Bigfoot usually makes for some entertaining(if not always,good) genre fare,as we've seen in the past here at the Wop.Not this time,unfortunately.This movie stinks like two shit-covered skunk apes lighting each others farts on fire atop a sulfuric heap of rotten eggs.We've taken on some Bad-squatch before,but the levels of ineptitude usually translated into hilarity,whereas what we have here is the cinematic equivalent of what it would be like if you drank a barium milkshake over the course of eighty five minutes,without choice esophagus or duodenum x-rays to look at afterwards.Kozak's movie,originally titled "The Unknown",is like a mash up of Jaws(1975),and Grizzly(1976),only without the suspense or entertainment value.Hell,there's barely even any Bigfoot in the damned thing.I was left so flat afterwards,I was nearly rendered a "carpenter's dream" and pondered reviewing something else,only deciding to go ahead with this,so as to warn you against wasting time or money on it.Let's put it this way.When I'm culling screenshots from a dvd,I'm usually left with about fifty decent ones to choose from,which I whittle down to what I think are the four best ones,the ones you see here when the post is finished.By the time the end credits rolled here,I had seven.And picking four decent ones out of those was nearly as hard as it was to sit through the movie in the first fucking place.
Bigfoot's cutting throats these days.Who gave him the knife?
An abrasive redneck tool(Miles "Tarzan" O'Keefe,paying his electric bill here)and his buddies are out poaching bear on Echo Mountain,a peak steeped in historic folklore and mystery,when his fellow lawbreakers all eat Bigfoot-inflicted throat lacerated death after the wild man of the woods KTFO's him for stumbling upon a camoflaged grave...or maybe it was the hootin',hollerin',and gunfire.We may never know.Ed(Isn't that a great hayseed name?Two syllables down south...Ay-uhd.)comes back around,and naturally blames it all on the Indian forest ranger,vowing to gather up the remaining goobers he knows and take revenge.After some cheap beer and a few games of pool,of course.Back in town,the sheriff and the mayor are closing down the beach,errr,ummm,blaming the deaths on a rogue grizzly bear in hope that the negative press doesn't evaporate the tourist dollars.Tourist dollars?The local barbershop and five and dime have a busy season?At the high school,the local obnoxious meathead Jay(Brandon Henschel)is being forced to partner up with the local brainiac nerd/Bigfoot buff Richard(Dylan Purcell) on an endangered species presentation over the weekend,or they both get ffffff....ailed.Jay gathers up two eager young pieces of trim(Chelsea Hobbs,Casey LaBow),some brewskis,and a video camera,taking his impending school failure as seriously as horror buffs should probably take Karl Kozak.
Even the grizzly bear is yawning out of boredom.
Way up on Echo Mountain,you can hear the tires spinning,maybe catch the faint scent of burning rubber,but things have kinda stalled out.Richard gathers firewood and comes face to face with a huge grizzly,but it lumbers off,balking at the thought of having to lick its own balls to get the taste of dork off its breath,the same way I had to dull my taste buds with a half pack of smokes to get the taste of the movie outta my mouth.Ed's redneck posse starts falling prey to the Pissed-squatch,one by one,but off camera is no way to stage deaths when you've got an elaborate costume to show off.Back at the crazy drunken sex-crazed teen party camp,it's much the same.Jay narrates an episode of "Douche Jock in the Woods" into his camera,Richard relates the folklore of the surrounding mountainside in a limp campfire tale,complete with equally flaccid black and white flashback sequence,and when Bigfoot finally muscles in on their boring weekend(through pov camerawork and growling,mind you),they all run off in different directions.When Ed finally loses his last marble,using the Indian as bait,shooting the last of his egghead buddies himself,and taking one of the girls hostage,Bigfoot finally...well...finally does nothing.In the aftermath,Jay manages to get some footage of the elusive creature,and the boys turn it in as part of their presentation,which the teacher tries to cash in on,instead having the film called a hoax,and being called a fraud of the lowest caliber by the whole community.Ironically,calling this production a "horror movie" is the biggest fraud I can shed light on here.
This is the only bobbler shot in the whole movie.
Kozak went on to direct Skid Marks(2007),a comedy about ambulance drivers,after dropping this full deuce two years earlier.I never thought I'd see a Bigfoot feature with less payoff than Ivan Marx's two jokumentaries,but I was wrong.Seeing his poor wife shuffle around in animal skins was far more rewarding than anything showcased here,which is a shame,because most of the elements are in place:a decent looking suit,ignorant Buford poachers,teenaged campers;the potential bodycount is pretty high,obligatory indians who know what's going on,and some really epic scenery,but in the end,it's all wasted here.You may have to actually wait for my third screenplay in line for a satisfactory Sasquatch story.That's all I'll say about that.None of the unknowns in tonight's entry really went on to do anything of note either,unless you count bit television roles or dancing extras in forgettable movies.Even Miles O'Keefe hadn't worked in film for five years afterwards.I can't give it a zero,due to the slick production values and nice cinematography on display,but still,avoid this one at all costs.
I see you hiding in there,Mask-uatch,and you oughta be.
No comments:
Post a Comment