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The Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti/Yowie/Yeren/Skunk Ape/Grassman has always been a subject that fascinated me from an early age. I grew up with various Bigfoot "documentaries" playing on cable in regular rotation, and as a kid I probably never went more than a month without seeing that Patterson-Gimlin film in some form. It was a world before Ancient Aliens dominated, and cryptids like Bigfoot and Nessie ruled the Earth. As I got older I had no choice but to accept that even though Bigfoot was 100% totally real, Hollywood was never going to treat him properly. It's been a never ending parade of zero budget amateur filmmakers who think "if Patterson and Gimlin could do it, why can't I?" But it turns out that putting a convincing Bigfoot on screen is harder than it sounds, and the subgenre is mostly a wasteland. But that's what we do right? We dig through the garbage dump that is low budget horror because we just never know what may be in there. We find valuable stuff in that dump almost every day. So in that spirit, I will be going through a selection of various Bigfoot movies that are mostly just obscure Amazon Video footnotes to see if any hidden gems may be out there. The answer is almost certainly no. But I'm doing it anyway.  American Bigfoot The Bigfoot: There are some fleeting moments where the Bigfoot is effective here, including the opening scene. They do some good sound design for the heavy steps and heavy breathing, and then they shoot it from a low angle to make it seem a lot bigger than it actually is. You could cherry pick 4 or 5 stills from the movie and think it was made by someone who knows how to portray a Bigfoot on a low budget without it becoming goofy. Unfortunately as it goes on you see a LOT of the Bigfoot in full daylight and any amount of close up detail does this particular Bigfoot costume no favors. In several shots you can see the camo gloves of the performer in the suit, like the actual neoprene type material of the gloves is shown in excruciating close up. That says it all I guess, they just didn't have the money for a legit Bigfoot suit and they decided to brazenly show the Bigfoot anyway. Score: 3/10 Everything Else: Well the biggest thing to notice is that they somehow roped Zach Galligan(of Gremlins and Waxwork) into the project, so you might think that gives them a leg up against some of the other crappy Bigfoot movies out there. But ehhh, Galligan is not really doing anything special to elevate this. Clint Howard also makes a quick appearance but if you go to the fridge to grab a beer at the wrong time you might miss him. The story is theoretically ok but in a perfect world it's the sort of thing that would require the Bigfoot being able to display some actual emotion, as this is basically a revenge story, and like I mentioned above this Bigfoot wasn't up to that. There are some kills but no real competent special effects work to speak of. The setting(which can save a movie like this) is fairly generic woods shot in a boring flat way. The actors who play all of the side characters are mostly atrocious, which is no surprise. Score: 4/10(probably a bit generous but hey they were able to cast Zach Galligan so points for that I guess) So a total score of 7/20, we'll see how that stacks up in the end. I expect I'm in for a lot worse, to be honest. 1. American Bigfoot(7/20)
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May 1, 2023 15:21
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The Relic is also based on a novel that is excellent airport/beach reading. It was one of my favorite books when I was like 12 and the release of the movie was a BIG deal. Actually the book series is still ongoing, except it's centered on a character that somehow ended up being totally deleted from the movie version. Personally I think the ending of the book was better than the movie, but I can see how it would've been tough to translate to film. What happens is that over the course of the book, they learn things about the creature, and one thing they learn is that it's skull is super think like an elephant's. So they end up killing it because one of the characters is a dead-eye pistol shot, so he lets it charge him and then he puts a shot right in it's eye. The bullet then ricochets inside it's thick skull and kills it.
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May 1, 2023 20:28
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Xiahou Dun posted:Wait are The Relic books still on-going or do you just mean the continued of adventures of Agent Pendergast, Southern-fried albino Mary Sue? Yea sorry, not really a Relic series just the Pendergast series. Which I do think had some standouts not including Relic or Reliquary. Still Life With Crows and Cabinet of Curiosities were very good.
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May 1, 2023 21:59
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Well I sure am glad I was a little generous with my rating of the first Bigfoot movie, because this one I'm watching now is so so much worse. I would've hated to give American Bigfoot a 0 and then had nowhere to go from there.
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May 1, 2023 22:50
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Gripweed posted:I will never understand why it's so hard to make a good Bigfoot movie. They did it once with Legend of Boggy Creek, so we know it's possible. Low budget indies aside, what I don't get is why nobody has ever tried putting some real money into it. I'd love to see someone put like 30 million into a Bigfoot movie. Cocaine Bear cost like 30 million. The closest we've had was definitely Harry and the Hendersons, but I want something scary.
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May 2, 2023 02:24
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 Terror at Bigfoot Pond The Bigfoot: I'll admit that I did soften on this Bigfoot as the movie went on, only because I started to realize that it at least had some self awareness to it. At first I thought it was maybe the goofiest Bigfoot I'd ever seen, and that's still true but I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and say that some of that was intentional. The goofiest thing about it was the performer in the suit. The concept of the movie is that this Bigfoot is creeping around the outskirts of this little camp, and the cameras are catching glimpses of him but of course the characters take a while to figure out what's going on. So you have a bunch of scenes with this performer in the suit sneaking around looking like Snidley Whiplash and then also their favorite move was to randomly strike the iconic Patterson-Gimlin pose, but over and over again. At no point is there any feeling at all that this thing is actually a creature and not just a drunk guy in a suit. But like I said, as the movie went on I started to get the sense that they were acting like that on purpose, it's hard to come to any other conclusion when you eventually have the Bigfoot donning one of the campers bandanas and trying to imitate them. Not the mention the ultra closeups of the Bigfoot's face which are ridiculous in their own right. Score: 2/10(would've been a zero if not for the bandanna) Everything Else: Now this is where I just have nothing to even be generous about. The actors are horrible, and that's fine that's to be expected. But really the whole setup of the movie is egregiously bad, like "why did you even bother" type stuff. I mean they literally didn't even have a real pond(and yet they put Bigfoot Pond in the title) to work with, they thought they could somehow shoot this thing next to a large mud puddle and pretend it's a small lake/pond. At one point the characters decide to go skinny dipping and it's an incredibly sad sight as they strip down and then sit in a small circle in the middle of this gross mud puddle. In another scene they dance around a campfire and the women take their tops off but like....why? Are these people nudists? I know I'm a loser but I've never been at a camp site with a bunch of friends where the women just all the sudden take their tops off for no particular reason. When the poo poo hits the fan it gets even worse because the characters are wearing GoPro type cameras(which is barely justified) and they narrate their own life or death struggles in the most forced artificial way possible. No surprise, but this is another one with no special effects to speak of, so all the kills are either off camera or laughably bad. Score: 0/10 So total score of 2/20, overall this is a movie that shouldn't have been made except for the fact that a Bigfoot wears a bandanna and taunts the camera with the Patterson-Gimlin pose. 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror At Bigfoot Pond Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 17:05 on May 2, 2023 |
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May 2, 2023 16:32
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 Scream 6 It's Spring Cleaning, time to take care of a few major releases that I skipped over from the past year or so. Scream 6 is probably the biggest of the bunch, the one that's been the hardest to resist reading spoilers on. But I did it, I went in totally blind and still with the faint hope that maybe they'd pulled off a massive swerve and Sydney was actually the killer. Well, no, that did not happen and I think for me this series has fully run it's course. The process of evaluating the suspects and trying to guess the killer(s) has become old hat, and I just don't have much fun with it anymore. Especially(and I saw someone in the Scream thread mention this) given that they seem to have established this one archetype for Scream killers where every actor who does it feels pretty much the same. They all basically do some form of the Matthew Lillard "It's a Scream baby!" manic character or the Skeet Ulrich creepy Kubrick stare thing and that's about it. Ultimately as much as I understand the need to move forward with new characters, personally my interest took a nosedive with the double whammy of Dewey's death in Scream 5 and then the news of Neve Campbell not returning for this one. Gale, Dewey, and Sid together made for a unique slasher series, without them it's starting to kinda blend in with all of the generic slasher background noise that's constantly out there. Throwing me a bone with some references to the original trilogy isn't enough. That said, I had a better time with it than I did with Scream 5. The setting was at least somewhat fresh, and there were a few classic Scream stalk/chase scenes that were better than anything in 5. I may not end up fully completing the challenges but we'll see how it goes, may as well start tracking them now: 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream Challenges Completed: 4. Fresh Hell(Scream 6) Meta Challenges: History Lesson(1/5), Geography Lesson(1/5)
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May 3, 2023 18:26
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Shaman Tank Spec posted:At this point it's going to be impossible to try to roleplay a 1960 movie watcher and pretend that I am approaching Psycho from the cultural context it was released in, so I'm not even going to bother and instead will just talk about the movie as I saw it in 2023. Definitely impossible to truly put yourself in the shoes of those people in 1960, but if you try to imagine it for a minute the movie just seems even more amazing. The genius of Hitchcock that he basically made an entire first act of what he knew to be "standard Hitchcock" that people had become accostomed to. The somewhat innocent woman on the run, in over her head and being tracked by police, a life changing stack of cash is at stake. Everything about it sets you up to kinda just ease into that comfortable Hitchcock zone where you enjoy another one of his capers. So that rug pull is even more ridiculous if you can imagine it in that context. The extent he was willing to go to set the audiences expectations so that he could then blow them away. Kinda odd actually to also think about that commercial he did for the movie where he shows off the Bates motel/house. I guess marketing trumped any sort of modern concept of spoilers that we would have today.
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May 3, 2023 21:52
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 Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch The Bigfoot: This was a bit of an odd looking Bigfoot, but I actually liked it. A lot more effort put into the face than the two previous Bigfeet I've seen this month, and I dunno I just think there's a lot of character in this one. It kinda looks like an old grizzled Bigfoot(or Sasquatch, excuse me) and obviously they just had a lot more money to put into the suit overall than something like American Bigfoot which looked more like Cousin It. All that said, the movie is pretty typical in how it treats the Bigfoot in terms of screentime. The Bigfoot rarely appears and when it does you don't really ever get a clear shot of it like the one below. The score would be higher if I saw more of it. But there's no arguing that this is a clear upgrade from what I've watched so far:  Score: 5/10 Everything Else: Also an upgrade, mainly because the setting feels more appropriate for a Bigfoot story. It's forest that feels like that stereotypical Pacific Northwest forest that you'd find a Bigfoot in. It's not a mud puddle in the middle of an open field, they actually went to a real forest and shot the movie there. There's also just a more confident directing hand at work, not that we're talking about the next Kubrick here or anything but the director was trying things and using techniques to give the movie some atmosphere. The acting is still pretty bad though, but even there I'd still call it a slight upgrade from the previous two films I've watched. Score: 5/10 Total Score of 10/20, which realistically could end up taking the crown when this is all said and done. In the world of Bigfoot films, mediocrity can seem like a home run. 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch Challenges Completed: 2. Tales From the Cryptids(take your pick) 4. Fresh Hell(Scream 6) Meta Challenges: History Lesson(1/5), Geography Lesson(1/5)
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May 5, 2023 15:49
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 M3GAN There was a lot to like here. Overall I agree with a lot of the comments/buzz surrounding the film, i.e. that it's pretty straightforward and also fairly restrained. It gives you exactly what you'd expect from the premise, but it does it very well. It gets in and gets out, never in danger of wearing out it's welcome, and learns hard into the natural(or more accurately, unnatural) creepiness that comes with M3GAN's appearance and movements. There's also some decent comedy within the company and the various employees and executives that are trying to develop and market M3GAN. All in all a solidly entertaining little movie, but I'm definitely happy to hear that it's getting a sequel. I feel like there's a great base that was established here for like a Child's Play style escalation where they could really get weird and wild with it in the sequels. Hopefully with the confidence from this success they feel like they can get even more creative and not just give us more of the same. 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch Challenges Completed: 2. Tales From the Cryptids(take your pick) 4. Fresh Hell(Scream 6) 10. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things(M3GAN) Meta Challenges: History Lesson(1/5), Geography Lesson(1/5)
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May 8, 2023 17:22
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 Exists This is a bit of a cheat because I was pretty sure I'd seen it and I was right, I had. But I wanted to include it just because it's I think pretty widely regarded as the best Bigfoot movie that isn't Boggy Creek. Or at least one of the best. The Bigfoot: I think this is probably a bit divisive just because there is a mix of CG and practical effects at play with this Bigfoot. So some people will immediately dismiss it because of the presence of CG. Not me though, I've always felt that to really do Bigfoot justice, someone was probably going to have to use some CG. But tastefully and for a purpose, which I think Exists succeeds at doing. When the otherworldly size and ferocity of the Bigfoot needs to be displayed, the CG is used but it's shot in a purposeful way that doesn't overly expose it's flaws. Other times when we want to see more up close detail of the Bigfoot, it's done practically.  Score: 7/10 Everything Else: The film was directed by Eduardo Sanchez who also did The Blair Witch Project. So you know the guy is experienced with found footage and Bigfoot is a subject that obviously lends itself to that pretty well. The actors are ok, nothing special but certainly they would rank at or near the top of the Bigfoot movies I've watched so far. But again, this is kinda cheating because I knew this movie was put together fairly well and wasn't going to be the in the same category of production as most of my other selections. Score: 6/10 The total of 13/20 is the winner so far, but we're still not even close to what I would consider the Bigfoot movie of my dreams. 13/20 is Citizen Kane though compared to the majority of what this subgenre has to offer. 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch 5. M3GAN 6. Exists Challenges Completed: 2. Tales From the Cryptids(take your pick) 4. Fresh Hell(Scream 6) 10. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things(M3GAN) Meta Challenges: History Lesson(1/5), Geography Lesson(1/5)
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May 9, 2023 18:04
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Yea that scene makes me physically ill. The most recent few times I've rewatched the movie I pretty much just look completely away from the screen until it's over.
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May 10, 2023 18:44
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 Terrifier 2 This is one of the last newer releases I wanted to check off the list, this challenge is typically what I use to catch up on these things. I was not a fan of the first Terrifier, so I certainly wasn't very enthusiastic about sitting down to a 2.5 hour sequel to it. The buzz around Terrifier 2 was very very strong though, and some of the stuff I'd heard about it made me think it was worth a shot. And yea, I think in the end it was. There's certainly more to this one, they went beyond the very stripped down gore effects showcase/montage that was the first film and got more creative with Art and what he represents. We're given a chance to see things at least partially from his disturbed point of view, and there's a lot more to chew on in terms of why he exists and why he can do the things he does. A better foundation is established where they could potentially build more interesting things onto it in more sequels to come. So I definitely liked it a lot more than Terrifier, BUT with that said it's still not really my thing and I think the gore is too much. Not too much like I'm offended or grossed out by it, I just think some of the gore scenes are so extended and so detailed that they become redundant and pointless. Like, how many times do we need to see Art completely obliterate a person's face? It gets repetitive. And that's an aspect of Terrifier that I don't really see changing, that's become part of the "brand" and they'll most likely only ramp things up even more in that department. Oh well, obviously some people really love that style so to each their own. 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch 5. M3GAN 6. Exists 7. Terrifier 2 Challenges Completed: 2. Tales From the Cryptids(take your pick) 4. Fresh Hell(Scream 6) 10. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things(M3GAN) Meta Challenges: History Lesson(1/5), Geography Lesson(1/5)
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May 11, 2023 16:42
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Yea I rewatched Mad God fairly recently and it feels like I'm making progress on understanding it but only gradually. I love that about it, I feel like I could revisit it ten more times and notice new stuff each time. Also keep your eye out for a quick appearance from the classic Ray Harryhausen cyclops from 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
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May 12, 2023 15:23
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M_Sinistrari posted:First time I saw the trailer, it made me feel the same way I did when I first saw the video for Sober. I was just so pulled in I barely paid attention to the song. Each watch of Mad God, I go in focussed on I'm going to follow the plot. Assassin goes into the underworld and...oooh what's that over there, I wonder how they did that construct....and yeah, more derailed than a dog noticing a squirrel. From what I've pieced together so far I feel like it's key to understand the dynamic between the actual human actor(listed in the credits as The Last Man) and the bizarre magic ritual stuff that the monster in the underground is doing. The Last Man seems intent on destroying that whole underground world by sending the assassins with the bombs but then the magic being performed down there seems to be powered by whatever that weird larvae thing was that they pulled out of the captured assassin. So there's a self-perpetuating aspect to the whole thing, but I feel like I've only understood it on a very surface level so far.
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May 12, 2023 17:01
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 Primal Rage The Bigfoot: A very interesting Bigfoot(or Sasquatch) to be sure. I give them credit for trying to do something new with Bigfoot and mostly succeeding. Without getting into too much detail, this Bigfoot has much more of a human characterization which I think has a side benefit of making the performer's movements less distracting. The Bigfoot is more human, therefore I don't mind that it's movements often feel very human. This was also on the higher end of the spectrum in terms of Bigfoot movie budgets. They don't shy away from showing the Bigfoot and they don't really have to, it looks pretty drat good even in daylight and close up. It's not perfect(I'm not a huge fan of the design of the face), but still clearly on another level from some of the crap I've already watched this month. I can't give it a perfect score because to me perfect would be a mean a more classic Bigfoot, but this is still a very solid score. Score: 8/10  Everything Else: Ehhhh it was hit or miss. Some of the acting was very good, but then even those same actors had some weird stilted scenes that weren't great. That's how it is with the two leads, it feels like they have good chemistry in one scene and then in another scene all the sudden they don't. Strange. One thing that does separate it from a lot of the cheaper Bigfoot films I've seen is that it does have some visual style to it. It's shot pretty well and it has a color grading that makes it feel a lot less flat than it would otherwise. Still, the main draw is the unique and well done Bigfoot. Score: 6/10 Total Score: 14/20 - One point better than Exists, making Primal Rage the top ranked Bigfoot of the month so far. 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 6 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch 5. M3GAN 6. Exists 7. Terrifier 2 8. Primal Rage Challenges Completed: 2. Tales From the Cryptids(take your pick) 4. Fresh Hell(Scream 6) 10. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things(M3GAN) Meta Challenges: History Lesson(1/5), Geography Lesson(1/5)
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May 15, 2023 16:37
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It's up against Spielberg's Duel in the Bracketology thread. Duel is representing one of my teams so I needed a few people to not like Alice Sweet Alice if I'm gonna win.
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May 16, 2023 15:02
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Franchescanado posted:Feels like an easy win for Duel. Duel is so good. Alice Sweet Alice is great but also off-putting. Yea that was my take, Alice Sweet Alice is too much of a specific taste to be able to take down Duel. But we shall see. I definitely don't expect it to be a shutout.
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May 16, 2023 15:08
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A few rewatches before I dive back in for a couple more Bigfoot movies. Texas Chainsaw Massacre I'd been holding onto the new UHD for a few months, figured I'd wait for the weather to heat up a bit. Anyway I think you'd get a range of opinions on whether a movie like TCM really benefits from the UHD treatment. Is the movie better when watched on a beat up VHS than a top of the line UHD? That line of thinking makes sense in a way because it's a movie that gets better the more you slide into it's sweaty griminess. That said, the 4k transfer doesn't remove any of that, in fact you could argue that in some places it maybe even goes a bit too far. The grain is extremely heavy and there are a few places where you do get that "swarm" effect and I'm not a huge fan of that. Overall though the graininess is what you want from TCM, and the 4k release definitely maintains that great texture of a down and dirty(yet extremely well shot) midnight drive-in type film.  Signs In the early 2000s I kinda rolled my eyes at the "loss of faith" storyline that is at the core of Signs. The resolution at the end of the film felt more like a Shyamalan contrivance than something truly earned, but watching it now after at least a decade since the last time, I feel differently about it. I think the genius of it is that it works if you want it to work. It kinda teaches you a lesson about faith in that way, faith is something you have to put effort into because you have to want it. If Gibson's character had chosen to fully abandon his faith, he would've ignored the so-called coincidences and Merrill may have never picked up the bat in that moment. In the end, we get to choose how we see the universe and in a sense we determine our own reality. All of that is of course added on top to what I already enjoyed about Signs, which is some genuinely cool and creepy stuff. We don't get a lot of big studio movies on this subject and it's always a good time when you get to see it done right. 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 6 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch 5. M3GAN 6. Exists 7. Terrifier 2 8. Primal Rage 9. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 10. Signs Challenges Completed: 2. Tales From the Cryptids(take your pick) 4. Fresh Hell(Scream 6) 10. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things(M3GAN) Meta Challenges: History Lesson(1/5), Geography Lesson(1/5)
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May 18, 2023 15:26
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 Dawn of the Beast The Bigfoot: This was a double disappointment because not only was there very little Bigfoot in the movie, the Bigfoot itself is pretty crappy. The makeup effects are decent but I don't like the design at all, it looks more like a Lon Chaney Jr. Wolfman than a Bigfoot. Unfortunately I don't really have much more to say about it because like I mentioned, the Bigfoot is barely in the movie. They lean much more into the Wendigo creatures, which are equally strange in their design but I'm not getting paid to evaluate Wendigos here, my job is Bigfeet. Score: 2/10 Everything Else: It's a well shot film, on the technical side it looks pretty good. That's about the only compliment I can give it, because everything else is just boring and uninspired. So it's actually an odd combination of technically competent filmmaking but without any sort of compelling material to actually make a film out of. It feels like they came up with a one line elevator pitch: People get attacked by Wendigos in the woods and then get saved by Bigfoot, and weren't able to build a movie around it to deliver that moment in a satisfying way. 1/10 Total Score 3/20 It's interesting how I came away from something like this actually preferring the zero budget stuff where people sit around a mud puddle while a guy in a Bigfoot suit does the Robot on the edge of the frame. This felt like a worse offense because they had some ingredients to make something good and didn't even come close to doing it. 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 6 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch 5. M3GAN 6. Exists 7. Terrifier 2 8. Primal Rage 9. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 10. Signs 11. Dawn of the Beast Challenges Completed: 2. Tales From the Cryptids(take your pick) 4. Fresh Hell(Scream 6) 10. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things(M3GAN) Meta Challenges: History Lesson(1/5), Geography Lesson(1/5)
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May 19, 2023 17:56
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 Interviewing Monsters and Bigfoot Your expectations of this movie can be drastically different depending on the poster you see. If you look at the poster above you might have some decent hopes that this could be a well done horror comedy with some solid Bigfoot action. On the other hand if you see the poster below, you immediately get a look at this guy's ugly mug and you know exactly what you're in for:  The Bigfoot: There's barely an effort to create a convincing Bigfoot because this is a goofy parody movie. You're not supposed to take the Bigfoot seriously, which personally I find to be offensive. Bigfoot is serious business. Score: 1/10 Everything Else: It's not funny, it's not scary, and more often than not it's just kinda annoying. Not particularly shocking considering the talent involved, but I pressed play on a Bigfoot movie so I gutted it out to the end. Honestly I'm not even really counting this one towards my overall total for the Challenge, so I'll be watching 14 movies just to make sure I have enough for real completion. But I had to watch this so you have to hear about it. Score: 0/10 Total: 1/20 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 6 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch 5. M3GAN 6. Exists 7. Terrifier 2 8. Primal Rage 9. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 10. Signs 11. Dawn of the Beast 12. Interviewing Monsters and Bigfoot
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May 23, 2023 14:43
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Well life got in the way of my Bigfoot quest a bit but here's a few more for the road... Bigfoot: The Conspiracy The Bigfoot: Very little Bigfoot in the movie, and what Bigfoot there is tells you pretty clearly that the filmmaker was not that interested in making a Bigfoot movie in the first place. It's really just a framing device to tell his little Spy vs. Spy/Good Man Protects His Family From Government Assassins story. Maybe not exactly fair to give a Bigfoot like this a low score because it's not really what the movie is going for, but at the same time this is a simple question of whether or not the movie delivered a good Bigfoot. It did not. Score: 1/10 Everything Else: Woah, this movie is legit, look at how many festival nominations it scored!  It's a very self-serious movie about government spooks trying to catch Bigfoot for reasons that I know were explained but my eyes glazed over. The main protagonist however is a regular dude who loves his family and also loves to sit around glowering off into the distance. From what I can tell, the director of the film cast most of his family in the movie. None of them are particularly good actors and the script is something one of those new AI tools could write. It's bad! I give it a few sympathy points for a family getting together and making a movie, that's pretty cool I guess. Score: 2/10 Total Score: 3/20 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 6 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch 5. M3GAN 6. Exists 7. Terrifier 2 8. Primal Rage 9. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 10. Signs 11. Dawn of the Beast 12. Interviewing Monsters and Bigfoot 13. Bigfoot: The Conspiracy
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May 30, 2023 14:39
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 Pearl I hadn't really planned for this to be my last movie of the challenge but I'm glad it was because it's gotta be the best horror of 2022. Especially if you're into the whole aesthetic, which I was, Pearl feels like it might be Ti West's first real masterpiece. I say it "feels like" that because I can never be sure about those things on first viewing, but man the movie was just excellent in a bunch of areas. Like I mentioned the look of the film is something we've never seen from West up to this point, and then the performances are great, obviously with Goth being the centerpiece of the whole thing. It's crazy to think that this movie could easily not even exist if not for the production delays on X. It feels very much in alignment with X thematically and with Goth's presence both on screen and in the writing, we could be looking at one of the all-time great trilogies here depending on how the next one shakes out. I'd love to see a UHD release at some point. So that's my final tally. I watched some Bigfoot movies but not too many, and cleaned up some of the biggest missing pieces from the genre this past year. My goals didn't really line up with doing the extra challenges this time but I did finish the basic 13 movie challenge: 1. American Bigfoot 2. Terror on Bigfoot Pond 3. Scream 6 4. Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch 5. M3GAN 6. Exists 7. Terrifier 2 8. Primal Rage 9. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 10. Signs 11. Dawn of the Beast 12. Interviewing Monsters and Bigfoot 13. Bigfoot: The Conspiracy 14. Pearl
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May 31, 2023 14:57
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I was someone who didn't think he had it in him. I really enjoyed House of the Devil, but Innkeepers underwhelmed me and then I didn't like The Sacrament at all. X made me sit up and take notice but it didn't change my overall opinion of West. Pearl is the best his writing has ever been so I can only assume that Mia Goth gets a ton of the credit there, but Pearl is also great visually and I didn't really think of West as that kind of director.
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May 31, 2023 16:17
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gey muckle mowser posted:Yeah I was proud of that one, haha. I'm glad people seemed to like the challenges in general, I put some effort in to avoid overlap with the challenges Fran tends to use in October. Which is hard when Spooky Bingo has 36 of them. As we finish up this year's May Challenge, which was excellent, I do want to mention to everyone that Fran has passed the torch to me(at least for this year) and I will be running the October Challenge. I'm in the process of putting together the bonus challenges and if anyone wants to PM me some suggestions I'd appreciate the contributions. I do think I'm leaning towards doing something more in line with what you did rather than Spooky Bingo, if only because this is my first time doing something like this and I think the smart move is to keep things a little simpler. I have a few ideas though that I'd definitely welcome opinions on, and hey if people really feel strongly about Spooky Bingo then you can let me know that as well. First, I like the idea you had of giving people a subset of challenges that can be applied to other challenges, i.e. you can watch one film and it can apply to multiple challenges. So I think it would be good to continue that. Secondly, I personally love rewatching my favorite classics in October, so I plan to give people a bigger opportunity to do that within the challenges. Maybe a mix where not every challenge can be completed with a rewatch, but more than we've had in the past. Third, I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on the timing of when we post the challenges. I know people have expressed in the past that they want them right away so they can plan things out, but would it be even better to know them like a week or two in advance? It's a minor issue but I'd be happy to just do it however the majority want it done. Anyway more to come obviously because we're still 4 months out.
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Jun 1, 2023 15:49
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