"Something in the Woods" - Sasquatch. It's Sasquatch in the Woods

I don't feel like that's a spoiler in the title.  "Something in the Woods" doesn't give us a clear look at the creature early on, but it's not shy about letting us know there's a bigfoot out there.  It does take awhile to get to the action though. It's available on Amazon Prime.

The movie opens with a man asking his dad about a bigfoot sighting that happened decades ago.  The father begins to tell his tale and for some reason includes quite a bit about a confrontation his friend had at work with some of his employees.  They pop up later for another confrontation, but aside from that, their side story doesn't seem to serve much a purpose.

Let me be upfront and say that Bigfoot stories that play out like documentaries aren't my favorite and at various points during this roughly 90 minute flashback, that's what this movie reminded me of.  It's a specific taste of mine and may not bother other viewers as much.


There are also the requisite number of "boy that's stupid" moments played out by the characters.  They're needed for a horror movie after a certain point.  If a character doesn't refuse to move to safety or neglects to check on that sound in the woods the movie would end.  And let's be honest, we've all done some pretty stupid things, right?  Like the time I jumped out of an SUV with a camera in hand and ran across the road because my wife and I saw a bear run into the trees.  I had just hit the tree line when it clicked in my head that the bear was awfully small.  Probably a cub and momma would be none to happy to see me chasing it.  Stupid.  My wife agreed when I quietly walked back to the truck without my footage.  So, characters panicking and firing blindly into the woods isn't something I can watch and say, "Nobody is that stupid!"


The movie has a surprisingly positive 3.5 stars on Amazon as of this writing and that's from 300 reviews, so not likely to be just the cast and crew.  The reviewers that didn't like it mostly cite the acting, which could be understated at times and just plain weak at others.  Not every actor in a small film is going to be great.  But the main characters do a fine job and most of the supporting cast manages to put in okay performances.  (I am blessed by the talented people who are willing to work with me in movies like "Jack vs Lanterns" and "Stopped Dead")


But you want to know about the monster.  We get to see a lot of the back of our Sasquatch.  And at times the head is distinctly "cone shaped".  I kept getting flashes of the Jack Links Jerky beastie and that didn't help build the tension.

 When we finally do see the "hairy man" in his full glory, it's about what you'd expect. A professional costume.  At least it's not just a disappointing tall guy in a fake beard and fur vest.  It's actually a step above of a lot of indie monster suits I've seen ( or made ). Check out the store bought wonder I used in the "Alien Vengeance" movies.  I used that sucker twice.

The direction and cinematography are what kept me watching.  There is liberal use of drone or crane footage, making the people appear "small" and vulnerable.  There are some times when true suspense is built up, especially when the wife is left home alone with the children.  The director does a good job of establishing early on that Bigfoot is pretty strong.  We see him snap tree branches with ease as he runs and it's mentioned that he has made off with a "200 lb hog".

If you like monster movies, and if you're reading this you probably do, this one is worth a viewing.  It's not outstandingly special or overtly gory and it does take a bit of time to really get going, but by the time it's over I was left feeling bad that I doubted it.  Manage the first 20 minutes or so and you'll be in for a good, if not totally original, time.

"The New York Ripper" - It's All 80s, Baby

"The New York Ripper", available on Amazon Prime as of the time of this writing, is a movie that will leave you saying, "What the F**K were they smoking back in the 80s?"  It's a pretty disgusting movie, but I say that as someone who realizes that this was the point.  There's all of the things that made bloody independent movies stand out way back when.  Blood, torture, nudity and a bit of a mystery.  The only thing really wrong with the movie is the killer's tell tale "Quacking".  The story seems to treat it fairly seriously, but I can't help but think that it was put in to disrupt the terror and shocking gore just enough to get past the censors.  It didn't work in some countries, apparently.

I say the movie has an 80s vibe, but really, it's a remnant of the growing gore industry of the 70s.  By the mid 80s gore was getting so over the top that it was becoming comedic.

If you're a fan of Lucio Fulci, you'll know what to expect.  Take a look at this NOT SAFE FOR WORK trailer for a small clue as to what you'll see.

There's plenty of blood and a few kills that will make you wonder how they pulled it off.  Overall the F/X are pretty solid, especially for the day.  There is one scene with a razor blade that made even me squirm a bit, but then a close up of the blood revealed the tell tale sugary crystals of syrup.  I guess the victim could have had really high blood sugar.

There is a side story of a rich woman who hangs out in the seedy side of town in her Porsche.  The role is played wonderfully by Alexandra Delli Colli.  It seems exploitive and unnecessary at first, but leads to one of the more suspenseful moments in the movie.

This is a good one for retro gore fans.  Might be fun to watch with someone who has only seen recent horror films just to watch them squirm at the old school F/X.  A bit of distracting voice dubbing, but nothing unusual for the time period it was shot in.

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"Armstrong" - A Movie so Mediocre it Made me Want a Sequel

"Armstrong" is an indie "super hero" movie.  I put super hero in quotes, because the description refers to it as a super hero movie and in some ways it is, but it is lacking certain super hero movie qualities that don't ever seem to spring up.  But keep watching.  Like all the way through, to get to the super hero movie pay off.

What we have for the most of the film is a "buddy movie" with rotating buddies.  A woman rookie EMT and the two men who will teach her to be the hero she needs to be. Or is it three men?  In the end, does it really matter? Why did she need men to guide her?  Maybe I'm not being fair.  She's a rookie.  Someone had to guide her through new territory and to be honest, she is written as a flawed, but strong character.

I think the real missing link in the movie is the presence of an interesting and strong villain.  There is a criminal organization, but unless I missed it while getting a glass of water, the head of this organization never makes an appearance or talks to our characters.  What's Batman without the Joker or Superman without Lex Luthor? Aren't most super her movies defined by the super villain since the guy in the cape rarely changes?  Perhaps I'm nitpicking, but I think this movie would have benefited greatly from a stronger presence coming from the Fifth Sun side of things. Oh, The Fifth Sun is the name of the secret organization chasing Armstrong.

Don't get me wrong.  The baddies are out to destroy the world and that's a serious problem, but they are completely humorless about it.  Their plan has no style and the foot soldiers have no flair. They do have really cool body armor though.

The production values of this movie leave nothing to be desired.  The picture quality and lighting are gorgeous throughout.  The audio is nearly 100%. ( I had trouble hearing one or two lines.)  The film score...actually left no impression on me at all, so it was probably just fine.  The special F/X were not amazing, but they weren't cartoonish either.  The costuming was spot on.  Armstrong's titular mechanical arm could have been a bit less plastic looking, but I suspect this is the direction tech is going in.

Finally, let's discuss the acting.  I read some reviews (as I often do before I write my own in order to see what people are interested in discussing) that came down hard on the acting in this movie.  It's just not true.  The real flaw, I think, was in the dialogue.  Some of it was just unnatural and that can make it very hard to deliver believably.  The hero and the baddies were a bit wooden at times, but that was actually true to their characters, not the result of bad acting.  Vickie Juedy of "Orange is the New Black" has already proven her acting chops in that show and she does a fine job carrying the story here.  And I'll be honest, and I apologize if he ever reads this and takes it the wrong way, but everything I have seen Jason Antoon in, I have found him from a bit annoying to downright unlikeable.  I didn't like him much in this movie.  But, let's consider this, I saw him as a guest star in a couple of Law and Orders and this film.  He often is asked to play a foil to the heroes of the show he is guesting on.  My finding him a bit annoying in those cases is him doing his job, very well.  At the beginning of this movie his character gives his rookie partner a hard time.  Again, his job is to be pretty unlikeable during those times.  So, is it good acting to be a unlikeable as an unlikeable character? Yes!  (The answer to that is "yes", gang.)  So, solid to good acting all around in this movie.

I called a  movie with good production values, good acting and a pretty cool concept "mediocre".  That seems unfair, but the truth is, by the end of the movie I wasn't disappointed in any single aspect, but I did feel like the concept could have been served better.  I think like many "origin story" super hero movies, this one was more about getting things like the explanation of our hero out of the way and the adventure was treated like a side story.  Now I would like to see the movie where our hero and a really cool super villain take center stage.  I'd also like to see Kevin Pollack's character play a larger role in the next film.  Also, I would like to there to be a next film.

For as much as I like Super Hero Movies, I've never really made one.
I did make an origin story though.

ONYX ORIGINS is available on Amazon Prime.

Qaudrant 9eV9 - Old Fashoned Sci-Fi Horror

So, I watched "Qaudrant 9eV9" because it showed a four star rating on my Roku's Amazon App.  That's unusually high for an independent horror feature on there, so it set me up for high expectations.  I don't usually comment on whether or not a movie is good or give a star rating here, but four out of five is a bit too high for this movie.  That said, don't let the slow start keep  you from watching the film all the way through.  If you start to watch it, finish it.  The  last twenty minutes or so are paced like an entirely different movie.

It opens back in the 70s and flashes back there quite a few times to set  up the "cold war" experiment that eventually spawns our monsters.  As that story line develops a pretty predictable, but fun monster movie trope develops.  After the set up opening, we're introduced to our five college students, most of whom are annoying movie stereotypes and all of whom are pretty two dimensional.  Thinking back to college though, I knew a lot of people on a pretty two dimensional basis, so maybe younger people can relate. I think the movie would have benefited from more frequent flashbacks, however.

This would have been an amazing short film.  It could have been cut down to about 30 minutes of explanation and action and just flown by, but instead we're presented a feature that doesn't have a whole lot of extra action or character development to fill in the extra hour.  It's sort of like an old Corman drive-in movie, but with less crime intrigue as a side story.  There's some attempts at a romantic sidelines that half work.  I didn't like any of the characters enough to care about who they were "hooking up with", but none of it was terrible.  I'm guilty of my own "padding" to reach "feature length" on movies.  "Indiscretions" has far more walking in the woods than we needed for a modern audience, but I was trying to establish how deep into the woods the characters had gone (even though we never strayed more than a mile or two from our cabins).  In fact, watch for a similar attempt of this movie to seem "far from civilization" thwarted when we see a car pass on the not to distant main road. "Lumber vs Jack" suffered from a similar fate in that, while I could crop passing cars out of the shot, the sound was ever present.  I wrote a brook into the script to explain it away.

There's also a meteor shower mentioned and viewed by our characters, that surprisingly, has nothing to do with the monsters.  It is a simple device to bring together this very loose group of "friends" on a camping trip.  They're not the lifelong friends with close ties  you often see in these movies, but rather people who know each other because they're all in the same class and two are a couple of sorts. This leaves us with some unusual interactions for a movie like this, where characters are usually harboring long seeded guilt or feelings for one another that only come out when disaster strikes.  It's a bit of a twist, but not one I'm sure most people will like.

A cooler twist on the old fashioned "kids vs monsters" sci-fi horror genre is Lexi (Dominique Storelli). She's sort of the survivor girl we recognize from 70s and 80s slasher movies thrown into a 60s drive-in monster movie.  She's an axe-wielding outdoors expert thanks to her dad who taught her how to "survive in the woods with just a pocket knife".

Once the monsters finally do show up, they're pretty cool looking.  Simple men in make-up and masks, but well executed.  They've got super strength, but as far as a super soldier experiment goes, they weren't given much else to work with.  We're never let in on how well they see in the dark, they don't seem to have much special training as far as fighting or tracking goes and it's never mentioned, but they must be half deaf.  Still, they're menacing enough in a "zombie" kind of way.  There are a few exceptional action sequences that would have really helped the movie had they been spread out a bit more.  There's enough action for 84 minutes, but it all seems to take place at the end of the movie.

On to the production values!  I don't like to take independent movies apart for low production values because most of the time those are largely a result of shrinking digital budgets.  Fortunately for this movie, I don't  have to.  There's the slightest unevenness in the volume of dialogue to music, but overall the sound is pretty solid.   You can see some very windy conditions and they handle it brilliantly.  Sets are few and convincing enough.  The locations are mostly outdoors and some of them allow for some impressive shots.  The lighting is at times "too much". (I hate when characters in brightly lit night spaces use flashlights they clearly don't need).  But, when the situation calls for that murky, hard to see shadowy darkness, we get it without being left totally in the dark.  The scenes in the tents are cleverly lit.  The costuming on the monsters isn't super impressive, but it's convincing and clean, which is better than elaborate and doesn't work.  The fight scenes are mostly well choreographed and the gore works when it's used.  Overall a pretty solid production.  Most of the acting could be a bit better, but it's nothing less than you'd expect from something that was probably shot in a few weeks rather than over months.  Rehearsal time makes a big difference.

If  you're a fan of old monster flicks, I'd recommend this one rather than just watching "Teenagers Battle The Thing" again.

Here is the trailer so you can see some of it for yourself.

Self promotion alert!
You can add "Alien Vengeance" for more monster vs young people in the woods fun and make it a double feature.

"The Nostril Picker" aka "The Changer"

"The Nostril Picker" or, as it is known on Amazon Prime, "The Changer" is a strange movie for sure.

The movie's basic concept that a grown man with an attraction to high school aged girls can make  himself look like a teenager is pretty creepy.  The basis for his ability to change makes little sense and the "effect" is achieved a bit like how they did it in "Quantum Leap" (except here there are a few reflection "goofs".  A common problem for any independent production.)  Overall though, once  you buy into the concept, I think that aspect of the movie is pretty convincing.

The movie is a strange watch though.  I think it's biggest problem is a lack of focus on its intent.  It swings from gory to intentionally (or I think intentionally) humorous pretty quickly.  I've been known to inject humor into my own movies, such as "Alien Vengeance" or "Stopped Dead" and "Lumber vs Jack" was clearly meant to be an off kilter concept from the get go, but something about this movie's core concept and then the High School comedy tone of the music video in the early few minutes was odd.  Although, if I'm honest, I guess AV suffers the same quasi serious subject matter vs humor of the cheesy retro F/X and use of a plunger as a weapon.

The Movie's Musical Interlude.
Warning: Disturbing finger use ahead!

The movie's tone aside, modern audiences also may be put off by a few other points. Being a product of the 90s, some things will stand out as not commonly acceptable. Transvestitism is used as a source of comedy, with a tongue in cheek performance by Steven Andrews as a cross dressing prostitute.  The fashions may seem like they're there for comedy, but people used to dress that way for real.  Although clothes in indie horrors do tend to be a few years out of date since we all know we'll be covered in blood before the shoot is over.  The video quality is also not what one expects from a modern "shot on video" affair.  The audio, however, is surprisingly clean for what seems to be a very independent effort.

Overall, if you're a fan of offbeat, disturbing and unintentionally funny horror, I'd give this one a spin.  Some of the acting is exactly what  you'd expect when someone gets non-actors together for a movie.  ( A few of the cast members have only this movie to their credit.)  Carl Zchering, however, is very effective and creepy in the lead role and that's what really matters.

You'll find yourself scratching  your head while watching, "The Nostril Picker", which I guess is better than what you could be doing with  your finger.

The transformation ritual.