Night Claws (2012)

I don’t think that I’ve covered a Bigfoot movie for the blog yet. I was flipping thru my list on Amazon Prime and saw this one. It is directed by David A. Prior, who was responsible for an old Slasher movie called Sledgehammer. Between that and the fact that it starred Reb Brown, television’s Captain America, it was a must watch. What did I get myself into?

The story opens like so many Bigfoot movies. You have a couple in a car making out. She hears a noise and ends his fun until he checks it out. That doesn’t end well for him or her. The next day we see the local police investigating a bloody crime scene. The Sheriff, played by Brown, thinks it is an animal attack. But the audience knows it isn’t one, because of the Bigfoot and all… There are also some nasty hunters looking for he hairy fella, a survivalist group on a weekend excursion, and an Anthropologist who forces her way into the investigation. Bigfoot has plenty of targets in this one. The body count rises and questions are answered before the credits roll.

This is an interesting movie. I thought that we were going to get a decent Bigfoot movie and at times we do. But much of the plot and mayhem are driven by the human characters doing horrible things to one another. For example, the hunters threaten and are killed by other humans. There is this strange plot with the heavily armed men trying to kill or capture Bigfoot and use the remaining survivalists as bait. Though they don’t expect one of them to be a bad ass who does away with a couple of them before leaving his wife tied up as bait because it is cheaper than a divorce. You know I don’t like the characters in this movie that much. Other than Reb Brown’s sheriff! He is cool. Nothing bad can happen to him, right? Right? Oh crap!

The special effects work is practical. We get an honest to God actor running around in a costume. The creature is kept off screen as much as possible until the very end. When we do get to see the whole suit, it looks fine. Not great, but still way better than CGI. The kills are kind of tame, but they do try with a limited budget. Of the thirteen Bigfoot victims, the most memorable deaths include a nice beheading (mostly off screen), a crushed head with brains oozing out, and some slashing claws mostly hidden behind a tree but with great sound effects work that leaves it to our imagination to fill in the blanks. I don’t want to oversell this part of Night Claws too much. I enjoyed the effects because they reminded me of what I used to see on direct to video low budget movies in the ‘80s. If that isn’t your thing you might not dig them like I do.

Do I recommend Night Claws? Probably not. I didn’t get nearly enough Bigfoot fun and wasn’t all that interested in the human dominated plot lines. There is a long stretch where we see characters talking to each other. The dialogue and performances aren’t the strengths of this one! By the time we do get back to some creature mayhem I didn’t care anymore. Oh, and there is an inexplicably weird plot twist at the end that was annoying. I’d recommend passing on this one.

© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer

Throwback Thursday - Book Review Grizzly by Will Collins

I haven’t done a throwback Thursday for a while so I thought I’d dig into the archives for something interesting. A couple of years ago I started a series for a website that I was writing for that covered novelizations of popular horror movies. Now these aren’t books that inspired movies, but those written to cash in on movies coming out. I’ve always found them interesting because most of the time they were written from scripts and the author, normally not involved with the movie, only had the shooting script to work off of. This means many times you get to see what was in the script before the director and editor got their hands on it. Makes for some interesting differences. Introduction out of the way let us take a look at the novelization of Grizzly.

I love me some drive-in movies and am even a bigger fan of Jaws inspired nature run amok movies.  So of course William Girdler movies play quite often in my house.  I was rather shocked to find a novelization of Grizzly available and of course I had to own it.  So after watching the movie I cracked the book open for some more fun.

The plot of the book mirrors that of the movie.  An enormous “throwback” grizzly bear stalks the visitors of a mountain park.  It finds people both tasty and easy to kill, so we are added to the menu quickly.  A park ranger named Kelly (named changed from the movie) and others track down the beast and do battle with it, but not until it has a pretty decent body count.  The heavy equipment comes out and the bear is finally stopped.  But of course you knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?

This might be one of my favorite novelizations that I’ve ever read.  Will Collins takes a very simple plot and manages to pad it out into a decent read without effecting the pacing too much.  The book is itself rather short at less then 200 pages, but again that seems about right.  All the fun stuff from the movie is in the novelization.  The bear, the oddball characters, and the kills.  Being a book we get to have much more character development of the most important character, the bear.  We find out where it came from, why it comes down from the mountain, and even why it first attacks humans.  Couldn’t really do that in a movie so the change of format is fun and more importantly blends nicely with the original plot.  Collins even is able to stretch the gore out a bit more then we were able to see on screen.  I’m a nerd for a good bloody kill and the book gives us more detail then we see in the movie. 

Whenever I’m reading a novelization of a movie that I really like I’m always worried about what liberties the author might take.  With that in mind let’s talk about the differences between the movie and the book.  We get a few minor things like the character of Kelly getting a name change, and he has more of an adversarial relationship with his boss.  It has a much more Roy vs. the Mayor shut the beaches down Jaws vibe to it then we get in the movie.  I think I’d chalk that up to something that was in the script that never made it to the film version.  I don’t think this brings anything to the story and makes it feel more like a Jaws want to be.  There are a couple of scenes added with characters like a father and son going camping that seems to exist only to add a few extra pages in. 

The biggest change is the ending.  In the movie we get a rather explosive ending much like Jaws (see a theme?).  But the book has hand grenades and a flame thrower tossed in for fun.  I have no idea if this was from the script and was changed during shooting, but I like it much better.  Though to be fair seeing how it is played out in the book I have no idea how they could have shot that sequence on a low budget.  Oh and the way the movie is edited you get the idea that one of the main characters had died, but in the book he didn’t.  I’m a big fan of the actor Andrew Prine so that made me happy. 

This is a fun, easy read that should appeal to both fans of the movie as well as someone just looking for a good creature story.  I’m recommend it and am glad to have it in my collection. 

© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer

Insectula (2015)

The poster looked cool

I love movies about giant bugs attacking the human race, which should be apparent to anyone reading the horror dude blog. I also love alien movies where they are up to nefarious plans to destroy the human race. When I heard that there was a movie about a giant alien bug that was invading Earth it shot to the top of my to watch list. That is how I ended up watching Insectula.

This one starts off with a commentator warning us of the horrors we are about to watch Plan 9 from Outer Space style. Then the action shifts to an alien world filled with all sorts of CG monsters and critters. One of them gets blown off the planet and finds its way to Earth, crashing into a lake. It makes its way to the closest female swimming along and kills her. This gets our hero involved because that she was the love of his life. He also works for the EPA so space monsters are sort of his thing. There is also an evil science guy, a good-looking woman, some hookers, and a coroner with a stutter. I’m sure the characters have names but I didn’t care.

Rule number one for making a parody of bad monster movie. Your version shouldn’t be bad! Insectula is a terrible attempt that doesn’t even have the charm of the movies it is making fun of. First the movie is way too long at a hundred and one minutes. After some interesting creature stuff the movie goes into a long stretch where we get introduced to far too many characters played by actors that have little to any screen presence or talent. You have the EPA guy, the evil scientist, and his pretty assistant as well as many others that serve only as fodder for a creature that takes way too long to reappear. While looking at my notes I noticed I kept writing, ‘where is the damn creature’ over and over again. That about sums it up. This is a project that could have used an editor. Hell, if you cut out the EPA agent and his mopey story this would have made the movie much shorter and tighter. Probably still not good but at least less miserable.

I did enjoy a couple of things about the movie. First is the character Lobo. He is a fat bald guy that is the evil scientist’s sidekick. He doesn’t show up until late in the story and gets very little screen time. The actor playing him nails his Tor Johnson impression and is very good. In a cast filled with annoying characters poorly brought to screen he stood out. I wish we had more of this character!

Loved the goofy effects

The other thing that was done well were the special effects. Don’t get me wrong it looks terrible, but it is supposed to. The fake severed head is my favorite effect and has that fun ‘60s look that is goofy as hell. The creature is mostly CGI, but we do get stingers and other latex bits swinging at the cast. Cheesy but perfect for the tone of the movie. There is also a bit in the Insectula’s nest where individual body parts are being kept alive so that they can make pus for the alien to eat. It was surprisingly disturbing, but is ruined because they had to make the scientist guy a bit pervy to I guess add some comedy where it wasn’t needed.

I wanted to like this movie but it is so boring that any enjoyment I could have possible had is killed. I’d recommend watching the kind of movie they were trying to spoof, like Invasion of the Saucer Men or Deadly Mantis, before sitting thru Insectula. Trust me you will have a much better time.

© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer