Bigfoot. Aliens. Murderous cultists. Zombies. Questionable special effects. Academy Award winner George Kennedy. Michelle Bauer’s tits. Demonwarp has it all.
Directed by Emmett Alston – who also gave us such glorious trash as New Year’s Evil and Nine Deaths of the Ninja -Demonwarp is one of those films that sounds increasingly ridiculous the more you explain it. What starts as a fairly straightforward hunt for Bigfoot gradually turns into the soggy pizza of low-budget horror ideas: aliens, zombies, cultists and whatever else Alston could throw into the mix. It’s cheap, weird and gloriously stupid; basically everything you could want from a forgotten ’80s monster movie, and the best part is that the film seems completely unbothered by how fucking ridiculous it is. It just keeps adding shit.
The story begins with Bill Crafton (George Kennedy), who is on vacation with his daughter Julie (Jill Marin) in a lovely woodland named (checks notes) Demon Woods. They’re having a nice relaxing time when, suddenly, the door’s kicked in and they’re attacked by a Bigfoot-like creature. Julie is subsequently killed, leaving Bill with a very personal reason to go hunting for the hairy bastard. Well, maybe don’t go vacationing in a place that’s named like something from a Dark Souls game in the first place.
Meanwhile, a group of young people comprised of two couples and a third wheel (who probably brought a load of hand lotion with him), arrive at a remote cabin expecting a weekend of sex, booze, and…Bigfoot hunting. Oh and presumably not-getting horribly murdered in the woods. One of the group, Jack (David Michael O’Neill) is actually hiding a secret – his uncle Clem owns these woods and disappeared under mysterious circumstances two weeks ago. But’s that not a problem for a group of a drunk teens and their irresponsibly provided guns.
There’s just enough time for flimsy characterisation, a cheeky little softcore sex scene, and the sort of childish prank that puts the characters in exactly the right situation to get themselves killed. And sure enough, Harambe’s more savage cousin attacks and kills two of the group, Tom and Fred (Billy Jayne and Hank Stratton, respectively). This leaves Jack to strap his bollocks on, venture into the woods with his remaining companions – his girlfriend Carrie (Pamela Gilbert) and Cindy (Colleen McDermott) – and kick some mangy primate arse. Would that it were so simple.
For a while, Demonwarp really does appear to be a fairly conventional Bigfoot led slasher. A Night of the Demon (1980) knock off, if you will. There’s a shaggy creature lurking around the woods, heads are torn off with gusto, and George Kennedy goes rogue with his guns and traps whilst keeping his big dad energy. There’s a generous helping of nudity throughout. And other characters wander into the area for reasons that boil down to the filmmakers needing to pad out the runtime with a few cheap deaths. The Bigfoot suit, designed by special-effects maestro John Carl Buechler, isn’t exactly going to be confused with a real cryptid, but it’s actually pretty decent for this sort of production. He’s a big, hairy bastard and, crucially, he looks like he could actually rip your head off rather than someone dicking about in a gorilla costume.
The young cast are mostly the usual assortment of ’80s horror fodder, which means attractive people with half a character trait each, wandering around in the woods making questionable decisions and occasionally taking their clothes off for reasons that have absolutely fuck all to do with the plot. Michelle Bauer turns up as a pointless side character, which is always a reliable indicator that the film you’re watching is grade A trash. Doubly so if she gets her baps out – which she does here, in perhaps one of the most egregious uses of that particular movie trope I’ve seen.
And then just when you think that the film’s getting close to ending it changes gear entirely. Jack tracks the Bigfoot down to its cave lair, pops a couple of caps in its ass, and then…it transforms into a man. Who is revealed to be Uncle Clem himself. Well, it’s some kind of were-yeti situation I hear you say. Oh no, no, no. The movie’s far too coked up for such a trite explanation. No, it turns out that a powerful alien named Algrath crash landed on Earth, and has been transforming people into yetis so that they can gather victims who can be turned into zombies for Algrath’s spaceship building sweatshop. Oh, and there’s an immortal zombie-priest abducting young women so he can give them the Temple of Doom treatment and feed the hearts to Algrath…which presumably gives him some form of power.
Yeah, you cannot convince me that this film wasn’t made under the influence of enough cocaine to make Pablo Escobar look small time. It’s completely fucking mental. Though I’ll admit that I’m being slightly disingenuous when I state that all this comes entirely out of left field. The film does open with an alien ship crash landing to earth – an event witnessed by a priest (John Durbin). The same priest who becomes Algrath’s right hand man, stealing the hearts of young women. But you’re led to believe that the Bigfoot creature is the alien. And there’s just no way anyone could guess how it all pans out.
The strangest thing is that, despite having the most schizo plot I’ve ever come across in a horror film, Demonwarp is actually pretty boring. There’re surprisingly long stretches where the film’s rather slow, with people wandering around the woods and not a great deal happening. This is probably the biggest obstacle to enjoying it, because you’ve got all these fantastic ingredients sitting there waiting to be thrown into the blender while the film spends an awful lot of time watching people walk from one bit of forest to another. If you’re not prepared to embrace the stupidity, it can become a bit of a slog. But stick with it. Because once the film finally gets around to revealing what the hell is actually happening, Demonwarp becomes exactly the kind of beautiful disaster that its title promises.
George Kennedy is obviously the biggest curiosity here. This is an Academy Award-winning actor appearing in a film where Bigfoot, zombies and aliens are all part of the same plot, which feels a bit like hiring Anthony Hopkins to perform the narration for a porn parody of the Power Rangers. Kennedy, to his credit, plays Bill relatively straight, giving the film considerably more gravitas than it deserves. There’s something genuinely entertaining about watching him attempt to impose some dignity on proceedings. Kennedy has the presence of somebody who could tell you about his experiences in the war and have you listening intently, yet here he’s hunting a fucking Bigfoot through the woods while the film quietly prepares to introduce Satanic aliens. It’s difficult not to admire the commitment.
The effects are another mixed bag, but again, that’s part of the appeal. The Bigfoot is, as mentioned, decent enough, and while the zombies look pretty naff, the alien creature is clearly where the money went. There’s some decent gore, including a particularly nasty head-ripping and a few moments where bodies are opened up with considerably more enthusiasm than anatomical knowledge. Nothing here is going to trouble The Thing‘s coveted crown for basically the best looking practical effects ever, but then Demonwarp has no business being mentioned in the same sentence as The Thing.
This is not a good film in any conventional sense. The dialogue is ropey, the acting varies wildly, the pacing is all over the shop and the plot appears to have been the result of someone replacing the script with a “shit horror movie cliches” bingo card. But there is a difference between a film that’s simply incompetent and one that’s incompetent in an entertaining way. Demonwarp belongs firmly in the latter category. It’s also very much a product of the direct-to-video boom. This was the era when films didn’t necessarily need to make sense if the box promised enough tits, monsters, blood and a recognisable name.
Personally, I fucking loved it. There’s a particular pleasure in discovering a film like Demonwarp decades after it was made. You know you’re not uncovering some forgotten masterpiece, and neither is the film pretending to be one. It’s simply a grubby little relic from the days when somebody could get a few hundred thousand dollars, hire George Kennedy for a couple of days, build a Bigfoot suit and say, “Right, now let’s put aliens in it.”
That kind of filmmaking has largely disappeared. And that’s a shame. Because for all its faults, Demonwarp has personality. You can criticise the pacing, the effects and the acting, but you can’t accuse it of being boringly conventional. Where another Bigfoot movie might simply give you Bigfoot, Demonwarp gives you Bigfoot, then zombies, then aliens, then Satanic rituals, then a fucking spaceship, apparently operating under the philosophy that if you’ve already bought a ticket for one monster movie, you may as well get the entire fucking zoo.
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