'Grizzly Park' should be closed due to weak script

Grizzly Park (2008)
Starring: Glenn Morshower, Emily Foxler, Randy Wayne, Sherlock Anderson III, Jelynn Rodriguez, Julie Skon, Kavan Reece, Trevor Peterson, Zolay Hanao, and Jeff Watson
Director: Tom Skull
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Eight juvenile delinquents are sent into the wild back country of Grizzly Park together with Ranger Bob (Morshower) on a week long expedition to pick up trash as court-ordered community service. But killers are at large in the woods... wolves, bears, and an escaped homicidal maniac (Watson). Will any of the teens, who for the most part are literally too dumb to live, escape to engage in criminal activities again?

The most damaging thing to this film isn't its predictability--if I wasn't expecting a movie with teenagers being stupid in the forest and getting killed in the process, I wouldn't have bothered with "Grizzly Park" in the first place--it's that this is possibly one of the laziest scripts I've ever encountered.

It's not bad, just lazy. The characters for the most part are so underdeveloped that even the broad strokes used to establish them as stereotypes being enough to make the viewer invest even the slightest attachment in them. The entire movie is also driven by Stupid Character Syndrome, with even extras being infected with it--like one of the kids being able to "sneak" a massive bear costume onto the excursion, despite the fact that the DoC and sheriff department staff would have checked their bags before leaving on the trip... and Ranger Bob would have checked everyone's bags before taking them to the park's interior. But he doesn't, because he would find the bear costume. And possible weapons. And junk food that might attract wild animals. He pays lip service to checking, checks one bag, and then promptly forgets to check the rest.

And what Stupid Character Syndrome can't accommodate, gaping logic or practicality holes will take care of. That aforementioned bear costume? The mask alone is larger than the pack pack the character supposedly smuggling it is carrying. And that's just the most obvious and annoying of the several such "well, this won't work, but fuck it... it's staying it!" elements; the film is full of them.

There's also a bizarre case of short term memory loss apparently afflicting many of the characters, which makes me wonder if the film went through some re-edits and new scenes were shot after completion and no one was paying close enough attention anymore. There are a handful of instances of this scattered throughout the movie. The most glaring takes place when the viewer is informed (by way of a character reading a plaque out loud) that Grizzly Park is so named because it was once home to the largest bear population in that part of the nation but that the bears were hunted to extinction long ago... but two scenes later, Ranger Bob is cautioning the kids about bears in the park telling them and what to do and what not to do. Yet, no one asks him why he thinks there are bears in the park when the historical marker stated they were all gone. Bob discussed that wolves had been restocked but did not mention anything about bears, yet everyone just goes with it.

Finally, there are a couple of underdeveloped subplots in the film, such as one revolving around two of the juvenile delinquents and a gang war between White and Mexican racial supremacists, and the one involving the escaped maniac mentioned in the teaser summary at the top. While the way that last one terminated was unexpected, it served so little purpose in the overall story that dumping it would have changed nothing... except perhaps freed up a little time for some character development. Perhaps that would have been enough to make "Grizzly Park" worth the effort of putting it in the DVD player.

"Grizzly Park" is available as a stand-alone DVD, or in "Horror 4 Pack Vol. 2", which crams four movies onto a single DVD. If this film sounds interesting to you, then you will want to get the "Horror 4 Pack", because it costs about the same (or less, if you go to a certain retailer with big stores and low prices, whom I won't mention because I wouldn't send my worst enemy there I dislike the experience of going to thost stores so much) but you get three other movies. The drawback is that only one of those is any better than "Grizzly Park".

'Paper Dolls' deserves distribution!

This review originally appeared in a slightly different form on my old Rotten Tomatoes blog. It's of a film I saw at the 2008 STIFF festival in Seattle. Production company Bad Fritters Films was looking for a distributor then... and they still seem to be looking. That's a real shame, because this is an excellent horror film.


Paper Dolls (2007)
Starring: Adam Pitman, Nathaniel Petersen, Gill Gayle, Kent Harper, Rian Jairell, and Sarina Hart
Directors: David Blair and Adam Pitman
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Two best friends (Pitman and Petersen) decide to celebrate their high school graduation with a "men's only" trip to Canada. When a strange gas station attendent (Harper) tells them about an old logging road that will bypass the clogged border crossing, they encounter some horrifying creatures in the woods... creatures that prove the legend of Sasquatch is all too real. Or do they? As Sheriff Domain (Gayle) and his deputies investigate, they uncover disturbing facts that point to a different, but equally dark, chain of events.

"Paper Dolls" is a film that is part thriller and part monster movie with a dash of teen slasher flick added to the mix, and it succeeds at being all those things to a far greater degree than what is common for horror films. It's also the scariest Sasquatch/Big Foot movie that I think has ever been unleashed on the general public.

Although it gets off to a shakey start--we have a prologue that will make you think you're in for another "Blair Witch Proect"/"Dairy of the Dead" movie consisting of video clips, which is then followed by what seems like the real credit sequence and then some nature shots that feel like a credit-less credit sequence--"Paper Dolls" finds its proper voice and direction shortly after that, treating the audience to a film that features a level of technical craftsmanship and professionalism all-too-rarely seen in low-budget horror films like this.

The cinematogrpahy is excellent and the movie is shot with a style that's modern yet stylish in a way that hasn't been seen since the early days of the horror flick; the directors recognize that the scariest monster can be the one you never get to see clearly and the monsters in this film are always hidden in shadows or seen fleetingly as barely discernible tangles of fur and hair as they attack. The movie also looks better than many of its modern counterparts, because it was actually shot on film rather than video (digital or otherwise)--the deep shadows of the night forest are truly black on screen. And, finally, the filmmakers didn't give sound a short-shrift in their film, and many scenes are as scary as they are due to the sound design.

The film also sports a well-development, well-written script. Each character has a unique voice, and it gives the talented cast the tools they need to fully bring the characters and the story to life. When the script is funny, it's very funny and when it's scary, it's VERY scary. The filmmakers also managed to come up with a perfect ending (well, two endings, really) that maintain the film's momentum to the very end. I particularly love the return to the videotaped talking-to-the-camera that the movie opened with, with a final shot that's perfectly framed and timed and edited.

For more information about this film, click here to visit the website of production company Bad Fritter Films.

'Suburban Sasquatch' is great gory fun

Suburban Sasquatch (2004)
Starring: Sue Lynn Sanchez, Bill Ushler, Dave Bonavita, and Juan Fernandez
Director: Dave Wascavage
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

If you like old time comedies, horror movies and adventure flicks like I do, you've undoubtedly noticed that extremely fake-looking gorilla suit that seems to appear in every third movie from the 1930s and early 1940s.

Well, sixty-plus years later, the old monkey suit appears to still be in service. You can see it on display with some minor alterations in Dave Wascavage's "Suburban Sasquatch"!

In "Suburban Sasquatch", a Sasquatch (aka a Bigfoot if you're in the American Northwest, or Abomniable Snowman if you're in the Himilayas) goes on a rampage in a new housing development, because humanity has either encrouched too close to its natural habitat or because the hairy beast has a personal vendetta against John Rush (Bovavita), a police officer who moved to here after Bigfoot killed his wife some years ago. A young Native American, Talla (Sanchez), is equipped with magical arrows and handaxes and set to kill the beast before the life-force he's absorbing from his victims make him unstoppable and unkillable. Along the way, she manages to find love in the form of a reporter (Ushler) who is also on the trail of the Sasquatch.


"Suburban Sasquatch" is a campy, low-budget monster flick that brings to mind numerous drive-in movie "classics" and a number of B-movies from the 1940s and 1950s--and not just because of the cheap gorilla suit that serves as the Bigfoot costume in the flick. The acting is as bad as it was in most of those flicks, the special effects are as dodgy (even if they're 21st century dodgy... such as CGI effects that are so horrible they've obviously been MADE to be horrible), the story poorly thought out, the dialogue is delightfully cheesy, and the characters hilariously cliched.

This film is far more fun to watch than the ones it emulates, because there's a sense here that that actors and director weren't trying to make a movie we're supposed to take serious, but were instead making the exact sort of goof it turned out to be. No one part of this film is more laughably bad than any other part, and this consistency, coupled with the fact that most of the film moves along at a fast pace--it is blissfully padding-free!--makes this fun to watch if you have a soft spot for B-movies. Plus, how can you not enjoy a movie where Bigfoot rips a guy's arm off and throws it at another victim? (Of course, if Wescavage and Friends WERE making a serious monster movie, then they came up with the perfect fusion of crapitude and created an accidental piece of art.)


This is not the perfect Bad Movie, however. Although the film moves quickly in most spots, there are times where it grinds to a near-complete stop, such as when our intrepid (yet whiny) reporter is having redundant meetings with his editor or redundant badgering sessions with the cops, or when he whines to Talla about how he's a storyteller and she's a warrior. In fact, just about any scene with the reporter that doesn't also involve Talla shooting badly done computer-animation arrows at Big Foot, or Big Foot trying to rip someone limb-from-limb are dead spots that drag the film down.

Another weak point is the back story involving John Rush and his previous Big Foot encounter. The film would have been stronger if the simple approach that the new housing development was built too close to the Sasquatch's hunting grounds had been what the film had offered up. It's one that's more in keeping with the whole Native American angle, and it's one that makes more sense than the Sasquatch trailing John from his old home to his new one. (Yeah, I know I just asked for a film titled "Suburban Sasquatch" to make sense....)

For all of the low-budget badness (and, despite the fact that I'm tickled by it, it is still bad) there is one aspect of the film that impressed me. I was very impressed with the actor wearing the monkey-suit, particularly in the medium and long shots where he adopts a gait that is exactly like the creature that appears in that famous blurry footage of a Bigfoot crossing a rocky clearing (or a stream or something). The low-budget camera-tricks of the "teleporting" mystically charged Bigfoot also work in the context of the film, and they even manage to bring a little spookiness to the proceedings.

Is "Suburban Sasquatch" a film you should seek out? I think I have to come down on "no", unless you pick it up as part of of a DVD multipack (such as "Depraved Degenerates" six-pack, available from Amazon.com for $7, or the "Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares" 50 movie pack, which can be from Amazon.com for a mere $13), because I think getting the film as a stand-alone might mean you're not getting your money's worth. As much as I admire the consistent level of badness here, and the fact that Wescavage avoids many of the faults typically found in films at this level, I still can only give it a low 5 rating... and that might even be a bit generous. (I may be kinder to this film than I should be, becuase I so loved Wescavage's utterly wild "Fungicide". This movie isn't nearly as insane, however.)

If acquired economically, "Suburban Sasquatch" would be an entertaining secondary feature for a Bad Movie Night. It might be even more amusing if you have someone in your circle who is ultra-PC. (I can imagine how some of the more hysterical, super-liberal and super-sensitive types will react to the miniskirt-wearing mystic Native American warrior chick in this film.)

"Suburban Sasquatch" is currently available as part of the "Depraved Degenerates" and the "Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares" collections from Pendulum Pictures.






For more movies with guys in bad ape suits, click here to visit Shades of Gray.