Monster of the Day #190

So what .. is this a human/tortoiseshell cat hybrid?

Of course I knew that. That was just my idea of humor.

I this is the scene from “The Godfather” where Vito is playing with the grandchild in the garden and doing the orange rind just before keeling over.

I am not sure what was the most frightening thing about “Snow Beast”. It was either Bo Svenson in ski pants or Bo Svenson in a hot tub.

For those uncertain, this is from Shriek of the Mutilated. There’s a similar screenshot in Dr. Freex’s review of said movie.

Oh, yes, Shriek of the Mutilated. The worst bigfoot/yeti movie ever made? If not, I’d say it has to be in the top three.

Retromedia recently did a release of this turkey, but they made some edits (the print is pretty nice, for what that’s worth). Most noted is the removal of the hit pop tune “Popcorn” from the soundtrack, which I found after viewing the film a seocnd time in twelve years was actually the best part of the movie. Even more intrusive was that they played with the contrast in a flashback scene. I remember getting a good chuckle from this flashback, supposedly showing a yeti attack in the blinding snow, but we can see there isn’t a flake of snow anywhere to be seen! They were shooting out in the woods on what certainly looked like a cold day, but minus the snow the character kept going on about! In the Retromedia release, they’ve turned up the light and washed the image out. Now it looks like there’s snow, but you can’t see anything else! If you can, I’d suggest hunting down the old video copy* and watch that. I’ll warn you though, everything in this movie is inept, and worse, dull. The acting is bad, the script is bad, the lights, camerawork, editing, all terrible. I was stunned. I’ve seen plenty of poorly made drive-in movies, but this one was testing me something fierce!

* I’m told there were two different video versions as well, one featureing “Popcorn” and one with genreic party music.

A creepy thing about Shreik of the Mutilated is how everyone’s performance improves after the shock twist in the final act. I won’t go into it for the sake of those who haven’t seen it, but that the actors suddenly seem to be having fun with their parts is a little disturbing.

is there a good “big foot” movie?

Some of the Yeti films are watchable, I wonder why they screw up “Big Foot”

Is Courage the Cowardly Dog the only one that opined why the beast is not called “Big Feet”?

Good Bigfoot movies, though few, do exist. One of the best may be Creature From Black Lake (1974?). The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) has its fans, and for a bogus documentary isn’t bad. I hope that someday someone write a book about 70s bigfoot movies, as the genre is fairly large for a microgenre, but hasn’t been well represented.

Abominable, while maybe not good in a traditional sense, ended up being a good deal of bloody fun. Definitely high on the curve for Bigfoot movies.

Braineater’s review of Black Lake sounded good enough to make me want to see it.

I’m hanging tough with the highly defensible claim that there are, in fact, NO good yeti or bigfoot movies. Probably the closest is Hammer’s Abominable Smowman, but even it is terminally slow and stagey.