'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.

'Fungicide': Great intentionally bad movie

Fungicide (2005)
Starring: Dave Bonavita, Wes Miller, Dave Wascavage, Mary Wascavage, and David Weldon
Director: Dave Wascavage
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When Silas Purcell (Weldon), a dorky mad scientist who still lives in his parents' basement, takes his latest project with him on vacation, the audience-expected accident happens, and soon the residents at a budget bed-and-breakfast place are fighting for their lives against a hoard of giant killer mushrooms!


It's not often that a movie described as "so bad its good" actually is so bad it's good, but that is the case with "Fungicide". It's an absolutely horrrible movie that looks like it was shot with a camcorder over a weekend, is performed by amateur actors (who, literally, are the director's family and friends, as well as the director himself), and features "manshrooms" and killer mushroom puppets that are only exceeded in their laughable-ness by the computer graphics effects.

However, the badness, coupled with the unadulturated glee displayed by the cast as they fight badly drawn CGI mushrooms and guys in dressed up in badly done mushroom costumes that shoot silly string at them as a defense, make this a movie that I watched with increasing glee and ausement myself.

Wascavage and his actors brought an energy to this film that is all-too-rarely seen in low-budget pictures. None of the actors had that lethargic quality that is so common among those who are working in front of a camera for the first time, and, while they had plenty of the "Look... I'm ACTING!" quality that is equally common in performers at this level, it is something that complemeented and enhanced the awful special effects and cheezy monster costumes. Wascavage and Friends clearly understood they weren't making the next big monster movie, and they are clearly having fun making the best movie within their reach, and making it intentionally goofy as they go.

The comedy, intentional goofiness, and the sense that the actors and director KNOW they are making a bad movie all combine to give the film its infectious enegy. It also helps that the script has some hilarious moments in it (the dream sequence with Silas spending a happy life with this killer mushroom "children" is truly one of the funniest bits I've seen in a amateurish production like this, ever. The handpuppet mushroom is so goofy that it in-and-of-itself is one of the niftiest and craziest things about this film.

And, to top it off, as silly as this movie is, the final showdown with the killer mushrooms actually managed to be a little scary, partly because I found that I had some invested in the very silly characters that are the films heroes--a reality TV star Major Wang (Miller), a retired pro-wrestler who is secretly suffering from a deadly yet potentially tragi-comic malady (Bonavita), an obnoxious realtor (Dave Wascavage), and the happy hippy who runs the B&B (Mary Wascavage)--and partly because David Weldon does such a fabulous job as Silas the Mad Scientist.