CHEROKEE CREEK ** USA 2018 Dir: Todd Jenkins. 112 mins
Framed by a pair of incompetent kidnappers talking straight to the camera, directly addressing potential movie pirates, this is a vastly overlong horror comedy in which attendees of a surprise bachelor party in the woods are slaughtered by an exuberantly mean incarnation of Bigfoot.
Though not before at least an hour of staged Bigfoot attacks, campfire exposition and debate about Bigfoot sightings – plus an array of lowest common denominator gags involving wanking, “squirters”, gays, piss, flatulence and foul-mouthed old women on mobility scooters. For cinematic diarrhoea fans, there is an extended “shit everywhere!” skit. The extensive padding includes a low budget filmmaker who tags along for the party and excruciating cutaways to the hero’s horribly shrill wife while she’s on her own hen night. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is inevitably referenced during an opening sequence following a pair of ill-fated hunters. On the plus side, the gruesome make-up effects are enjoyable, with two gory castrations for the price of one (perhaps in homage to earlier Bigfoot splatter movie NIGHT OF THE DEMON) and the impressive discovery of a dick in the mouth of a freshly severed head. The sex scenes are a shade more explicit than you expect, including some proper full-frontal male nudity for a change. It earned useful notoriety by being “banned” from Amazon Prime in early 2019.
Review by Steven West