Sometimes all the slick visuals and production values money can buy are no replacement for good, old fashioned passion for the craft. That magical urge to create something, no matter how malformed and misshapen, is all part of the fundamental magic of the movies, even when the story you want to tell is – admittedly – pretty fucking silly. As this point, you probably think I’m either talking about the herculean efforts of Sam Raimi and his equally inexperienced mates to get The Evil Dead financed, made, and screened, or I’m referencing Peter Jackson’s four-year odyssey piecing together the splatter comedy, Bad Taste; however, what I’m actually talking about is a lesser-known effort that was made in 1988, but wasn’t released until 1995, thanks to the good people at Troma Entertainment.
The film was Frostbiter: Wrath Of The Wendigo and while it doesn’t manage to hit the DIY heights of some other patched together classics such as The Hills Have Eyes or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it’s an adorable shot of serotonin to the brain of anyone who adores the thought of shooting goofy movies with your buds.
As two dumb, drunk hunters indulge in some early morning drinkin’ and shootin’ on the snowy Manitou Island, they stumble across the remote cabin of an ancient looking old geezer who warns them away – however, as his abode is ringed by a barrier made of human skulls, the two idiots panic, inadvertently shooting both the old man and blowing one of those skulls to smithereens. It proves to be an exceptionally bad move, because the wizened old duffer turns out to be the guardian of the resting place of the Wendigo, a monstrous beast that’s being kept out of mischief by the imprisoning powers of that imposing ring of skulls.
Now free, the massive, supernatural beast makes short work of one of those dum-dums, leaving the other, Gary, to flee for help. He finds it at another cabin which house yet another batch of boozy hunters who regularly travel here for weekends to blow off some steam. Soon, they find that this drunken weekend with the guys has become a fight for survival as the Wendigo’s lumpy minions make their soon-to-be short lives a living Hell.
But as they fend off chilli monsters, killer skeletons, saggy-titted witches and monstrous doubles of loved-ones, back in the town of Bedford Falls, teenager Sandy gets a prophetic dream that calls her to Manitou Island to fulfill a mysterious destiny. But after convincing a pilot to fly her over, she experiences something of a rough landing when the pilot loses his head thanks to a passing, giant bat-lizard. Can Sandy get to the old man’s cabin and reset the skulls before the Wendigo’s strength spreads beyond the island, or will she – and a cabin of screaming hunters – all fall before the might of this rubbery marauder.
For the purposes of this review, I’m going to drop what little reviewer credentials I actually own (not exactly hard) and embrace the fact that, despite its overwhelming flaws, Frostbiter manages to hit a spot that many “normal” movies can’t hope to reach. Due to a budget of $17,500 (in comparison, The Evil Dead’s was estimated to be £375,000 just to put things in perspective) the movie is piled high with wobbly sets, rubbery effects, Troma levels of acting and more gel lighting than you’d see in a decade of teaching high-school theatre, but anyone who has a deep respect for alt-forms of self-made cinema, will class all of those alleged flaws as a wonderful virtue. Much like the career origins of Raimi and Jackson, others such as Trey Parker and Matt Stone and the Canadian filmmaking collective known as Astron-6 have managed to forge impressive bodies of work from such humble beginnings and compared to such cobbled together debuts as Cannibal: The Musical and Father’s Day (also both released by Troma), Frostbiter is just as glorious.
The plot is just The Evil Dead, but with more snow as director Tom Chaney does what he can to try and emulate that Raimi zanyness, but some will find the exceedingly rough, homemade nature of the film too much to deal with. However, anyone who gets all romantic and doe-eyed about wannabe filmmakers toiling away while coated in fake blood will find it transcendent, even when the snow getting dusted from people’s shoulders is plainly flour. Obviously, this means such things as tone, pace and even suspension of disbelief are sacrificed simply to get their efforts on film. Entire characters drop out of the movie at random intervals plainly because they probably weren’t available to shoot a particular scene that week and it’s repeatedly explained away as them needing to blow off steam and needing a walk. Also, to desperately pad out some screen time, we keep switching focus to a local news channel for utterly unnecessary comic asides, but it all becomes increasingly endearing if you are aware of the rigors that come with trying to assemble a feature length film – even one that bizarrely contains actual guitarist for The Stooges, Ron Asheton, in a major role.
There’s obviously going to be the odd spoilsport who utterly misses the point and claims that everything is too amateurish to enjoy (the poorly executed stump of a severed hand is particularly awful), but the fact that you can tell these dedicated filmmakers are trying their best and working their asses off is far more fun than the finished results. A establishing shot of Manitou Island is clearly a painting and an exterior shot of the cabin is plainly a model – additionally, all the puppets and make up effects are so crude, you can almost smell the latex and spirit gum through the screen. But while the titular Wendigo resembles a methed-up centaur, you can’t deny that the stop-motion that’s brought it to jerky life is solid as fuck. Another noticable aspect of the filmmakers eccentricity is an utterly gonzo soundtrack that supplies a clutch of homemade songs from at least 9 different music genres whether they fit the scene or not. Gospel, metal, rock, jazz, everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in as we have not one, but two whole songs about chilli, one of which is a spoof of Prince’s “Kiss”. Obviously the sound mixing is terrible and large sections of dialogue is drowned out by whatever random bit of music is currently playing, but once again, the fact that you can virtually see the fingerprints of the filmmakers on every, hard-fought frame makes an incredible amount of difference when it comes to feeling the love (and copious amounts of chilli) through the screen.
Casual film goers will no doubt find my four-star offering insanely generous, but for anyone who has ever gathered together a band of like-minded mates in order to try and achieve some raggedy attempt at movie making should be completely beguiled at the efforts of a gloriously underfunded crew. It’s silly, it’s stupid and it’s bafflingly obsessed with chilli, but under the protective banner of Troma, Frostbiter: Wrath Of The Wendigo makes imperfect perfection.
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