Night Claws

NIGHT CLAWS opens with two amorous young people being turned into human salsa by the hairy horror of the title! The next day, we're introduced to Sheriff Joe Kelly (schlock omni-god, Reb Brown!), and his deputy, Roberta Glickman (Sherrie Rose). Police are stumped as they sift through the various body parts.

Meanwhile, a trio of hunters are tracking the creature, and a group on a survival training hike are introduced. Many deaths ensue, as the hunters are hunted and the hikers find survival to be... difficult. This Bigfoot isn't just deadly, it's fast!

Enter Professor Sarah Evans (Leilani Sarelle), who has been sent in by the government to assist Kelly and company.

Oh my!

A group of local youths have decided to have a beer bash in the woods! Will anyone be around to be hungover in the morning?

As killer yeti movies go, this one isn't a total disgrace. After all, what are we expecting, Macbeth? The monster isn't all that terrifying, but gets the job done. Gorehounds will be ecstatic over its gushy attacks! The twist near the end is trumpeted a bit too soon, but still works well enough.

Watch for Frank Stallone in a cameo....

Bigfoot walks around in the forest and kills two young people. Although they have been torn into pieces with incredible strength, the sheriff believes a human killer must be to blame, even if the claw marks seem a bit weird. Several tourists and hunters enter the forest so the beast gets plenty of opportunity to kill more people. Besides, one of the hunters has a personal revenge business going on, for which the beast's attacks will provide enough distraction.

Hard to believe this movie was shot in the 2010s, it is totally 1980s. Which is good. Instead of CGI creatures, you get an old-fashioned monster (tall guy in a hairy suit) walking around, and there are several familiar actors from 80s trash movies (Reb Brown as the sheriff, Frank Stallone, Ted Prior). Simple minded fun mainly for the older supporters of the genre, probably young audiences will like it less.

"Night Claws" looks like it was really fun to make, with David A. Prior meeting a lot of his old friends again. At this point Prior had pretty much retired, but a young producer by the name of Fabio Soldani gave him some money and sent him back to those woods in Mobile, Alabama where he filmed roughly 102% of his movies. Hell, by this point I'm pretty sure I could be a tour guide in that town. Unfortunately, as fun as this reunion must have been, the joy doesn't translate well to the screen.

This movie is supposed to be about Bigfoot, but he's really just an afterthought. His plot remains unresolved and we barely ever see him. For some reason creature features often have the tendency to add human villains as well, which never works and just takes up precious screen-time from the monster we actually want to see. To add insult to injury, this movie looks really ugly. Most of it is shot day-for-night, which really shouldn't be that obvious when shot by a director who's been at this for three decades. There are amateur films on YouTube who use this technique far better than "Night Claws", which is not a ringing endorsement.

That's not to say the movie is completely without enjoyable moments. The climax is very low on Bigfoot, but high on laughable plot twists and unexpected deaths. Everyone's favorite Norm MacDonald punchline Frank Stallone shows up from nowhere for a cameo so brief I'm pretty sure he left his engine running. Sherrie Rose co-stars as a deputy, but looks way more like a stripper. The best part has got to be the unknown Art James though, who gives us some great line readings as the town drunk who tells us everything about Bigfoot (in exchange for alcohol, naturally). This movie has some decent laughs, but no story progression or coherent action. Given that you don't know what's happening half the time, you'll be looking at the clock regularly.

P.S: The credits read 'no Bigfoots were harmed in the making of this movie'. It deserves an extra star for that at least.

Well, what can be said about "Night Claws"? For starters, then it really seemed like a movie that should have been made in the late 1980's, because it had that distinct late 80's horror feel to it. And is that good or bad? Well, in a sense it was nostalgic, but entertainment-wise, then it made the movie come off as a joke.

The story in "Night Claws" is about some Big Foot creature terrorizing a forest. It is a vicious and bloodthirsty creature that kills just about any sentient creature that ventures into the forest. Why? Well for no apparent reason. It just kills because it can. There is very little meat on the storyline for this movie, which made it even more hard to sit through and not fall asleep.

Let's move on to the acting. Where was it? The people in this movie were so unenthusiastic that it was just downright ridiculous. The performances put on by the actors and actresses in this movie was just horrible to behold. There wasn't a single memorable performance here.

So what worked for the movie? Well, oddly enough, the Big Foot wasn't actually that shabby to look at, the few times you actually got to see it, which was far in between, mind you. And the music wasn't too bad either, though at times it sounded like something from a horror musical of sorts.

I am giving "Night Claws" a 3/10 rating solely based on the design of the Big Foot creature and the 1980's feel there was to the movie, because everything else was not really worth mentioning.

This movie tried to bring in a lot of plot points and twists and random, movie-cliché junk. It was as if it was trying to be multiple different movies whilst simultaneously failing at all of them. Not worth the watch.