This Geek in Netflix: Assault of the Sasquatch

Assault of the Sasquatch?  Assault of the Senses is more appropriate for this creature feature centered around—you guessed it—a sasquatch.  What you may not have guessed, however strong your psychic powers might be, is that this particular sasquatch has Barbara Streisand hair.

Didn’t see that coming, did you?  That’s right, here at Geekscape we keep you on your toes.

What you can probably guess by the title alone, however, is that this movie is steaming pile of… puppies.  Sorry, Mr. London has decided that I’m no longer allowed to curse while I’m geeking out on Netflix movies and must substitute my profanity with more pleasant phrasing to reach the “family” market.  Write him nasty letters.

Assuming you want the plot and not a rant about the injustices perpetrated by the ferreting Mr. London on his poor, downtrodden writers, let’s move on.

Somewhere in a bear preserve in New England, three hunters accidentally trap Harry Henderson via a pizza-baited bear trap.  What they were doing in the woods hunting eighth grade boys, we’ll never know.  What we do quickly learn about these gerbil-cuddling backwoods hicks is that there can be only one—as long as he sports a magical roaming eye-patch.

Through a short series of expected bungles and low budget effects, One-Eyed Willy (Kevin Shea) finds himself in the back of a ranger-mobile being hauled into the city for poaching thirteen-year-old boys on a bear preserve.  Or poaching bears on a bear preserve.  This movie isn’t quite coherent.

Before he and his night’s hairy snatch are dragged in, he manages to get one phone call off to a jet-owning, pith hat-wearing, trophy hunter who is willing to spend one million dollars for the privilege of being able to hunt the sasquatch.

One million dollars to snag a yeti?  Man, you can go to a dive bar and do that for a couple two dollar beers.

The rangers haul Willy’s (actual name: Terry) van back to the city, unknowingly toting his furry prey along for the ride.  Then things get… interesting?  That’s not the right word at all.  Then things… maintain the same level of tedium for the rest of the flick.

The sasquatch breaks loose of his metal confines and starts strolling the boulevard causing havoc with what appear to be indiscriminate killings, startling chubby nerds everywhere.  As the police officers realize something is going on, they turn to their prisoner, One-Eyed Willy, and he preps them by extolling the inner psychological workings of the mighty sasquatch, which seem to be summed up with the phrase: don’t attack him and he won’t attack you.

This insight to Bigfoot isn’t exactly accurate, as the movie proves, but it’s not like someone was writing this thing and had to maintain some form of consistent internal logic.

So the minimal police force sits inside their station and eventually fights the hair-beast as it suddenly comes back to attack them.  What will happen?  Will the trophy hunter bag his prize?  Will the cops win out?  Will anyone survive?  Do I even care?

Let’s spice it up to see if we can induce some sort of caring.  Throw in a strained father-daughter relationship with a spoiled little cun—uh, hedgehog, an ass-kicking stripper gone “good” (which is not nearly as awesome as it sounds), a snotty prostitute, and a mother-murdering criminal and suddenly this movie has more moving parts than the screenwriter could ever hope to maintain.

Not that I have any faith that he’d be able to maintain much in the first place.  The script is clunky at the very, very least.  Not that the casting helped.  The two eligible bachelors both came off as potential (if not already active) serial rapists, the “hot” young daughter whose beauty was constantly referred to was the least attractive female in the movie… though ever assigning her a make-up artist or a hair stylist might have helped.  Maybe next time, kids.

This movie, if you’re down for a senseless creature feature, is on Netflix Instant/Streaming/On Demand.  Whatever flavor your cookie is, take a bite and settle in to watch the seasonal migrations of Willy’s eye-patch.