Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottonhell (2014)

 

Director: Spencer Snygg and Zachary Snygg

Screenplay: Spencer Snygg and Zachary Snygg

Cast: Peter Sullivan as Doug, Marisol Custodio as Brenda, Jon Arthur as Hector; Tom Cikoski as Jake; John Paul Fedele as Mayor Farnsworth; Jon Lunger as Roger Falk

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Why don’t you buy a gun and hug a tree?

To most this would be a silly low budget film about a 50-foot killer Easter bunny, from the shot on digital streaming era of cinema. I am coming to a film like this as a film from its director John Bacchus, one of the various pseudonyms for Zachary Snygg, a figure who has been around in the ultra low budget genre industry since the late eighties, creating curiously named films like The Bloody Video Horror That Made Me Puke on My Aunt Gertrude (1989). Figures like this are fascinating for me to find out about, be it Snygg or a Joe Castro, figures who are prolific but have not had writing on them, figures who just worked and made films which changed per the times they were in. Snygg in particular is a curious one, as he went to softcore film parodies like The Erotic Witch Project (2000) that managed to get onto British DVD rental shop shelves, to a series of horror films with predominantly black casts like Zombiez (2005). Honestly, whilst these films tend to exist under the radar in the straight-to-video territory, I have found that someone like Zachary Snygg fascinates in terms of seeing how genre cinema at a certain level changes over time. Well known cult figures like producer Roger Corman adapted to the times, as a figure like Fred Olen Ray goes from Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988) to Christmas in Palm Springs (2014), so it is fascinating to look at the more obscure figures or ones in the micro-budget genres who continued and soldiered ahead.

Here as well, Zachary Snygg has his trademarks, teaming with his sibling Spencer Snygg, particularly in that he has a very wacky sense of humour, something where, expecting prurient softcore with a film like Mistress Frankenstein (2000), you find yourself with a scattershot sense of oddball humor and obsessions like a man in a fake gorilla suit in-between the first two Erotic Witch Project films as a continuing joke. You could argue it is ironic, playing to the low budgets involved for arch humour, but it comes off weirder, coming to the fore here again with this absurd tale of a monstrous Easter rabbit, whose origins is only asked about for the final punch line with no answer, and the disgruntled dog catcher and the female artist stuck in the job having to deal with it. Opening with the son of a newly married father, disgruntled and unloading on his married to a considerably younger woman, getting his hand sliced off as the wedding cake does, Beaster Day is a film you will not be able to gage with if it is too ridiculous, too low budget, too wacky or does things which are indulgent and immature. A prolonged topless shot of an actress running about from a special effect monster is a good example of that which may be too indulgent for example of this, alongside its openly broad tone. It is a film, meant to sell as a monster movie, which however ends up feeling like its creator indulging in whatever they thought was funny and could sell for themselves.

With everything having the naturalism if artificiality as you see with 2010s shot on digital cinema, it is played with humour, which is with enthusiasm if indulgent, the absurdity found in characters such as the older guy, the father of the female lead, who cannot have fried food but asks for it to be cooked to smell (and for his sexual kinks with his wife and cook). There are moments that are inspired especially when it would have taken for more effort to be able to depict it, such as a first person from a spade, not even for a gore scene but just a trick shot for a single shot. In contrast, you have such an odd gag like the central dog catching/animal control firm being “Dog Catcher in the Rye”, which is strange knowing the Snygg brothers, who wrote the script, choose a J.D. Salinger reference which has no other context.

It is contrasted by the bunny itself, which is obviously superimposed on screen, with the gore scenes usually not directly onscreen, but the special computer effect of hiding parts of the cast to show missing limbs or as a severed head. They are usually separate cast members including female members from Zachary Snygg' softcore films like A.J. Khan and Darian Caine, a few of which happy to have the quota of nudity for the production, something which becomes less in this modern era like a selling point but more a stylistic choice even if will cause some to roll their eyes for how blatant (and pointless) it is. Said rabbit, at least a practical effect, is likely an actual puppet, a marionette with the strings digitally hidden and flopping forwards to move, who looks like a cross between a Sumerian rat monkey and the titular creature of Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973). It looks ridiculous, but with an example like the titular Godmonster, lovably too shabby to be able to survive as a living creature, worse (i.e. blander) has graced cinema.

It is technically an ironic film, embracing how cheesy it is, but it never feels like it is bad for the sake of doing it on purpose, but throwing anything against the wall in terms of humour on its own whims, not because it wants to be sardonic about the presentation. Our lead male is a dog catcher too obsessed with his job, interesting as a funny character actor Peter Sullivan manages to make him less a detestable or annoying figure, but likable ridiculous, contrasted by a failing artist in Marisol Custodio's lead having to share a work place. Whilst other characters will be too broad for some – such as a former hippy major so bad he steals candy from children – even that character has moments which work, even when the jokes fail. The mayor's clear bias against the Amish is an example of where it feels less intentionally wacky by their creators' idiosyncratic sense of humour, at least Zachary Snygg's career from the couple I have seen, as it may seem a deliberately absurd touch to include and never show, "Amish" inherently viewed as funny despite being a minority group, but is stretched out into something which feels more peculiar than deliberately out-of-place. Even in the one off dogs that feels wacky in how out of place they are, there are at gets one or two good moments. The leads thankfully are game for the material, which can be broad but least hits with moments, such as Sullivan's Doug having police codes for dog catching and PSTD flashbacks about Shih Tzu dogs.

It is not a film for everyone due to this deliberately lacksidasical tone, but it is at least a film which tries even if in the school of throwing everything at the wall. Too many films do not sustain themselves in content, even if a lot of my appreciation of these types of movies comes from a love for even the no-to-micro budget films which are sluggish and have charm in their great faults. Using the Jaws template as so many, with the Easter Day celebration under threat, considering the films which have existed, the ridiculousness here has to be expected, and the issue becomes whether you expect something this low budget and proudly embracing how indulgent it is. Certainly, and this is a technically positive, this is one where you cannot dismiss it as trying, as Beaster Day least keeps bringing something new in each scene, a gag or a joke or man half dazed forced to wear a cheap carrot costume to attract the beast, whilst other horror films of any budget feel they are going through motions. Even the lurid moments, mostly all the female nudity, feels out-of-time in the current day, making it more the director-writer’s impulses for better and for worse. A film like this I would have hated back a long time ago, but now able to appreciate the freewheeling nature of these sorts of films, this one does feel unashamedly its own film for good, for bad, for cheesy moments and a few good one-liners.