User Reviews

Note - this review contains spoilers.

"Beasts" - Frameline Productions, 1983. Directed by Don Hawks. Starring Thomas W. Babson ("Snowbeast", "Cheers"), Kathy Christopher ("Snowbeast"), and Vern Porter ("Lonesome Dove").

Deeply dissatisfied with a life and career that appear to be going nowhere fast, protagonist Doug Barnes packs his bags and travels to the Colorado Rockies to visit an old girlfriend, Cindy Butler. The pair have been separated for 13 years, ever since Cindy's family moved away from the east coast, but they have kept in touch during the interval, having written to one another 99 times. And while Doug is struggling and disillusioned, Cindy has found success and contentment designing computers for her father's company.

Slowly renewing their acquaintance and affection, Doug and Cindy journey into the wilderness to spend a few days at Cindy's father's remote cabin. But what starts off as an idyllic retreat quickly turns into a nightmare when the couple is besieged by a crazed Grizzly bear and two outlaws who are on its trail, determined to collect a $500 bounty. Cindy's mountain-savvy friend, Willie, comes to their aid but ultimately falls prey to the cons, while Doug is attacked and badly injured by the rampaging grizzly. Doug and Cindy must then race to escape the wilderness before Doug succumbs to his injuries or they're overtaken by the beasts that are hot on their trail.

All in all, "Beasts" is a great premise that was doomed from the start by a severely limited budget. The director paces the film well, but the camera operator and editor leave much to be desired, or else the budget became a factor again and they were rushed and/or forced to use inadequate equipment. The bear footage is marred by the fact that the bear continually looks back over its shoulder at the cameraman (and the few scenes they shot with a guy in a bear suit are a little too obvious). Sound is also an issue with the film, as dialogue is occasionally muffled and the ends of some lines are cut off. The actors make the characters come alive as real people, although there was obviously a lot of inexperience on the set. Kathy Christopher delivers the stand-out performance as Cindy, ably conveying both strength and vulnerability, to say nothing of patience as she tries to encourage a cynical and world-wearied Doug. The Colorado scenery is beautiful. The film's score is mostly lacking, but again, I suspect that budget played a large role there.

While I honestly can't give "Beasts" a super high rating, despite the soft spot that it holds in my heart, I won't treat it too badly, either. It was a great idea that didn't work out at the time, due primarily to the albatross of a tight budget hanging around its neck. Tom Babson and Kathy Christopher created characters that I could care about and wanted to know more about, something that modern films with flashier actors and obscenely large budgets often fail to do. I own the film and watch it from time to time. No, it's not an Oscar-winner by any means, but I enjoy it for some reason. I identify strongly with Doug's search for himself and his place in life. I can't help but wonder if his struggles are not autobiographical of the screenwriter.

There is also a strong nostalgia factor involved for me where this film is concerned, as I first saw it on late-night TV when I was around 10 years old (probably at the same time it was first released).

Here's hoping that, after they escaped, aspiring writer Doug wrote their true-life adventure in a story that made him a fortune, and that he and Cindy had three or four kids and eventually retired to the cabin (with the addition of a large bearskin rug).

Is this movie for real? I adored every minute of it's clumsy, lunk-headed, heavy handed length and went back & watched it again just to make sure. It's no SHINDLER'S LIST, but there is something going on here that is quite intriguing in the way that "outsider art" by non-artists can be engaging. Like the guy in Texas who covered 12 miles of fence posts along his cattle fields with upside down cowboy boots. You wonder what the motivation is while shaking your head in disbelief & smiling all the same.

OK so we have this mismatched couple who head up into the Canadian Rockies for a get-away-from-it-all weekend snuggling in a cozy, surprisingly well lit little cabin Ole' Willy has up there yonder miles away from any kind of help. They keep the drapes closed just in case anyone ambles by but it's better lit and cleaner in there than in the White Room on the space shuttle rocket gantry. Anyway, it seems that a giant rampaging man eater grizzly bear -- referred to as a "grizz" for short -- is stalking the treeline attacking random cub scouts & hunters. Meanwhile, two ex-cons are tracking the thing by asking people if they have seen it in the hopes of bagging a reward posted for the grizz. Even though they have been wandering the tundra for days their shoes are bone dry and they carry no camping gear, and have a taste for shapely blonde ladies who look good in flannel.

The bear is something else, a giant shambling force of nature that looks close to 500lbs. It's HUGE, and stalks the doughty couple like JAWS, nonchalantly observing their behavior and waiting his time for the right moment to spring into action. It appears to have been a trained bear cruelly civilized for circus shows or something like that, and looks like a big warm friendly huggy bear when supposedly mauling the handler who wrassles with it when simulating it's rampage. The bear's effect on the humans in the film is far more terrifying than anything it does: People scream, run about flailing their arms, revert into foolishness, and in the film's 2nd most outrageous moment, throw themselves off of cliffs to avoid being hugged.

It was at that point that I said to myself "OK now wait a minute, what the heck is going on here?" This isn't just a movie about a couple on vacation, it is some kind of a statement about man, the forces of nature, and how within each one of us there is a hidden dork waiting to come out. The male half of the couple (played by regular "Cheers" alumni Thomas Babson) physically resembles a mix of Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent and Stephen King with his big 80s Coke bottle glasses. He's a writer used to sitting on his behind, and one of the film's less subtle jokes points out how he struggles with a 35lb backpack while the shapely blonde in flannel's pack weighs 50lbs, and she skips across the snowy wastes like Dancer the reindeer.

She is played by Kathy Christopher, and BEASTS was sort of a mini-reunion for her and Mr. Babson, who had previously been stalked around the Rockies in the made for TV creature feature SNOWBEAST. She is easy on the eyes, packs a .44 magnum, and holds up surprisingly well even when being groped and leered at by a couple of sex starved ex-cons. The only problem is that she reverts into a simpering, clueless ditz during the climactic showdown with the bear, the convicts, and Mr. Babson's suddenly found testosterone resolve, laying bare (no pun intended!) the film's hidden agenda -- It was all a parable on men standing up and acting like men when the going gets rough, which is remarkable considering how everything that goes wrong is basically the guy's fault for being stupid at a critical moment.

Never mind: The conclusion is a howler, when it turns out that grizzly bears have a suicidal streak within them that will overwhelm their natural drive to probably avoid humans all together. The ending is utterly unseen, unpredictable, and against formula. Here is another movie that begs the question, how was this film allowed to be made? And the obvious answer is because in Canada nobody gives a damn, they probably just went ahead and made it without asking anyone. It's a big country.

6/10: I'd rather watch stuff like this than dancing penguin puppets or James Bond any day of the week, which might have been even more surprising for me to learn than anything else in the film.