Little boy Paul (an earnest and engaging performance by Eric Foster) befriends a friendly Bigfoot (burly Tom Folkes in a goofy looking suit). Meanwhile, Paul's forest ranger dad Will (overplayed with eye-rolling panache by Maurice Grandmaison) and several others venture out into the woods to capture an escaped tiger. Man, does this flick register as a definite head-scratching oddity: Director/co-writer Jay Schlossberg-Cohen and co-writer Philip Yordan clumsily blend sappy sentiment, cutesy animal antics (a family of adorable comic relief raccoons rampaging in a kitchen needs to be seen in order to be believed), and standard, but pretty tense and absorbing trekking through the woods action adventure thrills into a truly baffling oddball affair. And if that isn't kooky enough, our beefy Sasquatch drinks Coca-Cola and enjoys listening to rock music. Moreover, the adult actors ham it up like nobody's business, with John Tallman as jolly Native American Jim, Griffin Casey as obnoxious musclehead big game hunter Morgan Hicks, and Navarre Perry as jerky teacher Mr. Douglas rating as the most flagrant histrionic offenders of the bunch. Naturally, there's also lots of footage of animals in the wilderness and, surprisingly, a good deal of tension as well. Joseph D. Urbancyk's slick cinematography makes the most out of the breathtaking sylvan scenery. Fritz Heede's mechanically bouncy synthesizer score adds to the overall loopiness. A real curio.
Review of Cry Wilderness
