SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH (2011)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed/Written by Steve Sessions.
Check out the trailer here!!

It’s 1979 and when a couple on a romantic road trip hit a dog with their car, they seek out their owner which puts them directly in the path of a rampaging Bigfoot.

SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH is a modern movie filmed through a filter to look as if it were a drive-in movie unearthed and weathered through the years. While that type of filtered lens has become somewhat of a trope these days, it seems director Steve Sessions went the extra mile to fill the film with clothes, cars, and popular culture of the time which I can appreciate. This shows that Sessions at least tried with SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH, and having seen a ton of Bigfoot films, I know the extra mile you usually get in this genre.

That doesn’t mean SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH is particularly revolutionary filmmaking. It knows what it is; a grindhouse shocker about a monster on the loose. It delivers a gory death and a nice set of boobs in the first five minutes. There’s spotty acting everywhere, but the two leads (Sarah French and Donny Versiga) are pretty good and have the most charisma of the bunch. The script meanders all over the place, pausing any momentum made for an obligatory murder scene or for a nice long shot of women in and out of their unmentionables. And the film looks good with some decent cinematography in the establishing shots, giving the film a nice warm, late summer quality. There’s an awesome use of a Matchbox toy car being made ot look like the real thing for the Bigfoot to toss over a cliff. This type of low fi ingenuity always brings a smile to my face.

There’s quite a lot of DIY gore and while the Sasquatch mutilations are a little too cleanly cut, they are nice and bloody. This Sasquatch just loves to pull the heads off people and throw them far away. But the slice is too clean and at a right angle, which doesn’t look very real, but they do look like real mannequin heads being lobbed around because that’s exactly what they are. The mask is not really articulated, just a monkey mask, but the director does a good job of not focusing on it for too long and keeping it in shadow and at far distances to cover up those details.

The Bigfoot suit is baggy and not great. But the fur is nicely matted which is a detail many a Bigfoot film leaves out. So, this is no off-the-rack monkey suit. As a shadowy mass ambling through the woods, it’s sort of effective, but in broad daylight and well lit, no one is going to mistake this guy for the real thing. This Bigfoot also has the best posture in the forest. Bigfoot should hunch forward a bit, not walk erect like a furry Michael Myers.

This one endeared itself to me for the effort it goes to sell the era it’s trying to emulate, so I’m going to give SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH Three Mighty Feets!

SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH tries to mix the Bigfoot genre with another hairy monster in the final moments, which adds a fun twist to things. I dug this one. It never takes itself too seriously and the creative lengths the film goes with the effects and to sell the era was downright charming.