Winterbeast (1986).
“There’s no danger up here, just some assholes who are making it!”
Directed by Christopher Thies
Written by Christopher Thies
Starring Tim R. Morgan, Mike Magri, Charles Majka, a few others who you’ve never seen before and won’t see again, and Play-doh.
The Stage.
Weird stuff is going on in the woods around the Wild Goose ski lodge. Three cops are investigating the happenings, but the owner of the lodge refuses to shut down for the winter because it’s bad for business. Unfortunately for the visitors, the Native American curse that haunts the area is bad for everyone.
The Review.
This movie is wild. It feels like something my friends and I could have shot in high school if we had a summer to mess around and access to a couple of adults for the lead roles that would happily take beer and naps as payment.
I’ve seen movies that were low budget before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Blu-ray released for anything produced with the budget line listed as, “Whatever you can find in the couch cushions and on your walk to the set.” Actors are regularly flubbing lines which were just kept in the film anyway, the creature just changes wildly from scene to scene, and the editing is atrocious. All this to say, the movie is oddly endearing simply because of how small scale it feels.
The creature effects are insane. They range from people in costumes to full on stop motion claymation. In one scene, a topless damsel in distress looks out of her cabin window and the next, we cut to a claymation version of what I can only describe as Dollar General Groot, who reaches into the window, pulls out a Play-Doh version of the topless woman, and smacks her into the side of a clay house with a thud. I have seen student films that put this one to shame in regards to the production value. There are also full scenes with the music track going where you can see people speaking but you can’t hear anyone speaking, as if they forgot to layer that audio back in.
The story is one you’ve seen a million times, heck, we just kind of saw a similar story in my recent review of The Fear. Curses have been done to death and there’s nothing new in the story here. The characters are all horrendous actors but the guy who plays the lodge owner is particularly funny. If you’ve seen Wet Hot American Summer, I have to believe that Michael Showalter had somehow seen this and channeled the performance into his turn as the comedian who kicks off the camp talent show, because it is spot on what this dude was doing. Like I said, actors are misspeaking and flubbing lines and they’re just left in - at one point I had to rewind a bit to make sure I wasn’t going crazy.
The End.
Winterbeast is fascinating simply because it was released. As rough as everything is, there’s a quality about it that’s really fun to watch because you literally have no idea what’s coming next. The monster is a claymation alien one minute, and the next it’s a skull (that’s clearly a puppet) bursting out of somoene’s chest or a dinosaur clawing the top of a house. I find it impressive that the filmmakers just didn’t care and used whatever they had access to.
This one will be tough to find on its own. Vinegar Syndrome released this as part of their Homegrown Horrors set, and unfortunately, this is the best of the bunch. The disc is absolutely packed with special features (of which I have not yet been able to dive in) and it’s crazy that they were able to get some of these folks back for interviews because they’ve never been in anything else.
