A formidable team has been made with director Brett Piper (‘QUEEN CRAB‘) and Mark Polonia who co-wrote this film with Piper. We start off with a T.V. show that looks at mythical creatures though this show didn’t do the crew any favours as it was a hoax and was showing live. Fast forward a few years and the man behind that shocking failure of a show pleads with the producers to give him another chance and this time he will get the elusive muckman on camera for all to see. Having now got the producers permission to make a new show he rounds up his crew and sends them off to the backwoods of America to make a hit of a show.
The crew consists of 2 useless guys (cameraman and sound), Asia Buchanan a disgraced news reporter, their ass kicking no messing P.A. Billie who drives them around in her R.V. and Pauline (Danielle Donahue, ‘SURVIVAL KNIFE‘) who is a general all rounder. Upon reaching the apparent location of the muckman they meet up with a local called Cletus Hobbs who knows all about the infamous creature. Our bitchy reporter gets as much information out of Cletus before they all retire for the night. During the night a unknown noise is heard outside forcing them to go seek it out and coming face to face with a creature. It soon transpires all is not what it seems as to make a profit the man behind the show, the reporter and Cletus are once again faking the appearance of the muckman but as luck would have it the real muckman is out there and he doesn’t want to be caught on camera. If you have seen a Brett Piper film before you know what you are in for and if you haven’t well you are in for a treat as long as you like stop motion animation, men in creature suits and tongue in cheek humour. There is some really good characters in this and the choice of actors playing them was definitely a good one. Piper has stuck to his guns and hasn’t wavered from the path that he has been walking all these years and it is good to see a director not being pretentious. There is nearly none of the red sticky stuff throughout but you will be entertained enough with the characters dialogue that you won’t miss it. This is low budget film making at its best and doesn’t hide its clear references to ‘SWAMP THING‘ or ‘THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON‘.

Review by Peter ‘Witchfinder‘ Hopkins