Winterbeast

"Winterbeast" is the kind of movie you watch and just want to meet the cast and crew of immediately, and learn more about the making of it. I'm not sure where to even start, so I guess I'll just lay out the story. After a strange nightmare-sequence opening (where we are treated to our first experience of the quirky and horrendous stop-animation special effects) we meet Rangers Whitman and Stillman at the Rangers Station up on a mountain somewhere. Whitman is an intense and brooding character who takes his Park Ranger job with the utmost seriousness. The sunglasses-wearing Stillman is a pure ape, and would rather sit in the station and read his porn-mags than do any kind of community liaison. Which is tough, because one of their colleagues has gone missing, and pretty soon, more people at the mountain resort begin to go missing, too. Whitman decides it's time to shut down the resort. Stillman could care less. The hub of this resort is the local inn run by the camp, nasty and highly eccentric Dave Sheldon (What a performance from Bob Harlow. More on him later), but he is having none of it, and hampers their efforts to close the mountain down. But fairly soon, missing people begin to turn in to dead people, and it comes to light that there are ancient spirits out in the woods responsible for the carnage, manifesting themselves in monsters and possessed Totem poles.

The special effects, first of all. Absolutely diabolical. But unique! These guys did not give a hoot. "Winterbeast" was made (half-heartedly) over a number of years between 1986 - 1989 and my understanding of it is that by the end of it, original footage etc. had been lost or ruined and so Christopher Thies just ran what he could through and filled the gaps with stop-motion animation. All the action and dead scenes are made from clay and are absolutely hilarious. The acting is atrocious, for the most part. Tom Morgan is extremely rigid and awkward as Sergeant Whitman, but he is a joy to watch. Bob Harlow is actually very good and is the best thing about the film. What a nasty and menacing character he creates. His arguments with Whitman over the closing down of the inn are terrific. They really go at it in these scenes! It was like something you'd see in your day-to-day life, with Harlow's pitch getting louder and louder and the tendons in his neck nearly bursting out until the two are literally unrestraint and screaming at one another. It's terrible acting, of course, but by god it is entertaining.

As I mentioned earlier this was made over a number of years and as a result it gives the impression of a project that was passed from one film-student to another. The film varies in quality and changes sometimes in mid-scene. The best example of this is, I think, during one of the aforementioned bust-ups between Whitman and Sheldon. The camera angle suddenly changes and the footage goes from the normal-looking cheap kind to a sepia-grain tone. Made me wonder if perhaps half of that scene was filmed in '86 and the rest of it was added in years later, maybe after the original reel was damaged or what not. To sum it up, "Winterbeast" is like "Plan 9 to Outer Space". Highly deplorable film-making from a technical point, but highly enjoyable. However, "Winterbeast" is extremely obscure and thus not as accessible as "Plan 9...". It simply faded into celluloid-sludge obscurity along with a mass cohort of similarly low-budget, straight-to-VHS, horror flicks from this time, that are now a joy to seek out. The majority are unredeemable, but you do find the odd gem like "Winterbeast".

Winterbeast (1992) is a movie that I recently watched on Shudder. The storyline follows a couple of forest rangers working on a mountain with an Indian curse that has caused a history of disappearances. They start finding dead bodies all over the forest and as they dig into the root cause they start finding demons all around them.

This movie is directed by Christopher Thies in his directorial debut and stars Charles Majka (The Polka King).

This is a way out there movie. I've really never seen anything like this. I did like the opening birth scene and the mummy sequence in the woods. There's also some nice tan line boobies in here and a really weird sequence that goes with it. The claymation aspects of this movie blew me away, like who thought this was a good idea? Then there was a huge bird. The ending of this movie is awful.

This movie is one to watch if you want to watch a really, really bad horror movie. I would score this a 2/10 and recommend skipping it.

I'm not sure how this movie is averaging just over four stars, I had to do all I could to make it through the first four minutes.

I got sucked in because of the not so terribly awful rating, but should've known after the first few minutes this movie was just terrible. No name actors, most of which this was their first and last film role, just as bad special effects and a storyline that Christopher Columbus could not navigate.

So the next time your channel surfing, trying to kill a couple of hours, do your diligence and avoid this film. There are much better alternatives out there, the first one is Wendigo that comes to mind.

This is so horrifically low-budget that you'd swear it was made during the dark ages (aka, the 70's). The plot makes no sense whatsoever, but it's great fun to watch with a group of friends.

An amateur misconjecture devoid of anything recognizable as production values, WINTERBEAST is sure to win the hearts of all bad movie masochists fortunate enough to track it down.

The spindly story involves a woodsy resort town cursed by ancient Native American demons which manifest as wobbly totem poles, a giant chicken, and a goofy rubber spinal cord thingie with a big, grimacing head. The resident lawmen launch a bumbling investigation of several recent disappearances in the area, and gradually become aware of the mounting danger. In predictable B-horror fashion, they motion to alert and evacuate the area despite the resistance of the creepy mayor and some greedy local business owners who fear a loss of tourism revenue.

WINTERBEAST boasts clay stop-motion effects which appear to have been lifted from some tragic Third-World GUMBY knockoff, and intendance at every phase of production is catastrophically all-thumbs. Staggering, hilarious, and almost psychedelic in its diversiform inelegance, this is a lovable wonderwork of unsung schlock majesty which is surely a cult-film in wait.

5/10.