jeffoberholtzer1983
A hairy Bigfoot creature bent on the destruction of all mankind arrives in Townville, USA to reek havoc on the local rednecks. This film is an interesting blend of dark comedy and gore sequences, which personally, I found to be the most hilarious. Clearly a bow to the drive-in era, the cast is filled with over-the-top characters, including Mark the Lumberjack who sometimes wears a flannel shirt and jeans, the other times is in blood-stained long johns. His drunken pals bumble about the town, weapons in hand, ready to destroy Bigfoot once and for all.Make sure you have a few beers in hand before popping this one into the player. You're gonna need 'em!
mreporterman
Texas Chainsaw lookout! The Maryland Chicken House Massacre has made it to the silver screen, but instead of a psychotic serial killer chasing after victims with a rotating blade, a drunken lumberjack hunts down a huge ravenous gorilla with a wooden axe.Young director Eric B. Walter, with a Zucker brother type of charm, shoots to re-create the 1960's B-movie horror films that, if they weren't meant to be horror, would be considered comedies by today's standards. But his 2006 THE LUMBERJACK OF ALL TRADES is probably the cheesiest, corniest, most ridiculous thing I've seen so far this year… and, I loved it!!! In terms of style and structure, Walter's first feature film most resembles 1977's KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, which based on a friend's recommendation I was able to see last week via NetFlix, though Walter's movie unlike the John Landis directed flick is more focused than just series of random skits. The movie, which some might say is a box within a box, would have you believe that you're not watching a modern-day movie but in fact some wayward TV program of yesteryear replete with fake TV commercials. But, while the Zucker brothers had their Scot Free board game and their Zinc-Oxide PSAs, Walter has Bury Beer and lawyer TV ads."Big Bury" Beer is of course an in-joke for Walter's friends and co-workers, including myself who receive our paychecks from Delmarva's self-proclaimed news-leading TV station based in Salisbury, a job whose employees require at times a Turpentine-based beverage like Bury Beer, which may actually end up being the next flavor at the Dogfish Head.First off, the movie is set in Townville, Md., which looks like it's actually the Townville that time forgot. It's one of those scary-movie-type, small, creepy towns where development was all but abandoned, where maybe it could pass for Mayberry, but where you're always a stone's throw away from a human cannibal's slaughterhouse, which may accurately describe all of Delmarva's small, backwoods towns. Townville is also strangely populated by characters more apt for a spaghetti Western or who might be related to the Beverly Hillbillies.The movie stars Ken Johnson, who plays Mark the Lumberjack. Mark's constant beer chugging, scruffy beard, and, wearing of an eye-patch may make him part-pirate. But his brute aggressiveness, low intelligence, and catchphrase of "Oh, Yeah" may make him the re-incarnation of the Macho Man Randy Savage.For everything unattractive about this character, Johnson's performance endears viewers to the point where they don't want to take their eyes off Johnson's Paul Bunyan-esquire form. That's even when that large frame is standing in his underwear and the elephant in the room becomes the thick bulge that is Johnson's johnson, largely dangling between his legs center screen, which Johnson finally deflates the laugh bag by scratching himself.Mark the Lumberjack, after drinking all but one bottle of his beer, decides to go to the store. His mother whose shadow you only see and who Mark refers to as "Me Maw" yells at him to pick up some groceries but her deafness doesn't avail him to the location of the car keys, so Mark has to drive the lawnmower to the store. While there, Mark meets an Old Prospector who's on the hunt for gold. We're then paraded through a series of clichés both in dialogue and in dramatics personae. But the campy nature of the whole thing, even as we watch the Old Prospector camp out in nature, did bring the occasional smile to my face.I will say there were some scenes that dragged, and that maybe went on a little too long. But any pacing problems fall to dust after the hairy creature bursts onto the scene and starts unleashing the gore and violence. From then on, it's just an insane roller coaster ride. And yes, tons of blood are unleashed. The screen and the cast are by the end covered in buckets of it, deluged not only by the beast itself but also by our axe-happy lumberjack.There are moments of fluidity like when Mark goes to a card game. The editing is so slick here and the emotion is so energized and quick that it straddles MTV-like nauseating, especially with its loud music, but ends up being so rich and colorful that it breeds enthusiasm.Walter also proves his potentially good cinematic eye with several exterior shots, which utilize different aspects of the sky such as one vista boasting a mountain backdrop and another heralding a big full moon. There were also several time progression shots, which are attention-getting only in their contrasting beauty.But, dare I say I'm a little jealous at Eric for doing what I can only e-mail or blog about, though I am appreciative because I have seen several movies, even this year, that were low-budgeted, mini-DV produced features. I've even met some of their directors and of them all, hands-down, Eric has been the only one to have and to have had a passion that I hope has ne'er waned too much, almost as if he's still having fun.All the other directors I've met have gotten so jaded and bitter, but I get the sneaking suspicion that Eric still gets a kick out of the process because at its heart this movie is a parody, but all parodies, all good ones, come not from bitterness, the sincerest form of flattery and all that, and I feel like that's where Eric and his movie come from, a mocking yet nostalgic true film fan.
movieman_kev
Mark the Lumberjack and his pals have to save the town of Townsville from a rampaging Bigfoot after the creature's awoken by the local gold prospector in this brain-draining low-budget 'supposed' comedy. I put supposed in quotes because, quite frankly, I didn't laugh once. Apparently all of the 'actors' in this fiasco are under the impression that the louder you act, the better because all of them scream their lines. It's as headache inducing as it is cringe worthy. I could go to any play put on by any given elementary school acting class and I'd be more likely to see more nuance and coherency. Awful, unfunny, tedious, atrociously acted, horribly directed, I could go on and on ad ad nauseum about what's wrong about this film, but neither one of us has that kind of time.My Grade: FDVD Extras: 16 & a half minutes of deleted scenes and bloopers; a behind the scenes featurette (17 minutes); trailers & TV spots for this movie; and production images
kludwick
This is a moving, sensitive tale of the plight of a lonely, misunderstood bigfoot monster, and the tragically comic chain of unfortunate events that lead to the death of this majestic creature.A central theme of the film is the depiction of several characters' struggles with cruel disabilities. Chief among these: bigfoot's excessive hairiness (shared, to a lesser extent, by Brick McPherson, forging an emotional bond between these two characters that could only be severed by a chainsaw), Mark the Lumberjack's plight of having lost an eye in Vietnam (backstory which, while never explicitly mentioned in any way whatsoever, is clear from the subtle context of Ken Johnson's multi-faceted performance), addiction to chicken and/or human flesh (again, a common bond between bigfoot and Brick), and really, really severe mental retardation (entire cast and crew).Summary: You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll gradually shed skin cells and you'll convert some oxygen to CO2. It helps if you drink a few beers during, before and after the movie, and also while you write your review. (Trust me on this one.) Actually, a few beers are a good idea pretty much all the time. Go have some beer right now. (This, by the way, is another central theme of the Lumberjack movie - almost forgot to mention it!) My Rating: 10 bottles of beer on the wall.
