Shriek of the Sasquatch 2011
Shriek of the Sasquatch 2011…
It’s 1979 and Julie (Scarlet Salem, “Strip Club Slasher”) and Nick (Donny Versiga) are on a road trip which puts them unwittingly on a collision course with Bigfoot. Will either of them survive to learn the secret of the Sasquatch? Pseudo-retro drive-in fun, complete with film damage. Filmed in 2010.
– Written by Steve Sessions (Director)
I watched two movies last night instead of Monday Night Football. First, was The Pact and then sadly it was this movie. Shriek of the Sasquatch! tries to be a ’70’s campy type movie. There’s just so much wrong with this movie. Some of the acting is just horrible. I don’t know if that was intentional or not. At one point there’s a phone conversation between a deputy and the coroner. There are times when they coroner is just reading his lines off the paper he’s holding that is supposed to be the autopsy report. It’s supposed to be 1979 and yet there’s scenes that suggest it’s at least the early 80’s.
The isn’t campy fun but rather it’s tedious to watch. The story is hard to follow because it’s hard to tell who the main characters are. We meet characters and they either die because our Sasquatch likes to rip off heads. Seriously, heads are flying everywhere. That sounds much more fun than it really is, trust me. Or, we meet characters and then never meet them again. For example for some reason a teenager and a slightly older lady are hanging out by a tree off the side of the road. Like this is something people would do in the 70’s? The scene goes on for a few painfully long minutes until the teen boy walks for what seems like a mile to throw away his “soda can” and then sees something in a field off in the distance. Guess, what? It’s a head in a helmet! I am shocked! All that just to introduce another beheading by our Sasquatch? Really?
And, let’s talk about our Sasquatch. It’s a dude in baggy hairy suit and a rubber mask that jiggles when he moves. The guy in the Sasquatch suit doesn’t even attempt to change his walk. You know that traditional Bigfoot walk we see in every blurry video and movie? Well, not this Sasquatch. This Sasquatch walks exactly like a normal dude.
Not even Scarlet Salem’s extreme cuteness can save this movie.
And, as I mentioned, there’s the time frame. It’s supposed to be 1979. In once scene we have President Carter talking to the people. So that’s right. But, then in another scene we have the two random people talking by the tree I mentioned. Well, for a moment they are talking about the movie Jaws. The older female suggests that it was years ago when Jaws was re-released. When it was in fact ’78, when it got re-released right before Jaws II came out. In another scene, another random character is reading a magazine, it’s got a picture from the film Scanners of Louis Del Grande character’s head exploding. Scanners didn’t come out until 1981.
How do I know all of that? Because I was 5 when Jaws came out and living in Okinawa. My mom said I was too young to see the movie. I made her promise that if the movie ever came out again that I could go see it. 3 years later we’re back in the states and guess what, Jaws gets re-released and I get to see it! By the time Scanners came out, I was a horror movie fan. Every kid my was age talking about that head exploding in Scanners. It was just about the coolest thing we had ever scene in our young lives except for about every single death in Friday the 13th.
So, I get what this film is trying to do. But, it got the time frame wrong, the acting wasn’t all that great either. Though I don’t it was supposed to be bad on purpose. If that was the case, than the acting was actually really good. But, the movie just dragged, it didn’t come off as campy or fun, it just came off as really boring.
The good things about this movie. The boobs in the opening scene and the tiny, tiny boobies in the van scene because in my opinion, there is no such thing as bad boobies or even fake boobies. If you can touch them, their not fake. Then there’s what they tried to do with the ending of the film. It was almost good. It made me smile even. It wasn’t worth the boredom of the first 89 minutes but at least it was something. Oh! And, I like the movie poster, well done. However, the movie doesn’t live up to the poster.
If you want an example of how to make an homage film to a past era? Take a look at the movie Alien Trespass with Eric Eric McCormack. It’s like watching a 50’s sci-fi movie in vivid living color!
Shriek of the Sasquatch! Yet another movie, I wanted to like but it was just another bad horror movie.
Cast of Characters:
Sarah French … Julie (as Scarlet Salem)
Donny Versiga … Nick
Todd Cockroft … Deputy Hobbs
If the cast of Finding Bigfoot found this guy, they’d give him back.