“Your delusions about monsters are putting this lodge and town in jeopardy!”
Justin’s rating: All I did with clay in school was eat it. Yum.
Justin’s review: If you had a heart to make the ultimate creature feature in the ’80s but had less than no budget, how would you make it happen? I suppose if you’re a kid, you would’ve used toys and maybe one of those giant VHS camcorders. But for young filmmakers Mark Frizzell and Christopher Thies, they used spare time at the animation studio that employed them to start putting together a crazy stop-motion horror film to make Ray Harryhausen proud.
It then took the pair over seven years to make, and the end result was a baffling assortment of only-slightly-connected scenes and a creature bestiary the likes of which you’ve never seen. My friends, I give you Winterbeast.
You know how most creature features will do a slow burn up to the full reveal? Winterbeast throws that playbook out the window and effectively throws in two stop-motion beasts in the first minute. There’s no context, just some weirdness and grossness as if people thought of some cool moments, filmed those, and figured that they’d come up with a plot later (and never did).
Nominally, Winterbeast is about a remote ranger station and nearby mountain community that comes under assault by all sorts of weirdos. Why are the beasties staging an uprising? We’re told by one flannel-wearing guy that this place is an Indian gateway to hell that allows creatures coming pass through. OK then.
It’s as good a framework as any to slap a whole bunch of disconnected monsters who only share the trait of appearing out of nowhere, preening a bit for the camera, and quickly killing “people,” who are often tiny action figures.
The problem, from the angle of a cult movie lover, is that Winterbeast’s human element is duller than dirt. It’s bad, meandering acting that doesn’t spark a lot of intrinsically funny performances or great quotes. And there’s a lot of it — since stop motion is hard, yo — that the human filler becomes the thing you spend far more time tolerating in the hopes of getting those precious few seconds of monster action here and there.
Happily, Winterbeast does get more gonzo toward the end, especially as the mayor (?) of the town is revealed to be this super-creepy, mask-wearing serial killer clown who loves to sing along with children’s music while dancing around his corpse friends in a secret basement. I mean, talk about a stereotype!
Anyway, that dude erupts in flames for no good reason, but this continual threat isn’t over yet! The rangers, um, go places, and the one guy wears sunglasses all the time, and more monsters are confronted around a series of decrepit cabins. Sunglasses dude gets his head bit clean off by a dinosaur-ish thing, while another goes on the run from a giant menacing bird (its line is “Caw! Caw!” in case your imagination needed fuel). Eventually, they confront the titular beast and kill it with a flare gun.
Winterbeast definitely has a limited potential audience. You’ve got to really like low-budget, bizarre, nonsensical labors of love, and an affection for stop-motion horror beasties is a plus. Oddly enough, I fit firmly in this camp, so I was happy — if not fully satisfied — to have a visit with this flick.
The full creature list of Winterbeast
- Tentacle flesh eater
- Skull dude going through a guy’s chest
- Curious tree monster
- Furry big-eyed Sasquatch
- Long-necked, four-armed alien dude
- Grave mummy
- Slow-motion Winterbeast demon
- Serial killer who immolates
- Four-armed totem pole monster
- Horny dinosaur
- Plus-sized turkey vulture
Mutant Reviewers 
This, I will have to look for. Bizarre random monsters and gonzo mayor – works for me.