On day twenty-eight I decided to see how many bigfoot movies I could get through. I started the day with the found-footage film Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes (2012). An investigative journalist and his crew go to a cabin on California's "lost coast" to interview a man who claims to have recovered the body of a juvenile sasquatch in order to prove that it's a hoax. Once they get there, strange things begin happening in the woods around them. Without giving too much away, I will say that Lost Coast Tapes provides an interesting though somewhat muddled interpretation of the bigfoot legend. If it wasn't a found-footage film (Have I mentioned how sick of found-footage movies I'm getting?), I feel like I would have enjoyed it more. 7 out of 12 beers.
The second bigfoot movie of the day was The Capture Of Bigfoot (1979). The plot involves a local businessman who figures he can get rich by capturing a bigfoot. And that's pretty much it. He spends the whole movie trying to capture one, the sherriff spends the whole movie trying to figure out what's going on, and there's some stuff about "The Legendary Creature of the Native-American Arak tribe" thrown in. The movie's okay and features the legendary George "Buck" Flower, but most of it would be boring for anyone who's not into bigfoot. And probably anyone who is as well. Bad-ass VHS cover though. 5 1/2 out of 12 beers.
Three. Three was the number of bigfoot movies I could get through. To tell the truth, I kind of zoned out during this one. According to IMDB, Bigfoot Wars (2014) is a movie in which "A small town becomes the focal point of a brutal clash between man and a legendary beast". Yeah, sounds about right. That's the entire plot synopsis, by the way. Whoever wrote IMDB's plot synopsis probably zoned out a lot during this movie too, if they even watched it at all. I just watched this movie yesterday, but I really don't remember much about it other than it had Judd Nelson in it as a doctor and that the bigfoot (bigfeet? bigfoots?) kidnap young girls and rape them. Though as one of the girls puts it, "they weren't jerks about it or anything". I don't know if this premiered on Syfy Channel or not, but I kind of feel like even Syfy is better than this. 1 1/2 out of 12 beers.
555 (1988) is pretty standard slasher fare. Some inept cops and a reporter try to track down a serial killer dressed as a hippie that commits a rash of five murders during the fifth month in a different city every five years. The effects are actually quite good at times and whoever marketed the VHS obviously knew that and took full advantage of it. The rest of the movie is pretty low budget and sometimes too slowly paced, but was actually fairly enjoyable. 7 1/2 out of 12 beers.
I don't remember where I got a copy of And Here No Devil Can Hurt You (2011), but it's only a little over an hour long so I decided to check it out. It concerns a man and a woman who are having an affair and stuff happens. I'm not trying to be dismissive of the plot by saying that, that's pretty much the only way I can describe it without giving away the twist. I'm actually not even sure that I can call it a twist since I figured it out about 20 minutes in, and since nothing is ever explicitly explained I could be completely wrong about how I interpreted it. This is basic film school stuff. A lot of lingering shots, methodically plotted out scenes, and a pretentious atmosphere that all add up to very little. And Here No Devil Can Hurt You is not bad, but I can think of a lot of better ways to spend 67 minutes. 5 out of 12 beers.
The last movie of the night was Alice In Murderland (2010). In it, Alice is about to turn twenty-one, the same age her mother was when she was viciously murdered by a mysterious assailant. So to cheer her up, her sorority sisters decide to hold an Alice In Wonderland themed birthday party for her in the same building her mother was murdered in. Brilliant! As an added bonus the building is in a dangerous neighborhood, you have to walk through an abandoned junkyard to get to it, and the group has decided that no cell phones will be allowed at the party. And what a party it is! There's charades, and tea, and sleeping! But someone dressed as The Jabberwocky has crashed the party and is offing the girls one by one! Alice In Murderland actually has the basics for a fantastic slasher flick but unfortunately it doesn't follow through with any of it. The actors are okay and do a fine job of playing the parts they're given, but the movie seems so concerned with being clever or funny or quirky that it forgets that it's supposed to be a horror movie. I actually did kind of enjoy it, but it could have been so much better and I wish that it was. 5 1/2 out of 12 beers.
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