Even if you’re a such a cryptid-cinema completist that you’ve subjected yourself to the likes of Bigfoot Goes to Hell or Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper, I guarantee you’ve never encountered a Bigfoot movie quite like Sasquatch Sunset. I say this already having seen the one in which he goes hog-wild at a nudist camp, the one where his nipple inflates from excitement and the one where he tears off a urinating man’s penis.

From indie-pic iconoclasts David and Nathan Zeller (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter), the film depicts a year in the life of a four-member family of skunk apes. No dialogue is spoken beyond grunts and howls as they go about their way, foraging for food and shelter, and stumbling into one strange, dangerous situation after another.

Only two bits stretched too far into sketch comedy, like mimicking humans’ cellphone usage with a turtle standing in for the tech. Otherwise, ignoring the laws of nature dictate the shenanigans. It’s as if the “Dawn of Man” prologue in 2001: A Space Odyssey were remade as a ribald comedy. Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I took first crack by opening with Kubrick’s apes masturbating; the Zellners expand that into feature-length, covering all the bases of bodily functions.

It’s filthy, funny and — not referring to bowels here — oddly, oddly moving. To say such a style will polarize audiences is an understatement. Decidedly unconventional rather than experimental, Sasquatch Sunset is likely to prompt a flood of early walkouts. Whenever I witness such a hasty response — e.g., at every Paul Thomas Anderson or David Lynch screening — I consider it a badge of honor for the film. Congrats, Zellners! You’re in excellent company.

Expertly selling the inhuman illusion, the actors disappear behind first-rate makeup and prosthetics, to such a degree that I couldn’t determine whether Jesse Eisenberg (Now You See Me) or Nathan Zellner played the patriarch. No ID issue exists with Riley Keough (2019’s The Lodge) or Christophe Zajac-Denek (Tales of Halloween), respectively being the only woman and little person among the quartet. Each is excellent, gelling as a true ensemble.

Technically, the landscape shots are stunning, thanks to Oscar-worthy cinematography from Michael Gioulakis (2019’s Us). In its sixth screen collaboration with the Zellners, The Octopus Project delivers a beautiful score that, while different from the Texas trio’s alt-electronic albums, is no less melodic.

Detest Sasquatch Sunset all you wish — and many will — but its enigmatic energy clicked with me right away. The best moment arrives in a final shot that conveys irony, craft and an otherworldly power that registers that deadpan frame as an all-time great. —Rod Lott

Opens in theaters Friday, April 19. Get it at Amazon.

Director Gus Van Sant was on the top of the film world in the 1990s, with the semi-wistful Good Will Hunting heralding a true rags-to-riches story. Then, the 1998 shot-for-shot/pretension-to-pretension remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho barreled its way though the floppish door, with its brain-numbing thunderclouds, bleating sheep and other l’artiste touches.

So, yeah, I didn’t like the lousy remake.

But I was pretty much in love with Van Sant’s early work, especially To Die For. I saw it opening night in 1995, mostly because I was hoping to score some time with a private school girl I was very smitten with. Of course, she stood me up — I was a 15-year-old jerk who invited girls to Van Sant movies because I liked My Own Private Idaho and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. (To be fair, I think my Film Threat subscription had more to do with my fandom.)

Even sitting alone in the movie theater, I recall really liking the movie. Why wouldn’t I? Not only was it Van Sant’s new flick, but I also liked the Buck Henry script and, even more, I was entranced with the style of tabloid journalism that started with O.J. Simpson, Tonya Harding and Lorena Bobbitt. (Boy, no wonder I was often alone at the movies. *tear*)

In the black comedy, we meet the über-perky Suzanne Stone (the únter-perky Nicole Kidman). She is obsessed with being a “famous” television journalist. Told in flashback form, her life plays out like a John Waters movie with an L.A. snarky edge.

Suzanne believes the self-empowerment mantras about how television is the one great provider — one that doesn’t mesh with her new husband, Larry (Matt Dillon). Over the year, she becomes consumed with making it big, sans Larry. Soon, she finds a trio of white-trash true believers (including a young Joaquin Phoenix) in her cause, and she creates a teen cult of prepubescent murderers.

Being the near-spiritual dry run to Alexander Payne’s Election, To Die For is revelatory for the sleazy ticks and upselling tricks that now seem commonplace with reality TV becoming the status quo. Although things were different on 1995, To Die For is still a prescient movie. That being said, the one actor who holds it together is Phoenix, with Kidman and Dillion being too cartoonishly evil and dumb, respectively. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Fans of The Goonies, you’re never getting that sequel you so nakedly desire. (Also, the original movie is not as good as you remember it, but that’s neither here nor there.) So make do with Weston Razooli’s debut feature, Riddle of Fire. It may be as close as you’re going to get.

Wyoming-set, but Utah-shot, this “faerie” tale follows a trio of kids it dubs the Three Immortal Reptiles (Charlie Stover, Skyler Peters and Phoebe Ferro). With dogged determination — not to mention motorbikes, paintball guns and ski masks — they embark on a quest for a particular blueberry pie for the boys’ bedridden mother (Danielle Hoetmer). If they can bring her that, she’ll give them the TV password in exchange to play video games.

Easier said than done, of course, as the Reptiles run afoul of those “woodsy bastards” known as The Enchanted Blade Gang, led by a witch (Lio Tipton, 2016’s Viral) who’s up to some shit both criminal and mystical. Throw in a ragamuffin forest sprite (Lorelei Mote), a speckled egg, malt liquor, frozen crag legs, a ’76 Cadillac Delta and the theme from Cannibal Holocaust, and you have an unfailingly sunny-vibed adventure comedy steeped in folklore and shining in 16 mm splendor.

Riddle of Fire’s success hinges most on its casting of the kids, the small pints with big imagination. Razooli struck something akin to gold, particularly with Ferro and even with Peters’ slight speech impediment gaining subtitles. As a whole, the kids are as rambunctious as they are charming, giving audiences a glimpse of what The Little Rascals might look like, had it dabbled in the occult, with a smidge of O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” spread on top.

For the film’s last quarter or so, Riddle loses its way. A dance sequence teed up as an intended showstopper (à la Little Miss Sunshine) instead pushes the cuteness too far without allowing the off-kilter material to keep pace — and in cloyingly slow motion, no less. That deflates a balloon that heretofore avoided such Stevia-sweetened manipulation.

Helping Riddle of Fire cast its freshman-film spell of amusement is a killer “dungeon synth” soundtrack featuring Fog Crag Records, Lost Cascades, Hole Dweller, et al. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Most people only know this obscure comedy for its VHS box art, depicting an arm jutting from a toilet bowl to flush itself. Befitting of that porcelain throne, Good-Bye Cruel World is an unqualified stinker. 

Comedian Dick Shawn (1967’s The Producers) plays Rodney Pointsetter, an evening news anchor who melts down on air after his divorce. He resolves to blow his brains out — ho-ho-HO! — but goes to visit some family members first. One of those is his obese brother-in-law, essayed by Chuck “Porky” Mitchell; that’s how the credits list him, which may be the saddest thing imaginable. 

In between these reunion scenes, brief sketches and parodies play, as if broadcast from Pointsetter’s employer’s channel. Most were outdated by the time Cruel World hit video store shelves, like a hemorrhoid ad featuring “Jimmy Carter,” a spoof of Brooke Shields’ Calvin Klein jeans spot (but with a naked woman and a brand called Joy Crotch) and a commercial for Psycho Soap, with co-writer Alan Spencer (creator of TV’s Sledge Hammer!) doing a better-than-decent Norman Bates impersonation. 

The only amusing portion is a faux trailer for An Officer and an Elephant Man, which is just like it sounds. Novelty value seeps from this bad-taste bit as future Daily Show correspondent Larry Wilmore makes his screen debut making light of Louis Gossett Jr.’s drill sergeant role.

Although not truly interactive, Good-Bye Cruel World comes presented in “Choice-A-Rama,” allowing for a recurring gag of a host asking the audience to vote on what they’d like to see next. The results are never funny, but at least you get Angelique Pettyjohn (The Lost Empire) as a stripping nun. 

Ultimately, Rodney decides life’s worth living because sexy journalist Cynthia Sikes (Arthur 2: On the Rocks) wants to get in his pants. Too bad she and Rodney perish in a tragic accident of slapstick proportions in a finale so “wacky,” it includes a marching band. From a cloud in heaven, Rodney sings a song about life being “a mammy-jammer.” These are the jokes, folks. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Two years ago in Key West, I was dragged to a Jimmy Buffett walking tour. Because if there’s one thing I dislike more than outdoor physical activity in triple-digit temps, it’s the music of “Uncle Jimmy,” as his fervent followers call him. I can’t tell you much about the tour, except I suspect our host trespassed at least once, possibly made things up on the fly, and carried cheaply laminated photos printed from the internet with zero concern for DPI.

All this to say, I’m not the ideal audience for Murdaritaville, Paul Dale’s horror-spoof tribute to Buffett (made before the trop-rock troubadour’s September 2023 passing, lest ye Parrotheads cry “fowl”). But I am the ideal dead meat for its killer, a half-parrot/half-man in skipper’s cap who turns only non-Buffett fans into his own human buffet. In essence, the murderous monster (a dedicated Carter Simoneaux, Dale’s Killer Kites) is like Dexter for the salt-shaker-and-Hawaiian-shirt crowd.

Buffett references aside, I can’t say I dove in to this birdman movie with the unexpected virtue of ignorance, having seen a couple of Dale’s previous pictures in the same comedic vein, most enjoyably Sewer Gators. Among the 50 minutes before the closing credits, too little amuses this time ’round. I enjoyed a throwaway bit with an opera-singing shark (free spin-off idea: Opera Shark) and Dale’s brief return as arrogant TV news reporter Brock Peterson, seen talking to himself while leaving negative feedback for some Uber/DoorDash worker: “Mohammed? One star. That’s for 9/11.”

The movie’s style of humor often veers between the lanes of Abbott and Costello to Airplane! Much of the latter’s influence accounts for fake credits (example: “Armorer: Alec Baldwin”). These gags fall flat not because they run 10 slow-going minutes, but because they botch the spellings of an unforgivable amount of names: Kevorkian, Streisand, Aykroyd, Midler, Friedkin, Epstein, et al. (Hasn’t poor “Hellen” Keller suffered enough?) That sloppiness is indicative of Murdaritaville’s whole, with the major exception of Taylor Fisher’s design of the parrot man.

I think Murdaritaville would land best as a joke trailer, in which the title serves as the punchline. Perhaps those in Buffett’s cult will find more to dig. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.