Wendigo (1978)

Not to be confused with Larry Fessenden's Wendigo, but honestly, one couldn't.

A small party of people - photographer Eric, used car salesman/hunter Frank, Frank's girlfriend whose name I have already forgotten (and I'm most certainly not going to start the film up again to check, or - in fact - ever) go for an enjoyable time (a weekend? a week? a year?) in the (Canadian?) wilderness.

Their "Franco-Canadian" guide Defago and his Native Canadian assistant Billy are supposed to lead Eric and Frank to a moose (yes, exactly one), so that Eric can make a photo (yes, also exactly one) and sell it to a Big City magazine (look, I didn't write the script, so don't come complaining to me) and Frank can shoot it dead.

Of nearly equal interest to the city boys as the secretive and well hidden star of the animal kingdom, is the island with the old Indian graveyard which is situated in the area. It is possibly complete with hidden treasure (umm, jewelry made of bone?) and its own guardian spirit with a completely pointless backstory Defago will inform us in extensive, flashbacky detail about.

Too bad that the helicopter that brought the party into the wilderness crashes, leaving them and Mike-the-pilot stranded. Not that anyone seems even a bit concerned, don't worry, so everyone just goes about their business.

While I can promise you that nothing much will happen, the guardian spirit will still find a reason to get pissed off at the strangers. I think Frank's tendency to ramble on and on and on is to blame.

Oh boy, this is supposed to be an adaptation of Algernon Blackwood's classic story of the same title, but - apart from the character names - it very much isn't.

What the film instead is, is an especially dire example of the elusive creature we know as the late 70s local filmmaking/microbudget epic.

Even for one of those, Wendigo is exceptionally adept at boring its viewers to tears. The film's problem isn't that there's not much of import happening in it, its problem is that the not-happening does not happen in an interesting way.

Don't get me wrong, the 75 minutes of your life this steals won't be a total loss - for one, the film is very pleasant to have running in the background while one takes a nap, most probably thanks to the extensive amounts of completely inappropriate library music. Also commendable are some painful moments of something that is probably supposed to be sexual innuendo, an "Indian ritual" with following G-rated animal magnetism sex and lots and lots and lots of scenes of people talking, people walking and (for a change) people canoeing, all directed by a blindfolded man held at gunpoint by Canadian Mounties and their deaf wolves.

It is also quite a showcase for the different types of bad acting. There's Defago's "French cook or serial killer" accent, reminding me of nothing so much as of a certain skunk, combined with quite a few fine moments of eye-bugging; Mike's and Frank's complete lack of voice inflections or facial expressions, both men always droning on and on and on like underpaid telemarketing zombies; girlfriend's amusing interpretation of sexiness, which is what she's going for whenever she's not hysterical; and last but most certainly not least Eric's overacted star moose-photographer, as annoying as humanly possible for someone who isn't a mime.

It is in fact quite a shame that this ensemble isn't allowed to do a little more. Confronted with four or five scenes of plot, they'd probably be responsible for hours and hours of laughter.

As it stands, Wendigo isn't much of a film, even for someone with my somewhat lowered expectations, yet I know very well that the type of person who stumbles upon a film as obscure as this will watch it anyway, so it seems rather pointless to warn anyone away.

 

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