Now Available - Winterbeast

[Pak-Man]

Winterbeast

Feature film · 2022

Winterbeast has the homemade feel of a movie made over the course of several years: characters with different haircuts (and actors) from shot to shot, and claymation monsters who all seem to come f…

With Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

See it on RiffTrax

Winterbeast is a real gem, in the RiffTrax sense of the word "gem."

It's got that rough, homemade feel of a movie made over the course of several years, including actors with different haircuts from one shot to the next, and possibly even the actors themselves changing from one shot to the next. On top of all that, it's got claymation monsters who look nothing alike and all seem to come from different universes - or at least, different art rooms in different abandoned asylums.

Which one of these monsters is the Winterbeast? It's pretty hard to say. But it's up to some hapless park rangers to figure out what's killing people on their mountain. And for some reason, they have to answer to a sadistic old lodge owner who wants to keep the mountain open, "Mayor from Jaws" style.

Much goes unexplained in Winterbeast, including a random shot of an object in a box that, um... should be kept hidden in a bedside drawer. And the hotel owner sings a song that will haunt your dreams. It all leads up to a final confrontation that'll leave you saying "So was THAT the Winterbeast? Or...?" Suffice to say, if you liked Lycan Colony or Suburban Sasquatch, this is required viewing.

Try to figure out who, what, and why the Winterbeast is, with Mike, Kevin and Bill!

Written by: Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, and Sean Thomason

Contributing writers: Jason Miller and Zach Shatzer

[ihavemyreasons]

Thr claymation was unexpectedly awesome but everything around it was a big what the F is going on and why.

[eegah]

Thr claymation was unexpectedly awesome but everything around it was a big what the F is going on and why.

I have to admit, I kinda liked the music. It was catchy.

I don't know about the claymation being awesome, but it was definitely much better than you would expect in a movie of this...caliber.

Everything else was about as incompetent as possible.

[dbsommer]

"It's not every day you see the shittiest, most incoherent movie ever made." Me paraphrasing Mike.

It was an incoherent mess from start to finish. Great riffs despite this. But it does make Coleman Francis look like Coppala. Wiseau was positively competent compared to this. It felt like random stuff thrown together while hoping for the best.

[Pak-Man]

My theory is the artists did the monster scenes first, as unrelated standalone projects, but then the director decided to sew it all together into one clunky film. It's the only way I can resolve the fact that nobody ever acknowledges anything that happened in the previous scene.

[Pastor of Muppets]

My theory is the artists did the monster scenes first, as unrelated standalone projects, but then the director decided to sew it all together into one clunky film. It's the only way I can resolve the fact that nobody ever acknowledges anything that happened in the previous scene.

I love that the quality of so many Rifftrax enhanced movies is that weird hypotheses like this make perfect sense.

[Pastor of Muppets]

I fell asleep halfway through this, but I already counted 4 different monsters.  So which one is the Winterbeast?

I love that you NEVER see a monster in the same frame as a victim.

This movie is like a medley of short videos, related only only by geography.  Like, every scene seems to have taken in a tree lined mountainy area, but that's where the similarities end.  It's like somebody was teaching a directing class at a community college, and decided to take the final projects of his students for a semester, then just try to make a movie out of them.

[John Bradley]

This one was great, watched it a couple of times now.

Sure, it's an incoherent mess, but you expect these sorts of movies. The important part is that there were at least two unforgettable scenes - the "What Can The Matter Be?" dance sequence (complete with creepy clown mask), and the completely unacknowledged dick-in-a-box.

In the latter, I love the way the woman in the middle keeps glancing at the box, the two yammering guys, and back to the box - as if saying "seriously, neither of you people with lines are going to say anything about the dildo?"