Suburban Sasquatch — Suburban Sasquatch(Blu Ray)

Suburban Sasquatch is a so-bad-it’s-damn great SOV film from the early 2000s. It features bumbling-if-trying their best acting, a ridiculous cheap wardrobe from a fancy dress for the monster and characters, Windows 98 graphics/ blood splutters/ gunshots, very cheap gore and joke shop rubber limbs thrown around, and a general feeling of lo-fi camp.  Here from Visual Vengeance, those resurrectors of SOV/ ultra-low budget genre fare is a recent Blu-Ray release of the film- taking in a new director’s commentary track, and bulging 'n' bloody sack of archive extras.
 

Released in the year 2004 Suburban Sasquatch was directed/ written by Dave Wascavage. In total he’s helmed seven films taking in the likes of mad scientist staying-at- B & B horror comedy Fungicide (2002), kidnapped by UFO horror sci-fi Tartarus (2005), special forces marines picked off one by one action horror Infinities Lock (2008), and paranormal investigators send-up Adventures of the Haunted Hunted(2013).
 
The film's plot finds a Sasquatch who has taken up residency in a Suburban park- and liberal limb-ripping and gut-munching through a selection of local folk. So it’s down a jeans ‘n’ t-shirt journalist, and a duo of park rangers to save the day. Added into the mix we have a dimension jumping native American warrior tracking the beast with jewel-tipped arrows- which causes Mr Big foot to spurt PC graphic gore.  The film runs fairly long for an SOV video at around one hour and forty minutes, and largely throughout it remains both entertaining, at times very funny.
 
From the off, and the spooky PC game from the 90’s credits you know you are in for something very wonderful trashy. As we get into the film, and we see the bad joke shop ranger uniforms, and general low-fi computer graphics, and charmingly bumbling acting you know you're very much in bad movie nirvana. And this is pushed over the top into WTH territory when the films Sasquatch appears- as basically it’s someone in a very ropy and badly fitting gorilla costume, which features huge stuck-on furry size 11 slippers.

The bigfoot attacks come fairly often throughout the film's runtime- and these are a blend of cheap growl ‘n’ crawl swipes effects, joke shop limbs flying about, and a blend of cheap digital gore effects/ animal guts a splashing. Often in the aftermath of the attacks, you can clearly see the victims lying on their meant to severed limbs, splattered with red paint. Around these, we get wonderful hammy and bumbling interaction between the cast, as they try and track down the bigfoot. We also have badly realized fantasy/ mystical elements- and these occur around the vengeful native American warrior (who looks more Mexican), and include PC graphic crows, mist-hazed campfire chats with a grey combover white guy who is meant to be an Indian chief, and a few bursts of cheapy visual psychedelics. All in all, Suburban Sasquatch is a hell of a lot of campy and silly fun- I’m unsure how much is intentional/ meant, and how much is by bumbling accident, but I guess it doesn’t matter when the whole thing is so entertaining.

Moving onto this recent Blu Ray- and we get a good selection of extras. On the new side, we get a director’s commentary with Dave Wascavage, and a few of the actors. The director is certainly a buoyant and playful fellow, and the whole track is a very busy/ at times difficult to follow affair- but we do get some amusing/ interesting insights. We start off by finding out there was a Russian release of the film, which featured the same monotone man dubbing all the actor's voices.  We get a discussion about the first big attack- of the two fishermen (one of them the director), and how they had to alter it when filming to disguise the real normal height of the monster. We get talk about why the journalist lead is constantly been belittled, and how he wore some else clothes for much of the filming. There's one scene where Bigfoot's junk is seen is pointed out, and in the same scene, he’s wearing black trainers- as the big feet weren’t made at this point. Later on, they point out family and friends in the film, the cheap $25.00 gut effect, and bashing with a severed arm continuity. Shifts and changes in the film script, and much more. It’s an entertaining enough track, though it does rather test your patience in places.
On the archive side of things- and we get another two commentary tracks- one from Sam Panico of B&S About Movies and Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum, and the other from the RIFFTRAX team. We get the following featurettes- Behind The Scenes (8,29). Designing the Bigfoot Costume (10.58). Outtakes (11.11) Making The CGI(7.58) The Director’s POV interview(5.23). Behind The Scenes Image Gallery, and a trailer. The Blu-ray comes in a card slip featuring art by Earl Kessler. There’s a reversible cover artwork, a mini poster, VHS stickers, and a double-sided inlay. 
 

Suburban Sasquatch is one of the most entertaining, at times jaw-dropping bad films to appear from the 2000s. And this new Blu-Ray from Visual Vengeance, really gives you all the extras you could need or want from this (well relatively) modern trash classic.