We’re all about the new and exciting features here at the Screengrab, so here’s another one for your dining and dancing pleasure. Those three of you who have succumbed to my repeated shameless plugs for my book Hick Flicks may recall the 24-hour hillbilly horror movie marathon I inflicted upon myself and my four-legged life partner Maury the Wonder Chibeagle in the interests of cinematic scholarship and medical science. I don’t think I have another 24-hour marathon in me, but I’m willing to pull the occasional all-nighter in the interests of furthering my research and edifying you in the process. Let’s kick it off with a subject near and dear my heart: Bigfoot movies.
As you three Hick Flicks readers may also recall from the book, the 1970s were the heyday of Sasquatch Cinema, but the last year or two has seen an unexpected revival of the genre. After spending the night with a handful of the latest Bigfoot movies, I think I’ve figured out why. Take, for example, Primal (not to be confused with the recent creature feature Primeval, which I initially did), a video cheapie that appears to have been shot entirely on location in director Steffen Schlachtenhaufen’s backyard. I’m going to speculate that Schlachtenhaufen won a Chewbacca costume in a sci-fi convention raffle, and this provided all the inspiration necessary – in fact, all the inspiration to be found, period.
12 midnight. The first rule of creature features: conceal your critter as much as possible, preferably not revealing more than the occasional fin or eyelash for the first hour or so. Schlachtenhaufen breaks this rule less than two minutes in, when we spot the guy in the wookie suit squatting under a tree. Two hikers have wandered off the trail, a development that doesn’t sit well with Bigfoot, who proceeds to eviscerate them. At least, I think that’s what happens. It’s a little hard to tell because Schlachtenhaufen piles every chintzy video effect imaginable onto the scene, from a ‘scratchy film’ overlay to a psychedelic light display straight out of a 60s LSD movie.
12:30 am. Some semblance of a plot has emerged involving a group of surveyors who are unwittingly (I think, although this is never clarified) scouting a wilderness area for a big oil company. At a nearby ranger station, a young woman and her schlubby boyfriend are visiting her estranged brother, the creepy ranger who likes to be left alone. Pathetically, the one-room ranger station with its hand-drawn sign is the most elaborate set in the movie.
1:15 am. Bigfoot makes what must be his sixth or seventh attack in Primal, and we’re still no closer to finding out why he’s so upset. Maybe he should move to a less populated area. In the end, the oil company sends another set of surveyors into the area, which is sure to make him cranky all over again. But it’s time to move on.
1:30 am. Our next feature is The Long Way Home: A Bigfoot Story, and so far it makes Primal look like a masterpiece of crisp storytelling, tight editing and lavish production values. The director is James “Bubba” Cromer, a South Carolina attorney turned independent filmmaker. After ten minutes I’m ready to throw myself on the mercy of the court. An old woman is screaming about how her chickens have all been killed. This goes on for quite some time.
2:00 am. It turns out that Cromer himself is playing a failed Miami Herald reporter who returns to his hometown to investigate reported Bigfoot sightings. But what he doesn’t know is that his friends have staged the sightings using a gorilla costume, in order to lure him home; they hope the Bigfoot story will revive his career. This is actually a somewhat promising plot, and it has the advantage of explaining why the creature looks so fake – a problem most Bigfoot movies never overcome.
3:20 am. The plot may have been promising, but the executive is dismal. The Long Way Home plays more like a collection of outtakes than a coherent narrative – it’s all long, single-shot scenes of poorly improvised dialogue delivered by non-actors, a few of whom happen to be interesting characters who aren’t well-served by the process. On the Myspace page for the movie, Cromer lists his influences as Ed Wood, John Waters, and Charles B. Pierce (director of The Legend of Boggy Creek), and his movie is an eerily accurate composite of all three sensibilities. Maybe that sounds too much like a recommendation.
4:10 am. Here’s a change of pace: The Sasquatch Gang (originally titled The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang – no, really), a family-friendly flick in the Napoleon Dynamite mold. A band of young SCA geeks find tracks and a mound of poop in the woods, leading them to believe Bigfoot is in their midst. Justin Long co-stars as their hockey-haired neighbor. (Curiously, this is Justin Long’s second Bigfoot movie in recent months, as he also appears in Strange Wilderness, which sadly was not available on DVD in time for this marathon.)
5:00 am. This really is a Napoleon Dynamite wannabe; not only is Jon “Uncle Rico” Gries in the cast, but Napoleon himself, Jon Heder, has a cameo, and director Tim Skousen was the first assistant director on Dynamite. Sasquatch Gang has a rewinding narrative structure and a couple of good gags, but it’s mostly a lame revenge-of-the-nerds story, and most importantly THERE IS NO BIGFOOT IN IT. There is Carl Weathers as a Bigfoot hunter, but that simply won’t do.
5:45 am. We’re wrapping things up with Sasquatch Mountain (although the onscreen title is actually Devil on the Mountain), which stars Lance Henriksen as a man whose beloved wife was run over by a car while videotaping Bigfoot. Years later, the tape ends up in the hands of a young woman who is taken hostage by a group of bank robbers in gorilla masks. (I’m just telling you what I saw, folks.)
6:30 am. Either Sasquatch Mountain is competent, or it takes on the sheen of competence when viewed at the end of a long night’s worth of Bigfoot’s Funniest Home Videos. Whatever the case, I am reminded yet again that, while I always think I like Bigfoot movies, that doesn’t often turn out to be the case. Somewhere in my head I have this notion of the perfect Bigfoot movie, but I’ve never seen it in real life. Sort of like the creature itself, I guess. It must be time for bed.