Lance Henriksen Week: Abominable

Are you ready...for something that's actually not bad.  Today's film is the first of three Sasquatch films featuring Lance Henriksen.  I say 'featuring' since he's barely in this one, the star of the second and is a supporting player in the third.  Can his lack of presence in this movie help it or hurt it?  I love Lance, but, as you saw yesterday, he doesn't always make good film choices.  Hell, he's in three Sasquatch films- two of which were made in the same year!  Unfortunately for this film, it's decent level of quality will just hurt the other films by comparison.  Sucks to be you, the next two films!  Basically, here's the gist: a Sasquatch wants to kill and eat people.  Straight and to the point.  To find out what happens, read on...

In the Intro, a couple- one of whom is Dee Wallace from The Howling- go outside to see their deer killed and find giant footprints.  They go back inside, one of whom never appears again.  Dubious writing to start, admittedly.

When the plot officially starts, a hurt guy and his male nurse- tee hee- go up to the former's cabin.  At the Market, they meet Jeffrey Combs, who is deep into character.  Damn!

At the Cabin next door, a bunch of young ladies are there for a last weekend with their engaged friend.  Hello, Sasquatch bait!

In a strong contender for Most Awesomely-Random Scene Ever, the husband from the intro goes out in the Woods with Combs and Henriksen.  The latter proceeds to explain the concept of The Darwin Awards to the latter two.

Unfortunately, he runs off, finds the first victim and they all die.  Boo!

Back in the actual plot, the remaining young women are being targeted by the the Sasquatch.  To be critical, the movie is vague about time, making me wonder just how long the first woman was missing and why her friends didn't notice.

Friend 1: 'Susan hasn't called in six weeks- maybe something is wrong.'
Friend 2: 'She's probably just in the bathroom.'

In more random casting, the local Sheriff is played by the late Paul Gleason (of Breakfast Club fame) and his Deputy is Phil Morris aka The Martian Manhunter from Smallville.  They don't do much, until they decide to show up for the End

The Sasquatch revs into second gear and takes out most of the cannon fodder...I mean, women.  One of them gets a pretty vicious one too!

After a long wait, the Sasquatch can finally be seen in full.  The mask is much improved over, say, Primal, but doesn't hold up to long viewings.  That said, they usually don't do that.  Kudos.

I won't SPOIL too much about the final course of events, as the tension is handled pretty well overall.  I will show you this kind-of-silly ending scene though.  The End.

I was really expecting to hate this more.  This film is not great, but I'd be willing to say that it has some darn good moments.  There are some very creative kills and attack scenes.  For example, the 'lady pulled through the window' scene is not used too often.  There's even a moment where a lady learns to not stand on the floor above a Sasquatch.  Overall, the movie makes a good use of tension by way of their lead.  He has survived a bad fall and lost his wife & now comes face-to-face with the beast.  Before the explanation of the accident about forty minutes in, I was expecting him to be a survivor of an attack.  That would have been silly, I admit. There are some bad moments in the movie, but they are mostly the scenes with the male nurse.  He's not a terrible actor, but his role is just to get in the way.  This is apparently his debut film, so I shouldn't be too hard on him.  The bigger upsides and downsides of the movie are the random asides.  I love Lance's scene with Jeffrey, but it does come the hell out of nowhere!  It makes me wish that Lance could have been in it more too.  I guess he was too busy actually starring in a Sasquatch film made the same year- see tomorrow's review.  Overall, I recommend this film to fans of low-budget, creative horror.  It's quite a bit better than you might think.  Take us away, snow on only one side of the road...

Next up, the second Sasquatch film...which is called Sasquatch.  This can't nearly be as good, can it?  Stay tuned...