To misquote Feargal Sharkey “a good Bigfoot movie these days is hard to find”. From the boggy creek inspired pseudo-documentaries of the 1970s to the direct to DVD titles that currently plague our supermarkets, there have been an awful lot of Bigfoot movies over the years, and the number of bad ones far outnumber the good ones. Indeed the Bigfoot movie genre has such a stigma of awfulness attached to it, that it’s understandable if people choose to give it a wide berth these days.
There have been a couple of standout Bigfoot movies along this otherwise bumpy cinematic path though. A film from 2006 that deserves a shout out is ‘Abominable’, which we didn’t get in the UK till 2014. Abominable is basically Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but with Bigfoot. A wheelchair bound man who observes his neighbours through a telescope witnesses one of them being killed by Bigfoot, then has a tough time convincing others about what he has seen. It sounds like a joke movie, but Abominable really is a terrific, suspenseful, overlooked gem...written and directed by Ryan Schifrin, son of Lalo Schifrin, who provided the music for his son’s film. Abominable recently had a bells and whistles Blu-Ray release in the States, so hopefully that will cause it to appear on peoples’ radars, and earn it some much overdue acclaim.
When talking Bigfoot movies we can’t also overlook the disreputable, bad boy of the genre that is 1980’s Night of the Demon. Hands down the most goriest bigfoot movie ever made, whose enduring infamy rests on its appearance on the ‘Video Nasties’ list in the UK, and a scene in which a biker stops off to piss in a bush, only for an angered bigfoot to emerge from the undergrowth and pull the guy’s dick off. That film’s message is clear, be careful where you urinate when in the great outdoors, a pissed on bigfoot, will always be a pissed off bigfoot.
This brings us along to 1988’s Demonwarp, which gives Night of the Demon a run for its money in the ‘goriest Bigfoot movie ever’ stakes. It’s something of a photo-finish, but I think Night of the Demon takes the prize and Demonwarp has to settle for being the second goriest Bigfoot movie ever made. I can’t think of another movie though whose plot could so easily double as a series of ‘Weekly World News’ headlines ‘ALIENS TURNED MY UNCLE INTO BIGFOOT’, ‘POT-GROWING CO-ED HAS HER HEAD PULLED OFF BY BIGFOOT’, ‘ZOMBIES INVADE BRONSON CANYON’, ‘PASTOR ACCIDENTLY MISTAKES ALIEN FOR THE SECOND COMING’...incredibly all of that actually happens in Demonwarp, the only things that seem to be missing are an appearance by Bat-Boy and the cryogenically frozen corpse of Walt Disney.
Demonwarp stars George Kennedy, who of course everyone remembers from Hollywood classics like The Dirty Dozen and Cool Hand Luke and in his later years as Leslie Nielsen’s straight man in the Naked Gun movies. There was though this near forgotten chapter in George Kennedy’s career where he was getting a reputation as a ‘name’ headliner in low-budget horror movies, with appearances in this, Creepshow 2, Nightmare at Noon and Uninvited, before the Naked Gun series pulled him out of that career path. Whatever the genre though, few actors have played so many characters cursed with bad luck as George Kennedy. If George Kennedy gets onboard a ship in a movie its sure to sink, be possessed by ghost Nazis or a mutant car will stow away onboard, and if George gets onboard a plane in a movie you can be sure it will be hi-jacked by Islamic terrorists (lest we forget “I’m Jewish, and so was Jesus Christ”).
George’s run of cinematic bad luck spills on over into Demonwarp, where his character is spending some quality time with his daughter at a cabin in the woods...for all of about two minutes before, what would’ya know, fricking Bigfoot gatecrashes his way into the cabin. After his daughter is senselessly killed, George goes all Rambo on our asses, begins roaming the woods while armed to the teeth and sets up all manner of booby traps ....Bigfoot having after all drew first blood. George also takes to wearing a yellow hat, the stated reason for this being that it makes him more visible to Bigfoot. I guess the colour yellow is meant to have the same effect on Bigfoot that red does to a bull, and I’m sure George Kennedy’s adoption of this silly headgear had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it made him easier to stunt double.
Demonwarp is very much the late 1980s horror movie in a nutshell, you can immediately tell that the Friday the 13th series was still holy at the time this film was made. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before...there is this remote part of the woods that has developed a reputation for people mysteriously disappearing or being violently murdered there, so natch’ it’s a mecca for loud, fun loving teenagers who all wanna party with their ghetto blasters, take drugs and have pre-marital sex....yeah, you can see where this movie is going. Demonwarp’s second act is essentially a Friday the 13th movie with Bigfoot standing in for Jason. The film even has its own version of Tommy Jarvis, a guy called Jack, who has been mentally scared by a previous encounter with Bigfoot, but whose warnings about the creature fall on deaf ears.
Demonwarp also typifies the rise of the special effects artist as a horror movie selling point in the 1980s. It was one of the first, but certainly not the last, movies I remember seeing on the rental shelves whose cover emphasised its special effects team’s connections to other, more well known, horror movies “special effects by the team responsible for Re-Animator, From Beyond, Nightmare on Elm Street 4”.
Demonwarp appears to have originally been conceived as a vehicle for the special effects of John Carl Buechler. He designed the Bigfoot suit for the movie, wrote the original script, gets a ‘story by’ credit and was meant to direct the film before he got the gig to direct the seventh Friday the 13th movie instead. The job of directing the movie went to Emmett Alston, who was also responsible for a not very memorable slasher movie (New Year’s Evil) and a not very memorable Sho Kosugi vehicle (9 Deaths of a Ninja), on the basis of which Demonwarp and being replaced as the director of Enter the Ninja were probably his career highlights. It is understandable why Buechler chose to direct a Friday the 13th movie over Demonwarp. After all the Friday the 13th movie had probably four times the budget of Demonwarp, was made by a major studio and was part of a hugely successful movie franchise. Much as I like Friday the 13th part 7, I’ve always thought that Buechler was an odd choice as its director, especially as he wasn’t really a splatter effects kind of a guy, in the way that Tom Savini was. Buechler being better known as a wiz when it came to creature effects in fantasy movies. Demonwarp does feel like a movie more suited to his talents than Friday the 13th part 7.
Buechler of course, sadly passed away recently, and reading his obits does cause you to remember just how many brilliant movie monsters he was responsible for in films like Cellar Dweller, Ghoulies 1, 2 and 3, From Beyond, TerrorVision, Troll...he will be missed. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Buechler was to the VHS generation, what Ray Harryhausen was to people who grew up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
Buechler is also key to a theory I have that Troll, Ghoulies and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie are all part of a shared cinematic universe. Hear me out...in Troll, you see a portrait of a bald, gregarious looking fellow, which is actually a portrait of John Carl Buechler himself, but in the context of the film is meant to be the wizard Torok before he was transformed into a Troll. Hidden way in the background of that portrait is the ‘fish’ ghoulie from Ghoulies, and what do we find in the basement of The Garbage Pail Kids Movie but... the portrait of Torok from Troll, which also contains the fish ghoulie from Ghoulies. Anyway, that’s my theory as to how Ghoulies, Troll and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie are part of a shared universe...not that I’m holding my breath for a crossover movie anytime soon.
Buechler did have an instantly recognisable style when it came to creature effects, you really don’t need the video cover blurb to know that the Bigfoot costume in this film came from the guy who also worked on Troll, Cellar Dweller or Ghoulies. Buechler’s Bigfoot costume is undoubtedly his greatest gift to this production. In keeping with the late 1980s vibe of Demonwarp, the Bigfoot we get here is a super pumped Bigfoot who looks like he has been hitting the gym with Arnie and Sly. Bigfoot’s attacks on his victims resemble wrestling matches, with Bigfoot displaying a preference for pulling chokeholds on his victims. Suffice to say, this is one Bigfoot that the Hendersons wouldn’t want to take home with them.
Demonwarp does unfortunately suffer from a bit of downtime in-between Bigfoot attacks, where the film isn’t doing a great deal but lingering on an uninteresting bunch of teenagers and showcasing some young, rather wooden actors. My main issue with Demonwarp is one I have with allot of slasher movies, it is extremely predictable in terms of who is gonna live and who is gonna die. Pretty much from the get-go you know that Jack and his smart, sensible girlfriend are gonna go the distance, and that other characters like the pair of jocks who love pulling pranks are dead meat, ditto the pair of beer swilling co-eds who are trying to grow pot in the woods. It makes you wonder why none of these films succumb to the temptation of tearing up the rule book, killing off the goody two shoes characters and letting the obnoxious pranksters or the airheaded co-eds live to fight another day. Demonwarp though is a stickler to tradition in that respect, everyone you expect to die, dies, everyone you expect to live, lives.
one of these people is related to George Kennedy, the other is topless.
George Kennedy probably wished one of those beer swilling co-eds had more screen time as well, especially as one of them is played by his daughter Shannon. The behind the scenes story is that as part of his contract- Kennedy was paid 15,000 dollars for three days work on the film- there had to be a role for his daughter in Demonwarp. Now, when I first heard the story about George Kennedy’s daughter being in this film I automatically assumed that she played his daughter in the film, which would make sense, and Kennedy and the actress who plays his daughter do have quite the natural, onscreen chemistry. This isn’t the case however, Shannon Kennedy is one of the two airheads who break so many of the rules of how to survive in a 1980s horror film, they listen to rock music, they drink beer, they’re promiscuous, they’re trying to grow pot, and one of them takes her top off. Not Shannon though, the story is that there was allegedly some pressure put on Shannon Kennedy to take her top off for the film, which she wouldn’t do, and this incident is meant to have lead to some ill-feelings between George Kennedy and the filmmakers, which is understandable.
The other girl in this scene is played by 1980s Scream Queen Michelle Bauer, who of course was allot more forthcoming in the nudity department, and as a result does get a bit more screen time to bare the breasts and exercise the lungs that she was famous for back then. If it’s any compensation Shannon Kennedy does –hands down- get the most spectacular death scene in the film. However given this story about her being pressured to do nudity for the film, you can’t help but wonder if there was a degree of vindictiveness behind giving her such a thankless role in the film and such an ultra-violent death scene.
For all its occasional dull spots (just how many times do we need to see characters walking about in the woods) stick with Demonwarp, as it comes back strongly in its third act. Demonwarp’s greatest trick is conning you into thinking that it is just a simple Bigfoot movie and something of a spent force at its midway point. By that stage you’ve seen allot of the Bigfoot, you’ve seen nudity and you’ve seen gore, and there is the feeling that the film has run out of steam. Don’t be fooled however, for Demonwarp has a whole bunch o’ crazy to hand that it has yet to offload on you. How nutzoid does this film get? How about all of Bigfoot’s victims coming back to life as zombies, who steal electronic equipment in order to rebuild a UFO? How about Bigfoot turning out to be a normal man who had been abducted by an alien and transformed into a beast (as I said, this film’s plot is straight out of the Weekly World News). How about throwing in a mad Priest who sacrifices nude girls on an altar, and feeds their hearts to the aforementioned alien...who following in the footsteps of Robot Monster, hides out in a cave in Bronson Canyon. Demonwarp might be a Bigfoot movie, but it eventually reveals itself to be a Bigfoot movie with lots of extra toppings.
In that sense Demonwarp does begin to resemble Spookies (1986) another non-stop orgy in the special effects department, that feels more like a show reel for its make-up artists than a narrative film. Demonwarp does have the occasional whiff of calculated, cynical thinking behind it, as if the film was conceived by a bunch of corporate suits who brought a copy of Fangoria or Gorezone to the business table, and tried to nail down all the elements that made horror movie such big money earners. “We need lots of dumb teenagers who go to a cabin in the woods, and zombie movies seem to be renting well, we need some zombies in this movie, and we need one of those scream queens to get her tits out in this movie, and some other young actresses to get their tits out in this movie, and a star whose name will look good on the VHS box... Martin Landau?, Jack Palance?...maybe George Kennedy?...George Kennedy is available?, but he insists on his daughter being in the movie, ....will she get her tits out as well?”
Demonwarp is unwavering in its belief that throwing all of the successful elements of the horror genre into one, big movie is a guaranteed recipe for success. The maxim that ‘too many cooks can spoil the broth’ is completely alien to this movie...zombies, an alien, Bigfoot, a Scream Queen, a star name, they all get thrown in the stew here. Demonwarp is all about excess and stupidity... it is after all a film from the 1980s. If future generations need a crash course in all that rocked the genre’s boat back then, look no further, and if you love the 1980s, and love old school, practical effects then Demonwarp may well cause you to cum in your pants.... ‘nuff said.
No comments:
Post a Comment