Life near an apparently much-used mountain lodge gets a bit dangerous when possessed totem poles, zombie-things, and the little sibling of the Giant Claw begin murdering tourists and locals, thanks to a Native American curse. Or demons. Or something. Fortunately, Sergeant Bill Whitman (Tim R. Morgan) and Forest Ranger Stillman (Mike Magri) are on the case and/or having a lot of nice little chats full of non-sequiturs, doing their best to fight the Winterbeast. Which of the monsters is this mysterious titular entity, I’m not quite sure. Probably the pseudo-giant with the demon rubber mask?
Winterbeast, directed by Christopher Thies, really is quite the thing. A regional Massachusetts-made artefact shot piecemeal over the course of several years during the 80s, it takes place in one of our neighbouring dimensions, where all rooms are about toilet-sized and there exist no filmic techniques to suggest anything about where anyone or anything acts or stands or runs in relation to anything or anyone else. Unless, of course, it’s an interior shot, where people are usually shoved so close together in the frame, one tends to expect they’re just about to start kissing. Which they don’t: instead, there’s a lot of very peculiar dialogue, sometimes in synch with lip movements, sometimes not, that manages to go into a lot of things in excruciating detail, without ever quite reaching what we humans describe as “sense”.
This, however isn’t the slow and boring kind of weird, no budget films: while the film’s first half mostly consists out of these awkward dialogue scenes, they are strangely interesting, always weird enough to suggest there might be something interesting or mind-blowing discussed, and curiously detailed – very much as if all of this indeed made some kind of sense in the minds of the filmmakers. And that’s before things really start to come together in the second half, when the sporadic effects sequences from the first turn into a barrage of cheap and cheerful stop motion monsters of indeterminate size that have the ability to wreak havoc without ever visibly touching anyone or anything. Obviously, Giant Claw jr. is my favourite among them, even though it’s not as big as a battleship, and rather as big as a chicken coop (or perhaps two chicken coops). There’s also an absolutely adorable chestburster rip-off that would probably turn Charles Band green with envy. Hats off to a final action sequence that’s so awkwardly edited, the relations between time and space are clearly going completely out of whack after an hour or so of the strain the film has already put on our continuum.
But wait, there’s more! Winterbeast also features what may very well be the greatest operatic mad scene in cinema, involving a cheerful ditty, a (otherwise very shouty) man wearing a clown mask and a dangerous jacket doing a long and awkward dance, a plastic Halloween pumpkin and a desiccated chestburster victim in an armchair. Also, spontaneous combustion.
If that’s not enough to tickle anyone’s fancy, the spirit of Halloween has truly left this world.
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