or “Poppin’ a ‘Squatch”
Featuring: Kathryn “Hanna’s Gold” Collins … and a bunch of shirtless boys.
Director: David “Creepozoids” DeCoteau
Writers: David “Creepozoids” DeCoteau & Charlie “Badass Showdown” Meadows
Origin: Canada
Review_____
“I promise we’ll have a nice boring time.”
So ends The Tomb of Anubis’s first (of many?) “Turkey Day Month”. In the tried and true traditions and tribulations of the Satellite of Love, Deep 13, and the Gizmonics Institute, I’ve subjected myself to crap from both ends of the shit spectrum – brain peelingly pathetic (Rise of the Zombies) and sensory numbingly bland (A Haunted House). As such, it’s only fitting that my final feature should sup liberally from both buffets of misery, being both boring and awful. Bawful, if you will. Mourn not for me, my friends. Mourn instead for Canada, from whom’s womb this “barely qualifies for a movie” movie was brought into the world with zero fanfare and infinite apathy. Canada. Dear, sweet, Canada. First, I curse you by making Monster Brawl my first review representative of your land here in the new Tomb. Then, rather than make it up to you by reviewing something face meltingly amazing, I just end up insulting you once again with 1313: Bigfoot Island. In front of your friends and family. On Thanksgiving. Our Thanksgiving, not yours. Yours doesn’t count. Like most Canadian things. I’m sorry. I am SO sorry! I didn’t plan for it to happen like this! I’d never want it to happen this way, it just did! It’s not you, it’s me! Here, just let me do this review and I promise to sign the divorce papers…
David DeCoteau, the co-writer/director for today’s affair, used to do a lot of mercenary work for Charles Band, dating all the way back to the pre-Full Moon days of Empire Pictures. For anyone who doesn’t know what that means, Band was the Roger Corman of the ’90s, and Full Moon was the banner under which he cast his dark arts, with Empire being his stepping stone to his later, greater infamy. For anyone who doesn’t know who Roger Corman is, go read a fucking book… just make sure it’s about Roger Corman, cuz just reading a random book isn’t gonna do shit for filling in the Roger Corman portion of your personal bad movie lexicon. Speaking of Corman, he actually gave Dave his start in the artistry of less-than-fine films by hiring a barely legal DeCoteau as a production assistant at New World Pictures in 1980. Eventually he would go on to fame and acclaim obscurity by directing a dozen or so pornos (mostly gay… so I’m told) that he shot from ’85 to ’87, starting with New Wave Hustlers and ending with Little Miss Innocence, under the aliases of two Davids – Doe and McCabe. In ’86, producer Charles Band let him direct a crazy movie called Dreamaniac, aboot (ya hosers) a heavy metal musician who feeds his groupies to a succubus in exchange for success. This led to further Band collaborations like Creepozoids, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, and Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge, which DeCoteau was given, quoting his own words, “by default since I was in Romania and available to shoot.” PM3 is easily my favorite installment of the series, so even in the wake of something like Bigfoot Island, Double D will always have a special pedestal in my personal bad movie love shack. Speaking of love shacks…
1313: Bigfoot Island takes place on an island. Mind blowing, right? On this island is… a Bigfoot? Why, yes there is! Very insightful of you. Truly you are the Chosen One the legends have spoken of since time immemorial. I like big butts and I cannot lie. Anyway, aside from the skunk ape, this island also has a cabin, hence that “love shacks” thing 4 or 5 sentences ago. My sorries for the delay in segue. About that cabin, it’s the annual hangout for a posse of strapping young lads who like to have a “boys weekend” every summer. We’ll just call ’em Bruce, Lance, Fabian, Kyle, Troy, and Twinky for posterity, though neither of them will be mentioned by name for the rest of the review anyway, so who gives a fuck. They’re all physically fit college kids in the prime of their lives, but all six suffer from an apparent allergy to shirts. They probably met in a related support group or something. Like Never Nudes, only the opposite. Like… Never Tops. Anyway. the gents interact with each other through a series of brief phone calls that drop hints about how things at their last annual get together “got out-of-hand”, and refer to a girl who may or may not have “gotten what she deserved”. Danielle is our “deserver” in question, and whatever it is that she “got” (I’m going to assume it was rape… though one boy’s flashbacks indicate sugar to be a possible “got”), she looks to be ready to repay the lads in the form of a murderous spirit of vengeance she summons from the forest. Think less “flaming headed Ghost Rider” spirit of vengeance though, and more “guy in the worst rubber faced Sasquatch costume since The Alien Factor” spirit of vengeance. Give me $10 and 20 minutes at the nearest Salvation Army store, and I’ll give you something way better. I’ll give you something to cure your grandma’s constipation!… and probably give her catastrophic heart failure… make sure her will’s in order… and try to have her leave me something nice too… it only seems fair.
By the way, that last paragraph? Yeah, that’s the entire story. Sadder still? If I hadn’t filled that paragraph with inane sentences of bullshit that had nothing to do with the movie itself, it wouldn’t even have qualified as a paragraph. Though it runs a full 75 minutes (and feels like 175), the script couldn’t be more than a page and a half. There’s EXACTLY how it plays out for 5 of the 6 boys – each shows up on the island separate from the others (neither of which is carrying any luggage for this weekend getaway…), calls one of the others to let them know they’ve arrived, then makes his way to the cabin. Rather than hang out and wait for the others, they each go for a walk/run through the local scenery (except for one, who makes sure to take a shower first, cuz, you know, showers) until they’re eventually chased down and killed by our titular beast of excessive shoe girth. At some point during the “stalk, chase, kill” sequence, Danielle has a weird blue-hued “angelic molester” flashback about the boy where he says something vaguely rapey during a close up like “Look at her. She totally wants it.” or “I’m going to forcibly enter your vaginal cavity with my penis against your will, and will not stop despite your efforts to deter me.” Copy and paste that scenario several times, and that’s enough to qualify as a movie to some people. If David DeCoteau can do that, I should just copy and paste “This movie is a piece of shit and everyone involved needs their testicles tased” a few dozen times and let that be the end of it. However, unlike DeCoteau, I appreciate whatever audience I can get and will actually make an effort to entertain you by continuing to review!… and to whoever said “What are you gonna do, END THE REVIEW NOW?!” in a heckling effort, remember two things – you don’t have to keep reading if you don’t want to, and yes, I can hear everything you’re saying because I’ve filled your home with cameras so I can stalk your every action. Also, I’ve been jerking off in your orange juice when you leave the house. Every time you leave the house. How does it feel to have me swimming inside you, (Your Name Here)?
I know the old adage of movie makers is that “even the cheapest, crappiest horror movie will make a profit based on the sole distinction that it’s a horror movie”, but… for fuck’s sake! This is barely enough material for a shitty short film, let alone this fugly feature lengther! There’s so little dialog and story that explaining how this movie needed TWO writers requires a level of homological algebra (real thing, not a gay joke… well, not JUST a gay joke) that would make Einstein’s asshole clench, so don’t waste your time. I’m only a theoretical physicist myself… theoretically. Whatever your field of mathematical prowess, “Charlie Meadows” is probably just another DeCoteau alias and he’s using this whole “co-writer” bullshit as some sneaky tax dodge. Don’t ask me how it works, I’m a Death God and a self-worshipper. I’m my own religion, so I’ve been tax exempt since before taxes were a thing.
You know what’s REALLY weird about this movie? Beyond the half naked barely legal boy toys and shabby piles of peed-on rugs someone found at the dump and thought would make a menacing, bloodthirsty bigfoot? Other than the final scene, where Cute Boy #6 is confronted by Danielle, NONE of the actors are ever filmed together! Could it be a subtle commentary on how technology has isolated us from each other in this age where everybody has a cell phone and social media has allowed us to connect with people across the world, yet simultaneously causes us to shutter ourselves in our homes away from actual society? I’m more inclined to believe it’s because DeCoteau wanted their scenes shot in no more than an afternoon, and the lads all had separate lunch breaks from their jobs at the local Buy & Bag… which probably makes 97% of their revenue from middle-aged women. Their prices are a bit higher, but the “service” can’t be beat! I hear they do home deliveries now too, wink wink.
Anyway, even when “the spirit of the forest” enacts his deadly penance upon the perpetrators, NOBODY APPEARS ON CAMERA TOGETHER! Was DeCoteau going for a “less is more” method, where the audience fills in the deaths with their own gruesome imaginations, or was he just worried that the kids would ruin their scenes by laughing uncontrollably upon finally seeing what the movie’s antagonist turns out to be!? You couldn’t really blame them if they did. I mean, George Clooney, seasoned veteran of Return of the Killer Tomatoes he may be, would have a hard time keeping a straight face if a guy dressed in the mangled remnants of a shag carpet from some ’70s swinger couple’s “social room” got in his face, reeking of spilled beers, cigarette burns, and cum stains past, staring at him through the eye-holes of the rubber dollar store monster mask hot glued to said shag… can you imagine the smell of that filthy forty year-old carpet burned with hot glue? Like, really cheap, nasty hot glue whose overpowering chemical odor you can smell from across the street and will still be stinking up your clothes long after you donate them to the homeless shelter ten years from now following an attic clean up.
The thought alone makes my Thanksgiving dinner wanna refute its marching orders and beat a hasty retreat. I feel the pumpkin pie making a violent escape through Esophageal Ridge as I type this. Let’s save me the trouble of mopped mashed potatoes and barf off of my bathroom floor and stop talking about it.
Now to address the big shirtless elephant in the room – is this movie geared toward a gay audience? The initial reaction to the DVD cover (the cast sans chestal coverings) from most people I’ve mentioned it to has been “Is this gay softcore?”. Unafraid of the homoerotic (I lived in NYC for a decade and I’ve seen Rocky Horror Picture Show enough times to explode Rush Limbaugh’s fat bigoted hate demon skull), I too expected it to be a big gay monster orgy, and was actually very surprised that the guys are all (at least portrayed as) heteros. Hetero rapists, granted, but heteros none-the-less. There also aren’t any dicks flopping around, which leaves this as a very PG-13 production. As such, this definitely isn’t a gay movie, but I think it’s definitely a bait flick. By not showing these youngbloods as anything other than attractive shirtless dudes (who, again, MAY have gang raped a girl), the movie appeals to not only a gay audience, but also the female demographic, ranging from young girls looking for “safe skin”, all the way up to mothers and grannies looking to slap their squishies to a bevy of virile lads without a full-on dick display. DeCoteau’s seemingly gotten into the market for male cheesecake, capitalizing on garbage like Twilight and “the Cougar Movement” while the horror flicks he’s made his career on now taking a distant backseat. It’s like those “Divas” videos that WWF did back in the ’90s – a professional wrestling company releasing videotapes of women in bikinis cavorting in exotic locales that have nothing to do with professional wrestling beyond said bikini models appearing in wrestling rings when they’re not posing for calenders and more bikini videos. And that’s the best possible analogy for Bigfoot Island: it’s young male models running around without shirts with brief moments of Sasquatch murder happening between scenes of more young male models running around without shirts on and pretending to act. Technically there’s little bits of horror in this stew, but you need to wade through a lot of okra and spoiled cauliflower to find any of it. And when you do, it’s never satisfying enough to warrant all the shit you had to eat to get there.
Finally, I have no idea what the “1313” comes from in the title beyond it being the name for DeCoteau’s series of similarly themed “shirtless guys” movies. It could be some obscure gay code, it could be the numerical equivalent of “BB”, which could stand for any numbers of things (I’m guessing “Boys” or “Beefcakes” or “Buttsex” being one of them). Whatever the case, I don’t have the fucking slightest. I tried to find ANY reference to its definition and/or roots on the internet, and came up with nothing. NOTHING. Even the production company’s website makes no attempt at explaining the significance. In a world where every shred of information and every embarrassment anyone has ever committed ever is forever etched in a universe of digital granite, you either need to generate an Absolute Zero level of interest from the rest of the world, be an international spy of the 007 caliber to keep your shit out of the worldwide wasteland, or make a weekly sacrifice of a dozen chickens and goat to the Elder Gods to have them wipe your sins clean… every Tuesday night at 9… followed by a brand new “Herman’s Head” at 9:30! Did you know “Herman’s Head” aired the first television advertisement for condoms in the US? There, you’ve now learned something from this review whether you wanted to or not. I get to retain my teaching license for another year. Time to go file for some educational grants while you go choke your giblets or something. Later, taters!
Moral of the Story: Does anybody else find it odd that Mother Nature’s tool of revenge is made entirely of synthetic materials?
I looked all over the internet (well, 3 sites that I trust) for a Bigfoot Island torrent I could take screen shots from and came up empty taloned. And I sure as shit wasn’t going to spend $5 on a DVD from Wal*Shart just to take pics… though I would’ve worn a hidden camera just to get the register jockey’s reaction once they looked at the DVD cover. Anyway, not wanting to come into your home with nothing to offer, I instead present you with the following trailer. If you still have any interest in seeing 1313: Bigfoot Island after seeing it, hammer a few nails through your nipples and send me the pictures.
Anubis will return next time in
“Walk Like Aman, Talk Like Aman, Kill Like Aman”
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