Search for the Beast
2 /10 1 Votes
Director R.G. Arledge Distributed by Something Weird Video Country United States | 1.8/10 IMDb Genre Horror Duration Language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 1997 (1997) Cast David F. Friedman, Jeffrey Pierce Similar movies Prowl (2010), Abominable (2006), Spike (2008), The Prey (1984), The Capture of Bigfoot (1988) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Search for the Beast is a 1997 American horror film directed by R.G. Arledge and starring Rick Montana as Dr. David Stone, a scientist searching for a giant man-beast said to inhabit the Okaloosa wilderness. The film is considered by many to be to one of the worst films ever made.
Contents
Years before Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino decided to create an homage to 1970s drive in movies (Grindhouse), Rick Montana and David F. Friedman created Search for the Beast. It was their attempt to create a 1970s drive in movie in the late-1990s. David F. Friedman was a famous exploitation film maker who gave us drive in classics like Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs, and Color Me Blood Red. As an homage to exploitation movies in general and specifically drive in movies it was dead on. No one has ever seen it as intended by these two in the Director's cut. Each distributor who sold it degraded the sound and image and edited to their liking to make it appear more 16mm like and more drive in movie like (lower quality). The Director's cut is pristine digital video with sharp, clear sound. If you judge the picture by the standards of today's movies filled with digital special effects and production budgets in the millions it is obvious that it is low budget and does not compare with them. If you judge it as an exploitation picture, faithful to its roots in every way, it is a stunning success. Implied sex scenes and bad acting are requirements for exploitation movies. That and the subject matter - a bigfoot like creature - are what makes it exploitation.
Plot
The film opens with an implied soft-core sex scene involving two teenagers who are camping in the wilderness of Okaloosa. A Bigfoot-like creature invades their campsite and kills the two. The next five minutes of the film play like a faux-documentary with a narrator, Dr. David Stone (Rick Montana) explaining the story of the Bigfoot. The film then changes to a normal movie, and the father of one of the victims, Milton St. John (David F. Friedman) asks Stone, as the leading expert on the Bigfoot, to lead an expedition in an effort to capture the Bigfoot before it can kill more people. Stone does not want to capture the beast, but agrees to try to take photos and videos of the creature.
The next day, Stone's graduate assistant, Wendy (Holli Day), convinces Stone to let her come along on the expedition. Stone agrees and takes Wendy into his office to show her some grainy footage he previously took of the Bigfoot. Stone and Wendy, along with four colleagues (Dan, Jay, Bob, and Darlene) depart in a van to begin the expedition, but stop along the way to ask directions of a guitarist, Crazy Joe. The group hike fifteen miles to their campsite. When they arrive, they set up camp and exchange monster stories. Stone and Wendy share a tent, where she confesses she has had a crush on him since she was an undergraduate.
The next morning, Stone and Wendy discover the others have gone out looking for the beast save for one of St. John's hired hands, Dan. Stone leaves Dan and Wendy to look for the others, but Bob and Jay are killed. Dan assaults Stone and takes Wendy hostage for unexplained reasons. He ties Stone up and, with Wendy and Darlene at gunpoint, forces them through the forest. Stone escapes and encounters a group of Dan's henchmen, who he deals with. Dan abandons Darlene and Wendy escapes and finds Stone. Dan is killed by the Bigfoot while Stone and Wendy escape in a truck driven by Crazy Joe.
Reception
In his book, Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies: A Film Critic's Year-Long Quest to Find the Worst Movie Ever Made, Empire film critic Michael Adams criticizes Search for the Beast for a hissing soundtrack, poor cinematography, misspelled credits, and shoddy acting on the part of two amateurs whom he refers to as non-actors. Adams describes Bigfoot as looking like the "lovechild of Marty Feldman and a monkey and pans the movie's overindulgence in soft core porn. He gives the film a rating of a 12 out of 100, the worst rating he'd given a film to that point.
References
Search for the Beast WikipediaSearch for the Beast IMDb Search for the Beast themoviedb.org