Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch

I understood upon renting Clawed: The Legend of Sasquatch that it was going to be a low-budget, independent-type film. Therefore, my expectations were not very high. After having watched it, I think Director Karl Kozak, and Writer Don J. Rearden, did really well if you ignore the weak plot.

The movie starts with a very stereotypical scene. A group of four hunters, portrayed as shoot anything that moves, drunken rednecks, is trying to poach a grizzly bear on Echo Mountain. A sasquatch, known as Taku-he by the local Indian tribe, acts as protector of the mountains and kills three of the poachers, leaving the fourth slightly maimed. A Native American forest ranger, played by actor Nathaniel Arcand, rescues the fourth hunter. For some weird reason, racism I guess, the hunter thinks the ranger is responsible for the death of his friends and vows revenge.

The accident is reported as a grizzly bear attack and the local townsfolk want to keep it hush-hush, since they are a tourist community and the season is about to begin. The local sheriff, actor Jack Conley, calls in some trackers to destroy the problem bear, but they are a few days out. The forest ranger knows it is Taku-he, but keeps this information to himself. The ranger spends the rest of the movie finding bigfoot-type sign and wandering around the mountain trying to keep people away so they don’t get killed by Taku-he.

The weak plot of the movie begins when a class project about endangered species pairs two high school boys, who don’t like each other, together. One of the boys is a stereotypical jock who is not very bright and thinks of nothing but beer and girls. The other is a quiet, but intelligent boy who has a secret fascination with the legends of Taku-he and the history of attacks on Echo Mountain.

Hearing about the grizzly attack on Echo Mountain, the jock decides they should base their project on it. The quiet boy is not too keen on this but reluctantly agrees when he hears there will be girls going. So, with a couple of girls and a supply of beer, they head to the mountains.

Meanwhile, the surviving hunter gathers three more of his drunken buddies and heads to Echo Mountain to kill the Native American forest ranger. I think you can see by this time where this movie is headed and I don’t want to spoil the ending for you.

The sasquatch in this movie looks pretty cool for a low budget film. However, by the third or fourth scene, you will realize the facial features do not move, so that obviously limits its appeal. The Hollywood-like depiction of hunters as drunk, trigger-happy, rednecks is annoying, but if you watch many movies, you ought to be getting used to that by now.

In a nutshell, this movie is predictable, stereotypical and over-acted. However, despite all this, I found it entertaining and would recommend it if you are a sucker for bigfoot movies. This movie is rated R and contains one scene with nudity, so parental discretion is advised.