Thursday, April 27, 2017

CRY WILDERNESS (1987) *


Jay Schlossberg-Cohen and Philip Yordan previously worked together on the insane horror anthology film Night Train to Terror.  Seeing their names in the credits made me hopeful that Cry Wilderness would deliver the same kind of jaw-dropping thrills that movie had.  Well, my jaw dropped several times throughout, but mostly because of how awful it was.

A little boy tells his teacher he’s close friends with Bigfoot.  Naturally, he gets in trouble for telling lies.  One night, Bigfoot comes to him in a dream (?) and tells him he needs to save his father.  The kid runs away from school to save his pops, who is busy tracking a mysterious creature in the woods.  Could the monster be his son’s imaginary friend?

Cry Wilderness is like an insane mash-up of E.T. and Harry and the Hendersons.  Like E.T., there’s even some gratuitous product placement, courtesy of the subplot where Bigfoot drinks Coke and crushes the cans “unlike any human could”.  Unfortunately, the film is closer in quality to Pod People than E.T.

We also have to wait a long time before we finally do get to the Bigfoot stuff.  When we do, it’s ruined by a truly terrible costume.  To make matters worse, it looks like it’s falling apart half the time.  

Most of the movie is heavily padded with a lot of boring nature footage.  The acting is also amateurish and often times painful to watch.  The less said about the ridiculous and stupid ending, the better.

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