Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 28, 2008, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Back when Winterbeast first appeared on VHS in 1992, its creators report on the new DVD’s commentary, certain reviews claimed that the movie was shot on video. It’s hard to imagine any remotely practiced eye making that mistake, though many (this viewer included) did mistake it for a Super-8 production. Yet the supplements on the disc from Winterbeast Entertainment Group reveal that quite a bit of it was lensed on 16mm, using everything from professional Arriflexes to wind-up Bolex cameras, even as the transfer itself does little to upgrade its visual quality. The fullscreen picture is still rife with dirt, speckles, scratches and visible splices, not to mention wildly fluctuating colors, contrast and audio.
But perhaps cleaning up Winterbeast would have been beside the point, and the movie might have lost a little nostalgia value had it been restored and spiffed up. For its story, acting, editing (complete with numerous crossed director’s lines) and special FX are as patchy as its images, telling—sort of—the tale of ancient Native American demons haunting the woods around the Wild Goose Lodge. As forest ranger Bill (Tim R. Morgan, whose fake mustache changes color, size and position with alarming regularity) and his deputy (Mike Magri) look into a series of deaths and disappearances, they try to convince lodge owner Sheldon (Bob Harlow) to shut down until the threat can be eliminated. What they don’t realize at first, but will be obvious to anyone watching, is that the perpetually smirking Sheldon is involved in the supernatural doings. It all leads to a climactic series of monstrous confrontations set both deep in the woods and around a bunch of broken-down houses that resemble Edward Hopper paintings.
Winterbeast itself is so ramshackle that the title is a misnomer on two levels: The eponymous creature doesn’t show up until the final scenes, and almost none of the film actually seems to be taking place during the winter. Beyond Harlow’s over-the-top turn, the acting is as wooden as the weird totem pole the characters find up amongst the trees, and Michael Perilstein’s repetitive synthesizer score belongs to what a friend of mine once described as the My First Casio school of movie music. And yet, for those who have a fascination with such homegrown fright fare, there are a couple of minor rewards to the Winterbeast experience. One is the series of stop-motion monsters that make brief appearances throughout the film, lending their scenes a certain crude charm, if not any degree of realism. The other is an out-of-nowhere setpiece in which Sheldon dons a plastic clown mask and pantomimes to an old child’s recording of “So Long at the Fair.” This bit has nothing to do with the rest of the plotline, and its incongruousness is heightened by the fact that, amidst the otherwise amateur dramatics, it’s actually pretty creepy.
Everything you’d ever want to know about the creation of this no-budget epic can be gleaned from the filmmakers’ audio commentary and the Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be? featurette, which rarely duplicate each other’s information. On the talk track, writer/director Christopher Thies, producer/editor Mark Frizzell and cinematographer Craig B. Mathieson reveal that the production was literally put together with whatever they had lying around, yet it actually, unlike many no-budgeters if its ilk, employed sets instead of all found locations. (Not very convincing sets, mind you, but sets nonetheless.) Accidents were the mother of invention here—a key character catches fire simply because the film ran out while shooting his scenes, resulting in a flash frame over his face—and at the end, we find out why the movie looks and sounds so bad. Unable to afford to cut negative, the team simply transferred their work print, with only a single track for the music and sound FX; presumably, the original elements that might have allowed for a true disc restoration are long gone.
With good humor, Thies and Frizzell recall other snafus in the featurette, like the first shooting day in which one of two carfuls of actors and crew got lost on the way to the location, and Thies nearly throttled the hapless driver. It’s revealed here why Winterbeast ended up being shot mostly during the summer, that Frizzell added all the profanity to Thies’ script (complete with a montage of “shit” utterances from the film) and that the stop-motion lizard and chicken monsters were built by future Corpse Bride co-director Mike Johnson. A Soap Opera Version is actually about 12 minutes of scenes that were shot on video during two days late in the game, and wisely went unused—even though they’re technically no better or worse than the film portions.
A photo gallery discloses that a Super-8 camera was in fact employed at certain points in the project, and allows a generous peek at the sets, makeup FX creation and improvised dollies. The deleted scenes prove to be mercy killings, though at least a couple of them give the title beast a slightly bigger role in its own movie—and do stick around for the end, when outtakes of a gratuitous topless girl are accompanied by the theme from The Benny Hill Show. Finally, there’s an Easter-egg audio interview with Perilstein, who notes that it was Frizzell who was responsible for using one music cue “over and over and over again,” and repeatedly plugs an upcoming Winterbeast soundtrack CD.
Like everyone else unearthing their vintage cheapies these days, Frizzell claims that Winterbeast has a “cult following” deriving from its initial VHS incarnation. This may or may not be the case, but for those devotees who are out there, the DVD is a must-have, and it may win the movie a few fresh devotees as well.
