Legend of the Sandsquatch

Trying to find her missing father, a woman joins a group of friends on a trip out to the desert to find him while her boyfriend and his band decide to use the trip to pull a prank on them, but when they find that the legendary creature he was chasing is real must try to get away alive.

This was a somewhat decent if overall problematic genre effort. One of the better aspects on display here is the decent enough setup that provides a fine time for this kind of feature. The whole idea of the family legacy trying to deal with the vicious creature that has haunted their grandfather for decades following an incident when he was their age is a solid starting point, offering up the kind of worthwhile launching point for his obsession to find it as well as the granddaughter's desire to honor him by checking on his quest to get to the bottom of everything. The need to gather the friends and decide to head up to follow through on everything and getting caught up in the struggle with the creature is a fine way to carry that and provide a decent connection for everything. This sets the stage for the fun finale where the creature finally appears and sets off on a decidedly silly rampage against each of the different groups out in the desert. After starting with the initial attack on the grandfather when he was a teenager, the remainder of the scenes here feature some cheesy fun where the humanoid creature is brought through some fun and brutal action against the groups. From the chase against the dirk-biker by himself in the middle of the desert, slaughtering the band members who are walking through the night, or finally attacking the main group while hiding in the desert, it all comes to a head with a solid battle in the creatures' underground lair that has some fine connections due to it's storytelling way of bringing everything together for a lot to like here. There are some rather big issues on display that hold this one up. Among its biggest drawbacks is a wholly bland and sluggish pace that makes this one quite difficult to get into. The first half spends far more time on the relationship drama that goes on between the girl and her boyfriend that's not in the slightest bit interesting, not just with his blowing her off to spend time with his band at the concert but the extracurricular activities that include screwing around with groupies or encouraging them to partake in a prank that makes him out to be such a despicable prick that it's impossible to see what initially drew them together in the first place. These scenes just do nothing to help make any of them likable and feature such flawed logic that it's hard to see what the goal of it all is. As well, there's also the unfortunate bonus of this material being done at the expense of getting to know the main creature at all. Since far too much of the film is spent with the group traveling to the cabin in the desert to find out what happened or the band trying to enact their prank, it leaves the film with hardly any action from the creature or a chance to get to know it anyway. All we get is one real line determining what it is and its origins so there's very little chance to get to know it so that when it does strike some of it comes off somewhat blandly. Even worse is the fact that it's all so late in the film because all these other bland setups are being used first that it can be a struggle to get going, and with the low-budget origins showing up as well there are some big issues on display.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, and Nudity.

So much fun, to be a part of and to watch.. It is a B movie epic in my opinion!. Everyone check it and me out!!! Everyone else I met through the process were energetic and fun. The site was full of excitement and wonder. People from near and far were there, and you should had been too! The soundtrack fits perfectly with the course of emotions throughout the film. A lot of personal time went into this project, by everyone involved.. Simply a unique experience for me... Enjoy! Just to mention as well that these types of movies don't happen by chance, and also not without some collateral to fund the demands of material and individuals time..! Myself and everyone who enjoys watching this film should thank Tom Devlin and Lola Wallace for their hard work and vast knowledge... Thanks!

Disclaimer: not affiliated with the film in any way.

Quarantine has led to me binge-watching my way through all the horror movies on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and Tubi. So I've seen some pretty shitty movies. This was not one of the worst I've seen, but also not one of the better.

I'm guessing it was very low budget.

The Pros:

• Decent amount of gore if that's your thing
• For the budget, the creature actually looked pretty decent. Props to the sfx team
• The closeup of the scorpion was pretty cool. Some of the scenery/artistic shots were actually done pretty well
• Didn't drag as much as some of these below budget B movies
• I laughed at the part where the almost kiss got interrupted. That was pretty good.

The Cons:

• Whatever band did the songs. I'm sorry but whoever said it sounded like they were karaoke Trent Reznor was right
• Like all of these low budget monster films they drag out "getting to know the characters" when everyone knows they're all going to die. The movie could have been a lot shorter without the unnecessary partying and over exposition. Nothing super exciting happens until like an hour in and even then it's not particularly scary
• The camerawork. Shaky and all over the place.
• The acting was stilted. Not as bad as some I've seen, but it definitely felt like it was a college movie project
• Nobody knows how to fire a gun

Overall: unless you want to watch roughly an hour of twenty/thirty-somethings fumbling through a script, or watch something you don't have to pay much attention to for 90% of the time, pick something else. I'm honestly giving it three stars because of the special effects team and most of the scenery shots.

Needless to say that I had never heard about the 2006 horror movie "Legend of the Sandsquatch" from director Lola Devlin, prior to stumbling upon it by sheer chance here in 2024. Of course I opted to sit down and watch the movie, on account of it being a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, nor actually ever heard about. Sure, I have to admit, though, that I wasn't really harboring much of any expectations to the movie, given its rather laughable title.

The movie does start out nicely enough, I have to say that. As a gorehound, I was definitely thrilled with the way that the movie started. But the movie fell into a slump shortly thereafter and director Lola Devlin just didn't manage to impress me with this movie. It felt like there was no red thread throughout the narrative, and that made sitting through "Legend of the Sandsquatch" feel like an erratic and random viewing experience.

I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list in the movie. The acting performances in the movie were fair, though nothing grand here. I will say, though, that I've seen far worse acting performances in other movies, so the acting in "Legend of the Sandsquatch" definitely spoke in favor of the movie.

For a horror movie then "Legend of the Sandsquatch" was a swing and a miss. It felt like a high school film project pieced together by director Lola Devlin.

This is not a movie that I will ever return to watch a second time. Nor is it a movie that I would recommend horror fans to waste 83 minutes on watching. Some of us suffered through this so you don't have to; you're quite welcome.

My rating of writer and director Lola Devlin's 2006 movie "Legend of the Sandsquatch" lands on a three out of ten stars.