funny. He plays the greasy shop owner who spies on the kids, waves his gun around (and I mean an actual pistol…), and eventually goes out into the woods to kill the rogue bear blamed for all the killings. Spoiler he does get the bear but that wasn’t what was killing all the critters in town. He has some snappy dialogue and lands most of the best jokes.

The other thing that surprised me was the special effects work. We don’t get to see the gore happen but do get some shots of mangled bodies after the fact. That was a little disappointing, but they do make up for it a bit with how cool the bodies look. Where they did a great job was with the Bigfoot costume. It is all practical and looks much better than I would have thought. They keep it in the shadows for most of the movie but when you get a glimpse it looks like a real creature. The actor can move in it and is able to chase the cast and be menacing.

I do have a couple of complaints, though they are minor. We get a few montage/dialogue scenes that drag the pacing down a bit. The movie is around ninety minutes long and could have done with about ten minutes of it cut. I also didn’t like the tacked on ending which felt forced. But overall this is a decent movie that surprised the heck out of me. I can’t believe it took me fourteen years to watch it! I recommend Holler Creek Canyon.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer