Winterbeast (RiffTrax)

Film Year:  1992

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Christopher Thies

Starring:  Nobody who was in any movie other than Winterbeast

RiffTrax Year:  2022

Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

Here is what I can tell you about Winterbeast's plot............that's it.  Your guess is as good as mine.  It's some babble about a Native American curse I think, and monsters are on the loose eating people, while other people go crazy and blow up.  This all leads to an epic climax featuring an extra in a devil mask on stilts walking in a circle chasing two guys.

RiffTrax claims this movie was filmed over the course of a decade.  What little I can find on IMDB makes that claim seem like hyperbole.  Over there it says two scenes were filmed in 1986, but filming became dormant after that for reasons that are unclear to me.  The rest was filmed in 1989 and it was finally released three years later.  That's not exactly a Boyhood-style filming schedule, though it is an unusual one.  More in line with Monster A-Go Go than anything.  And Monster A-Go Go is probably the most apt comparison you'd find for this movie, which is just a bunch of random images that almost feel like they're screaming at the viewer and don't really make that much sense strung together.  Winterbeast has a little bit of an edge on Monster A-Go Go in that it actually has a climax with an ending.

Watching Winterbeast is like...um...you know that tape from The Ring?  Imagine that, but a half-assed attempt at a story edited into it linking whatever the fuck you're watching.  That's the experience that this movie offers, and I'm still not convinced I'm not going to die after seven days.  What little that can be taken from Winterbeast as an experience is that feeling that you're watching something that is not meant to be seen.  If this horror movie is creepy at all, that's because it feels cursed.  The nutty cuts between actors doing static reactions to horrors that they're never in the same frame with always seems like something out of your worst nightmare, and Winterbeast may just be haunting your dreams after watching it.

The special effects are crude, but kind of effective in their crudeness.  Gore makeup never looks real (I don't think anybody working in make-up was familiar with human anatomy), while claymation offers up some cool monster designs, they all just kind of stomp around like they're throwing a temper tantrum, and when they kill someone it looks like a person made out of Play-Doh.  Less ambitious monsters include the afore mention devil man and something that I'm assuming is supposed to be killer mummy of some kind, though what a mummy is doing in North America I couldn't tell you.  The movie is at its most unhinged when it features a innkeeper off his rocker and dancing to a record, where the movie goes full snuff film and makes you think "I don't wanna be watching this anymore."

Winterbeast is the type of film experience that is few and far between.  That isn't a recommendation of its content, because while it's a unique experience it isn't an experience that everyone has the stomach for.  Winterbeast is distinctly...Winterbeast.  You gotta give it that.  This movie is like Evil Dead only if Sam Raimi had died of a cocaine overdose on day one and the crew decided to finish the film the best they could but couldn't figure out if the camera was on.

The Trax

This is the Stockholm Syndrome of RiffTrax releases.  I'm not entirely sure if this riff was funny, because I watched it and I did laugh, but that might be because I was trapped in a room with this movie and didn't feel like I could escape.  All I knew in the hour it took to watch this movie was Winterbeast, and I felt like I had to love it because it was the only thing that existed and if I didn't love it then I would die alone.

I felt only moderate amusement for a while but as Winterbeast continued to ramble away I felt my sanity slowly melting and I started laughing like a madman.  Good comedy or have I simply been driven to the brink of insanity?  I can't tell the difference anymore.  The RiffTrax of Winterbeast is like that sequence from The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob steps on rakes for a solid minute.  It's funny, wears out its welcome, and then becomes the funniest thing you've ever seen because it JUST WON'T STOP!

Mike, Kevin, and Bill are just as flummoxed by this movie as I am.  They don't understand it, they try to, but just sigh and let it be Winterbeast.  They seem to be less beaten down by it than I am, but they're seasoned professionals so I imagine they have to take it for the good of the team.  The unprofessional nature of the shoot gets torn apart, as footage is so poorly cobbled together that they aren't sure if the actors are the same from scene to scene.  The editing is so strange it's hard to tell how one shot relates to another, often leading to bemusement from our commentators.  We get to a point where the film shows us a scene of rock climbing (I know MSTies, I know) and Mike verbalizes exactly what I was thinking at that very moment when he says "I hope they got this footage from somewhere else, because I do not trust these filmmakers to shoot this safely."

Also their reaction to a certain phallic shaped object that just interjects itself into this movie is not to be missed.

The riff is at maximum enjoyment when the movie gives up on pretending there is a plot and makes with the horror, consisting of stop-motion creatures, some dude in a clown mask dancing, and a guy dressed like a devil prancing around in a meadow.  They can't figure out what any of this has to do with the movie they're watching, but they quip away at the madness that this movie offers.  I laughed in that madness, but I can't honestly say a piece of myself didn't die during the experience.

Good