Night Claws

This is what I would call an utterly formulaic, check-the-box kind of movie.

Dumb as a bag of hammer's sheriff who steadfastly refuses to accept the evidence? Check .

Hot-headed, belligerent idiot who wants to pick fights with everyone else in the movie? Check.

Air-headed, sweet-natured bimbo married to hot-headed idiot? Check.

Tough-as-nails female character, a la Ripley from Alien? Check.

Vigilante mob who wants to storm the forest to kill the monster? Check.

Brassy, smart collegiate "expert" to clash with the dumb as a bag of hammers sheriff? Check.

It's as though the creative time behind this movie went out of their way to include every cliche character archetype from every horror movie ever in this movie. I am a fan of good "bad" horror movies. This isn't one of those. The biggest horror about this movie was that it was made, at all.

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.

It's been a while since I've watched a So Bad It's Good type of film, and really, that's all I was hoping this would be. I saw Ted Prior's name, I saw bigfoot in the synopsis, I was in the mood for cheese....what the hell am I waiting for? Let's get going! First off, after starting it, the title calls it Apex-Predator. Whoa, that's even worse than Night Claws....alright!

It doesn't take long for this film to show it's ugly bigfoot head. We got a bad acting right from the get go, and the acting as a whole is what will keep you watching. There may have been one nip slip in the opening scene but nothing else, and there's only minimal blood/make-up effects. So there's no surprises to be had with Apex Night Predator Claws.

Getting back on track and the sole reason to watch this film is to watch the camp. There are a handful of "well-known" B movie actors here, but Reb Brown and Ted Prior stole the show for this guy. When I say "stole the show" I actually mean, kept me from falling asleep. Reb Brown is so amateurish he warmed my heart. He was almost cute with his acting. You could see him remembering his lines, trying to use the correct amount of emotion, it was awesome. He also had a couple funny sequences too. Then we got Ted Prior who is just a hot-blooded, son of a bitch the entire time he's on screen. You get the gist his character is a tough guy, but he takes it one step further and just becomes a jerkoff. So much so, it becomes a positive. He tells his wife in it to shut up at least 5 times. Telling your wife to shut her yap = gold.

So yeah, watch this flick if you truly enjoy camp and/or are a bigfoot enthusiast. If you're neither, pass on this all day long and then some. If you're a little of column A and Column B, I'd say check it out. If you came here looking for any advice on dating, then you've come to the right place. If she talks too much, dump her ass!

My friend Mike looked at me and asked, "Wanna come over to my house Friday night? We're gonna have tons of booze, play games, watch stupid horror movies, and even try a Ouija Board." He had me at "tons of booze." So I showed up Friday night but I skipped the card games because I suck at poker. I went downstairs and 10 people were about to watch a movie. I asked, "What movie are we watching?" and sat down. The guy next to me shrugged. "I think some Sasquatch movie." I thought he was talking about some Sasquatch documentary. But as the opening credits came on I saw the words "Midnight Releasing" and I said out loud, "Oh s***." Everyone laughed at that. But they should have known it was no laughing matter.

Midnight Releasing is a production company that is notorious for putting out horror movies so garbage even Uwe Boll would be unable to watch. I went to their website once and checked out their trailers. It was just one piece of garbage after the other. I shouldn't have watched this Night Claws movie. But I thought the booze would make it tolerable. It didn't.

Immediately, when the movie began we're shown the obligatory "young people having sex in a secluded area" scene. During the sex, the inevitable girl stops the sex because she heard something part, where the guy says, "Probably just the wind". Followed by "There it is again. John, go into that creepy dark, forest and check out that terrifying sound" part.

Although the movie already started downhill, it goes further downhill by the minute. The acting is atrocious. Plus, a lot of the voice work for the outdoor scenes sounded like it was post-synchronized in an indoor setting. Plus, the script was bad. Unnecessary scenes and people arguing with each other because the writer thought that was necessary for the plot, or something. The regular stock characters in horror were there: the bimbo; the selfish jerk who acts aggressively to everyone for little or no reason; the deranged redneck who knows about the creature; the violent redneck who wants to do whatever he can to kill it; the old, guttural-voiced sheriff who relies on some scientist to inform him on the creature; and the plethora of random people who are just thrown in to increase the kill count.

The special effects is stuff any guy off the street could do. There's this one scene that is extremely dark but it's clear that it was filmed at daytime and darkened with a filter. In this scene, they build a fire. But it's painfully obvious the fire is computer-generated. The computer animated "fire" looked like Super Mario Bros. graphics.

There actually isn't any gore in this movie. For a monster movie to lack gore, that's truly awful. I'll just stop here. To be honest, this is the type of movie only for those horror fans looking for a horror movie where it's obvious the filmmakers just wanted to make a stupid horror without any thought to being scary, original, suspenseful, or innovative. It's clear everyone involved with this movie knew this movie would suck. And if you watch this movie, you'll know it's gonna suck within the first 10 minutes. 1/10 stars from me only because a zero rating isn't allowed on this site.

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.