Verdict
Summary
Visual Vengeance has gone way out of their way to bring Suburban Sasquatch to high definition on Blu-ray. The film was shot on a crummy digital source, and so the full-frame presentation preserves that aesthetic, and while the film is 100 minutes forever, there’s also a shorter version on the disc as a special feature, and that version is the RIFFTRAX version. There are multiple commentaries, archival interviews, a making-of featurette, trailers, inserts, stickers, a poster, and more. This is way more than this movie deserves, but hey, why the heck not? I give this movie zero stars for it’s complete incompetence, but five stars for its unintended greatness, so I’ll have to meet somewhere in the middle at three for the experience of consuming it all once.
Plot:
A Sasquatch terrorizes suburbia.
Review:
You never know when a huge wooly Sasquatch creature is going to strike, but strike it does in a small mid-western town … big time! First, it’s two out-of-towners who come driving in down a mountain pass. Pieces of them are found on the side of the road beside their mauled vehicle by local cops who are befuddled by the carnage. Later, an Indian American shaman sits by a campfire with his shapely daughter Talia (Sue Lynn Sanchez), and he mutters his blessing and a warning to her, as she gears up with mystical arrows to go hunt for the beast that may or may not be transient through the corporeal and spiritual realm, but somehow never completely one or the other. Talia trots off into the woods and eventually has a number of alarming encounters with the beast, the “suburban Sasquatch” of the film’s title. The creature, by then, will have inspired flashbacks from a deputy sheriff whose wife was carted off by the monster who, no doubt, made a meal of her as it’s made plenty of other sloppy, gory meals out of many others. We watch at various intervals as the Bigfoot (it’s got two Big Feet, if you’re counting) lops off the arms and legs of lady campers, beer-drinking fishermen, and even a screaming, broom-wielding mother as her gob smacked son watches in silent terror. But the Sasquatch isn’t the only thing she meets in the woods; she also runs into a journalist named Rick (Bill Usher) whose grandma lives in the dubious version of suburbia that the monster happens to be pulverizing. His grandma has big hopes and dreams that Rick will write the Big Story, and the Big Story comes in the shape of TWO BIG FEET, that is the Bigfoot that crashes down grandma’s door and is about to eat her up until Talia with her magic arrows saves the day! But is the Sasquatch a thing of flesh and blood, or merely a cursed spirit wandering the wilds of the suburban wilderness? Watch Suburban Sasquatch to find out!
Shot for peanuts and pizza by ultra grind-low-fi filmmaker David Wascavage, the close-to-unfit-for-human-consumption Suburban Sasquatch is the equivalent of 99cents Store brand Dorritos that will eventually rot your liver and intestines if you consume it all at once without water, but I tell you what – it’s freaking hilarious at times and by the end I was actually rooting for the two heroes to survive and become a couple after all the crazy shit that they went through. The movie seems to be almost deliberately horrendous, but if it’s done in all seriousness (which is more likely), then it’s quite literally one of the worst “real(ish)” movies ever made, which is a feat (feet!) in itself. The monster is featured constantly and every time it comes on screen (the movie was shot almost entirely in daylight) it completely destroys and restores your mind because it just looks so awful, but it’s glorious. The CGI is cheap and funny, and the dialogue is never ending. Characters just talk and talk and talk and it sounds incredibly overwritten, but again, that’s part of the movie’s unintended (I think) charm. There’s definitely an audience for this, but watch it with friends. You’ll appreciate it more that way.
Visual Vengeance has gone way out of their way to bring Suburban Sasquatch to high definition on Blu-ray. The film was shot on a crummy digital source, and so the full-frame presentation preserves that aesthetic, and while the film is 100 minutes forever, there’s also a shorter version on the disc as a special feature, and that version is the RIFFTRAX version. There are multiple commentaries, archival interviews, a making-of featurette, trailers, inserts, stickers, a poster, and more. This is way more than this movie deserves, but hey, why the heck not? I give this movie zero stars for it’s complete incompetence, but five stars for its unintended greatness, so I’ll have to meet somewhere in the middle at three for the experience of consuming it all once.
