Fantastic Fest Review: “Wild Man of the Navidad”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Here’s a surefire way to get me to attend a screening of your home-grown, no-budget movie: conceive it as an homage to the grimy backwoods horror classics of the ‘70s and put Bigfoot in it. Make it a Texas Bigfoot movie and I’ll be first in line. (I attended the Texas Bigfoot Conference a few years back, and you can read all about it – I know you saw this coming – in Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema.) That’s more or less what first-time feature filmmakers Justin Meeks and Duane Graves have done (with an assist from original Texas Chain Saw Massacre writer/producer Kim Henkel) in Wild Man of the Navidad.

Sure, you could argue that the Wild Man isn’t technically Bigfoot, but like the “Fouke Monster” of The Legend of Boggy Creek (surely an influence on Meeks and Graves), he’s a big, hairy cousin of our friend Sasquatch. Like Boggy Creek and its other '70s ancestors (including Chain Saw), Wild Man purports to be based on a true story, in this case the journals of rancher Dale S. Rogers of the tiny town of Sublime, Texas. Meeks plays Rogers in the film as a troubled man with a catatonic, wheelchair-bound wife who is cared for (and occasionally molested) by chubby, shirtless Mario (Alex Garcia). After losing his day job, Rogers is forced to open up his family’s land to hunters. This causes a bit of a crisis of conscience, since he knows the Wild Man is out there somewhere (he leaves a skinned rabbit on the back porch each night to placate the creature). Sure enough, those who venture out into the bottoms are later found with their internal organs externalized. Along with the local sheriff, Rogers determines to rid the Navidad of this deadly creature once and for all.

Wild Man is set in the '70s, and in many ways, it’s a masterful recreation of the backwoods horror classics of that era, from the stylized opening credits to the near-flawless production design. (Where did they find those pop-top cans of Lone Star?) The supporting cast members are likewise authentic-looking, right down to their tobacco juice-stained beards, although you wouldn’t call any of them actors. They’re all locals who are pretty much playing themselves, and you won't find any Brandos in the rough here, but at least the accents are right on and you can really believe these guys know how to make a "cactus pussy" (don't ask, just trust me). The design of the Wild Man is also ingenious; instead of the usual suit made of carpet remnants, the creature (or man) is draped in the pelts of animals he's killed, so you don't know what he looks like underneath.

The only thing detracting from the illusion that this is a lost drive-in classic from 1974 is the fact that it was shot on digital video, but unfortunately, that's kind of a big deal. This type of movie should look like it was found in rotting film cans dredged up from the bottom of a swamp, and video doesn't come close to capturing the appropriate texture. The choice is certainly understandable - that's how you get a no-budget movie made these days, after all - but it takes suspension of disbelief to a higher degree of difficulty. Still, if you have a soft spot for the backwoods horror of yesteryear, you'll probably get a kick out of Wild Man.

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All-Night Bigfoot Movie Marathon
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All-Night Bigfoot Movie Marathon

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

We’re all about the new and exciting features here at the Screengrab, so here’s another one for your dining and dancing pleasure. Those three of you who have succumbed to my repeated shameless plugs for my book Hick Flicks may recall the 24-hour hillbilly horror movie marathon I inflicted upon myself and my four-legged life partner Maury the Wonder Chibeagle in the interests of cinematic scholarship and medical science. I don’t think I have another 24-hour marathon in me, but I’m willing to pull the occasional all-nighter in the interests of furthering my research and edifying you in the process. Let’s kick it off with a subject near and dear my heart: Bigfoot movies.

As you three Hick Flicks readers may also recall from the book, the 1970s were the heyday of Sasquatch Cinema, but the last year or two has seen an unexpected revival of the genre. After spending the night with a handful of the latest Bigfoot movies, I think I’ve figured out why. Take, for example, Primal (not to be confused with the recent creature feature Primeval, which I initially did), a video cheapie that appears to have been shot entirely on location in director Steffen Schlachtenhaufen’s backyard. I’m going to speculate that Schlachtenhaufen won a Chewbacca costume in a sci-fi convention raffle, and this provided all the inspiration necessary – in fact, all the inspiration to be found, period.

12 midnight. The first rule of creature features: conceal your critter as much as possible, preferably not revealing more than the occasional fin or eyelash for the first hour or so. Schlachtenhaufen breaks this rule less than two minutes in, when we spot the guy in the wookie suit squatting under a tree. Two hikers have wandered off the trail, a development that doesn’t sit well with Bigfoot, who proceeds to eviscerate them. At least, I think that’s what happens. It’s a little hard to tell because Schlachtenhaufen piles every chintzy video effect imaginable onto the scene, from a ‘scratchy film’ overlay to a psychedelic light display straight out of a 60s LSD movie.

12:30 am. Some semblance of a plot has emerged involving a group of surveyors who are unwittingly (I think, although this is never clarified) scouting a wilderness area for a big oil company. At a nearby ranger station, a young woman and her schlubby boyfriend are visiting her estranged brother, the creepy ranger who likes to be left alone. Pathetically, the one-room ranger station with its hand-drawn sign is the most elaborate set in the movie.

1:15 am. Bigfoot makes what must be his sixth or seventh attack in Primal, and we’re still no closer to finding out why he’s so upset. Maybe he should move to a less populated area. In the end, the oil company sends another set of surveyors into the area, which is sure to make him cranky all over again. But it’s time to move on.

1:30 am. Our next feature is The Long Way Home: A Bigfoot Story, and so far it makes Primal look like a masterpiece of crisp storytelling, tight editing and lavish production values. The director is James “Bubba” Cromer, a South Carolina attorney turned independent filmmaker. After ten minutes I’m ready to throw myself on the mercy of the court. An old woman is screaming about how her chickens have all been killed. This goes on for quite some time.

2:00 am. It turns out that Cromer himself is playing a failed Miami Herald reporter who returns to his hometown to investigate reported Bigfoot sightings. But what he doesn’t know is that his friends have staged the sightings using a gorilla costume, in order to lure him home; they hope the Bigfoot story will revive his career. This is actually a somewhat promising plot, and it has the advantage of explaining why the creature looks so fake – a problem most Bigfoot movies never overcome.

3:20 am. The plot may have been promising, but the executive is dismal. The Long Way Home plays more like a collection of outtakes than a coherent narrative – it’s all long, single-shot scenes of poorly improvised dialogue delivered by non-actors, a few of whom happen to be interesting characters who aren’t well-served by the process. On the Myspace page for the movie, Cromer lists his influences as Ed Wood, John Waters, and Charles B. Pierce (director of The Legend of Boggy Creek), and his movie is an eerily accurate composite of all three sensibilities. Maybe that sounds too much like a recommendation.

4:10 am. Here’s a change of pace: The Sasquatch Gang (originally titled The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang – no, really), a family-friendly flick in the Napoleon Dynamite mold. A band of young SCA geeks find tracks and a mound of poop in the woods, leading them to believe Bigfoot is in their midst. Justin Long co-stars as their hockey-haired neighbor. (Curiously, this is Justin Long’s second Bigfoot movie in recent months, as he also appears in Strange Wilderness, which sadly was not available on DVD in time for this marathon.)

5:00 am. This really is a Napoleon Dynamite wannabe; not only is Jon “Uncle Rico” Gries in the cast, but Napoleon himself, Jon Heder, has a cameo, and director Tim Skousen was the first assistant director on Dynamite. Sasquatch Gang has a rewinding narrative structure and a couple of good gags, but it’s mostly a lame revenge-of-the-nerds story, and most importantly THERE IS NO BIGFOOT IN IT. There is Carl Weathers as a Bigfoot hunter, but that simply won’t do.

5:45 am. We’re wrapping things up with Sasquatch Mountain (although the onscreen title is actually Devil on the Mountain), which stars Lance Henriksen as a man whose beloved wife was run over by a car while videotaping Bigfoot. Years later, the tape ends up in the hands of a young woman who is taken hostage by a group of bank robbers in gorilla masks. (I’m just telling you what I saw, folks.)

6:30 am. Either Sasquatch Mountain is competent, or it takes on the sheen of competence when viewed at the end of a long night’s worth of Bigfoot’s Funniest Home Videos. Whatever the case, I am reminded yet again that, while I always think I like Bigfoot movies, that doesn’t often turn out to be the case. Somewhere in my head I have this notion of the perfect Bigfoot movie, but I’ve never seen it in real life. Sort of like the creature itself, I guess. It must be time for bed.

The Screengrab : bigfoot

Fantastic Fest Review: “Wild Man of the Navidad”

All-Night Bigfoot Movie Marathon