Night Claws (2012)
From second one, it's obvious. Night Claws is absolute trash but it turns into the kind of garbage you have fun wallowing in. This movie is plagued with so many issues we're going to have to go through it scene-by-scene. It's a spoiler-filled review!
The film begins like every unimaginative slasher movie: with two teenagers getting randy in the back seat when they hear a noise. After being told by his girlfriend that “he’s not getting any of THIS until he goes and checks out what the noise is”, the sap gets reduced to chunks of hamburger but not before his girlfriend tears off his feet while trying to prevent him from being pulled out of the car window.
The incident baffles police. Two dead teenagers, torn to shreds by some kind of wild animal... but what kind? That’s when anthropologist Sarah Evans (Leilani Sarelle) arrives, intent on proving Bigfoot's the culprit. Along with Sheriff Joe Kelly (Reb Brown), she begins investigating.
Meanwhile, more future victims for the killer Sasquatch are introduced. Two couples are on a boot camp-style camping trip with an instructor, a group of teenagers ignore the police's warning and go to the woods to party. These characters add nothing to the plot, but Bigfoot demands blood damn it! Night falls, which means trouble for the humans, and for the audience. Day-for-nights shots are everywhere and the blue filters don't fool anyone, particularly not when even the campfires are tinted! As the civilians reach their apex of annoyance, the body count resumes. It's about time, as the actors' performances are dreadful. Two of the campers are left, shaken... and are then promptly captured by a trio of rednecks who want to use them as bait for Big Foot. MORE meat for the grinder?!
Night Claws takes a break from adults and switches to the teenagers. In my favorite scene of the movie, we see this party consists of 6 people, three guys, and three girls, with a third being off-screen. One of the boys figures it’s time to inject additional nudity into this movie and walks over to where the girl he’s lusting after is sitting. She’s acting kind of strange though, really quiet. As he goes to nudge her and asks what’s going on, her head comes off! It’s one of those legendary Big Foot pranks where the creature decapitates someone, cleans up the blood and then places the head back onto the body. As the surprised teen is torn to shreds and we hear his blood-curling scream, his friends confuse the sound for him and blondie getting it on. Awesome.
Following a bloodbath, the three rednecks using the couple as bait prove themselves the dumbest, most easily tricked gun-totting specimens I’ve ever seen. The police, meanwhile, are so eager to split up and get themselves killed it's a wonder the killer skunk ape can keep up. And then we’ve got the ending. This is one of those movies where the planets must have aligned, it’s New Year’s Eve, 1999 and the date also happens to fall both on a Friday the 13th and February 29th. We discover that the biggest, most nonsensical set of coincidences have set this movie into motion. Just when you thought the writing couldn't get any worse, there it is.
Night Claws is filled with painful demonstrations of acting. The special effects are laughable, the dialogue makes petrified wood look fluid, the script abysmal, and characters shallow. The whole thing would've been dated if it had been made in the eighties. It’s not even a movie anymore; it’s an experience. You can’t believe how bad it gets until you have seen it for yourself. The good news is that it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious. So many things are done wrong you can always find something new to poke fun at, and seeing it with someone who has no idea what they’re getting into is a gleeful experience. Unfortunately, the DVD release lacks subtitles, meaning you're likely to miss some of the juiciest dialogue as the audience talks and laughs throughout. As a movie, Night Claws is embarrassing. As something you can play on your TV during a party or a film you can watch with your friends and laugh at, it’s what you want in a movie that’s so bad it’s good. I urge you to rush out and tear it apart like a Yeti tears apart a teenager. (On DVD, September 12, 2014)
