“Well, we came all this way. Might as well get a tan, right?”

Drake’s rating: Sasquatches are big into FM radio

Drake’s review: You all know that I’m a tried–and–true Squatchian, right? After all, the cinematic atrocity known simply as Bigfoot was an early review of mine for Mutant Reviewers, and that was far from my first trip down the Sasquatch trail. So when an ‘80s flick that purportedly featured everyone’s favorite gigantic furry humanoid popped up on my radar, it of course became required viewing.

And there definitely is Bigfoot-related mayhem to be found in Demonwarp. Following an opening in which a wandering zealot comes across an object crashing down from space, we’re immediately thrust into a remote cabin where a fellow named Bill (George Kennedy, Airport) is vacationing with his daughter. I didn’t catch her name, but it really doesn’t matter as, five minutes later, she’s very dead, the victim of a home invasion by a rampaging Sasquatchian intruder.

But our killer Bigfoot is going to need some other victims to menace, so a few weeks later a Chevy Blazer full of twenty-somethings come rolling up to the cabin for a stay of their own. The driver is Jack and, as the default main character, it’s his uncle who owns the place. It turns out that his uncle isn’t the previously-seen Bill, which was my first thought. Instead, Bill and his daughter had been renting the cabin from Jack’s uncle when the Squatch attack happened, and Bill has been furiously typing up his scathing Yelp review ever since. He’s docked the rental a full star for the inconvenience of a murderous Bigfoot, which is honestly more than fair.

But unlike a certain Mutant Reviewer we won’t name,* Bill can’t just spend his entire existence pounding out ill-conceived if well-meaning reviews and releasing them into the void. And so in true Crazy Ralph fashion, Bill shows up to warn the newly-arrived gang that there’s a monster on the loose and their lives are in danger. Which, ironically enough, is exactly what happened to me when Al popped into my cubicle one morning and warned me that Justin had just found out that I’d drank the last of the coffee.

Unlike yours truly, Jack and Co. don’t flee in terror and hide in the Mutant Basement for a few days while things cool down. Nope, they instead laugh off Bill and decide to stay in the cabin, which is in pretty poor shape and still missing a door thanks to the Bigfoot. They fool around, play pranks and pretty quickly find themselves on the wrong end of a Bigfoot stomping as the creature returns and makes it clear that he takes personal offense to the cabin and any who reside within it.

And then the Sasquatch steals their radio.

Which, sure, it’s 1988 and Guns N’ Roses is all over the airwaves, so I get it. But it just seems like a lot of effort when a simple trek down to the K-Mart could have netted the Bigfoot a radio without all of the screaming and shooting. Depending on which K-Mart he went to.

Having survived the attack, Jack takes fellow survivors Cindy and Carrie and decides to trek out of the forest, since the Bigfoot had also popped the hood latch to the Blazer and pulled out every wire his fuzzy fingers could find. But that journey is made all the more difficult by the hidden dangers the trio come across, which include bear traps and the occasional tripwire leading to a dynamite charge.

Which, again, is kind of ironic since Justin also laid down bear traps in the Mutant Lunch Room after what was later referred to as “The Great Coffee Meltdown of 2024.” The sudden sound of a trap snapping shut was enough to keep us all on our toes in those dark days. But Justin stayed caffeinated, which was the important thing.

Less concerned about Sasquatches or traps are the two girls in the red Jeep who’ve inexplicably driven to the forest looking for a spot to sunbathe, and a photographer on a hike. No, these people weren’t mentioned at any point earlier in Demonwarp, they just kind of appeared as random side quests for the Bigfoot to pursue while the three primary characters dodge traps and once again encounter Bill, who this time around is sporting a bright yellow hat and an expression identical to the one he wore when he forced that Boeing 707 to go over its mechanical limits and taxied it off of Runway 29 in deep snow, just in time for Flight 2 to land.

Man, remember when George Kennedy was in good movies?

Look, this flick is pretty bonkers, and I haven’t even gotten to the zombies, the alien, or the ritual sacrifices yet. The third reel just kind of takes off on its own and throws in pretty much every B-movie idea it could think of, and lets the dazed viewer just sort through them like a random box of dollar comic books at the local flea market. If you want to see a Bigfoot wreaking some havoc, you’ve come to the right place. But that’s not all you’re going to get with Demonwarp, since this flick swings for the B-movie fences with everything it’s got.

And no, all that flailing around doesn’t make this movie a home run, but it’s still entertaining watching these disparate elements force their way into Demonwarp, and then have the movie try to make some sense of it all.

Which it never does, incidentally. But I’m gonna give it an A for effort anyway.

*Me. And also Justin. Probably Josh, too. And… look, take your pick, really.

Intermission!

• A car full of young people driving up to a remote cabin in the woods. I’m sure they’ll be fine.
• Half-crazed George Kennedy with a gun is pretty similar to an unarmed and stable George Kennedy.
• The area is called the Demon Woods. Yeah, no way I’d be camping there.
• Fred’s been taken! That’s one of the guys, along with Jack and, um… the other one.
• Other guy gets killed by a Sasquatchian playing chiropractor.
• Bigfoot stealing a radio is honestly kind of hilarious.
• Hey, new characters!
• And one of them is scream queen Michelle Bauer!
• What’s with the wandering zombies?
• Calculator watch! Those are some teeny-tiny buttons on that thing.
• Now we have a horde of shambling zombies. A smallish horde, but still.
• Michelle can’t keep her top on for two minutes in this flick.
• Explosions solve everything in B-movies.