Big Foot looks scarier in this poster than he does in the movie

The “giant creature” subgenre of horror b-movies has never really been my favorite. The stories and plot development are usually pretty standard – the unaware soon-to-be victims + giant creatures + bloody death = The end.  I was mildly surprised however, in that “Abominable” was a pretty decent b-horror movie, full of drama and suspense. It was hampered by only a few of the usual b-movie faux-pas, and its good points eventually balanced out the negative ones successfully.

The main storyline of the movie follows actor Matt McCoy, as Preston Rogers, an author who’s wife was killed 6 months earlier in a climbing accident which also resulted in his own legs being paralyzed. Preston was traumatized psychologically by the accident and upon his doctor’s advice, he returns to the cabin where the accident occurred, in an attempt to speed up his emotional healing.

Otis, not giving Big Foot a dental exam

Accompanying Preston, is a miscast male nurse, Otis (Christien Tinsley), who reminded me of an older version of Danny Masterson’s  character on “That 70’s Show”. Strangely enough, he comes across not so much as a nurse, but as an unwilling companion, genuinely annoyed by Preston and his insecurities. Otis even goes so far as to spike his own milk with alcohol and chill out on the couch. Not something I would expect a home health nurse to be doing much of. I’m not really sure what his purpose actually was in the movie. Besides being generally apathetic toward Preston, he’s pretty much absent for a large portion of the film because he’s out looking for a store in the backwoods podunk town that carries Preston’s soy milk, which he forgot to pack.

One of the hot chicks next door, post-Big Foot

While Otis is out, a bunch of hot young girls show up to spend the weekend in the cabin next door, and Preston, being stuck in a wheelchair, has nothing to do besides spy on them with a pair of binoculars while feeling sorry for himself. During his spying, he sees one of the girls get kidnapped by Big Foot as she’s talking outside on her cell phone. Drama quickly ensues as Preston tries to get messages to the other girls, the police and Otis, but to no avail, as they all believe he’s some psychologically messed up, delusional “peeping Tom”.

Preston Rogers looking nervously intense

The character of Preston was generally likeable throughout the movie.  He had an innate nervous creepiness about him which I attributed to a vague resemblance to Anthony Perkins  as Norman Bates  in “Psycho”. This seemed to make it harder to determine if he was really a good guy or not, especially with his spying habit. However, his character seemed rather clueless for an author, and it seemed like he whispered his lines throughout the whole movie ( I guess to avoid being heard by Big Foot?). His lack of energy and overall monotone voice made the extended scenes involving him alone in the cabin even longer than they were.

*sigh* Lance rules the horror genre

About 45 minutes into the movie, we get a break from Preston with a separate subplot involving movie icon Lance Henriksen, as one of 3 local men camping in the woods, hoping to find and kill the alleged “Big Foot” creature. This scene, although excellently acted, did not quite mesh with the rest of the movie and seemed to run a bit long, almost to the point where it feels like you’re watching a different movie altogether. We see about 5 minutes of sarcastic macho banter between the woodsy men, that is actually amusing, before Lance’s character, Ziegler Dane, hears a noise and goes running off in the direction of where he thinks Big Foot might be. The scene is almost satirical in that the men are obviously not the “sharpest tools in the shed” and yet they are joking about people that died doing stupid things, a la the “Darwin Awards.” Soon after, we subsequently see Ziegler go running off after Big Foot by himself, into the creature’s cave no less, and becoming the first of the three to earn their own “Darwin Awards” at the hands of Big Foot.

Oooooh...scary lighting on white skin. Big Foot likes this.

The lighting and effects throughout the entire movie, especially the scenes involving Preston, were successful in helping create a “spooky” atmosphere. At one point, Big Foot knocks down power lines so a lot of the scenes inside Preston’s cabin are eerily lit, with a foggy glow highlighting Preston’s face, much like the spooky flashlight effect often used when people are portrayed telling ghost stories. The scenes toward the end where Preston and the last surviving girl, Amanda (Haley Joel) are trying to escape to the car are especially enhanced by rapid flashes of light in the dark which seem to add to the panicked effect on screen.

"Why the hell am I up this early?"

Separated at birth?

Overall, “Abominable” was a smartly directed, tension-filled b-horror movie with fairly good acting. In fact, I was able to take the movie fairly seriously until a point near the end where the viewer is shown a close-up of “Big Foot’s” face. The face on the Big Foot creature was such a ridiculous caricature, that in the most intense escape scene at the end, I couldn’t help but bust out loud laughing because Big Foot looks like Fozzie Bear’s  maniac cousin gone wrong. I mean, it seems like a decent effort was put into the rest of the movie but someone didn’t quite understand the meaning behind making a “realistically frightening” creature. In fact, it seemed like they tried to create a brown version of the “Abominable snowman” from the stop-motion animation movie “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” from 1964. On my personal cheese wedge rating scale however, the Big Foot creature added many points to the movie’s cheesiness so it ends up with a total of 3.5 cheese wedges, for pretty good quality and average cheesiness.

Lance Henriksen as “Frank Black”

One of the plus sides of being addicted to SyFy and the Chiller channels is that I’m exposed to old TV shows of the supernatural/horror genre that I didn’t catch the first time around. One such show is Millennium, starring Lance Henriksen as Frank Black.

I am completely obsessed with this mesmerizing show! The show’s focus is based on the “end-of-the-Millennium apocalyptic conspiracies” that ran rampant some 10 years ago as we approached the beginning of the 21st century. So, the topic’s not exactly current, and it’s rarely shown in chronological order, making it extremely hard to figure out what’s going on, so why is it that every day at 4pm, I am glued to the TV to watch and re-watch every episode of this hypnotic series?

Why does this show mesmerize me so? Is it the writing? Somewhat. Is it the “conspiracy theory” topics? Likely. But seriously, the one thing this show has that makes me keep coming back for more, again and again, is the star of the show, Lance Henriksen. This guy is the smart man’s “Dirty Harry”! In most of his roles (even beyond “Millennium”), Lance rarely shows signs of emotion, except for a trademark penetrating glare that he directs at any wrongdoer to force them to crack and confess all of their evil deeds.

He doesn’t ever need to express any other emotion because his intense “Don’t mess with me” glare would make any serial killer freeze dead in his tracks. Lance Henriksen has the innate ability to achieve an expression on his face that I would give ANYTHING to be able to flash to customers in the pharmacy when they tell me that they don’t know why it takes me 15 minutes to put pills in a bottle!

On top of his intimidating demeanor, the character Frank Black is incredibly smart. I don’t know about you, but when it comes to most of my pop culture heroes, “smart” and “badass” usually aren’t seen together in the same character…AND, Frank Black has psychic powers! But he does not have the normal psychic powers that you see on your average “supernatural” show. HIS psychic powers are the ability to see what a serial killer sees when he’s killing people! How “badass” is that! It’s off the chart! As Frank Black says, “It’s my gift, it’s my curse.”

As Charles Bishop Weyland in AVP

Amazed by his portrayal of the character of Frank Black, I researched a bit into Lance Henriksen’s career and discovered that he has literally been in hundreds of TV shows and movies, most of which get regular play on the SyFy and Chiller channels. What’s crazy is that I’ve actually seen most of these shows, but never realized who Lance was, because he does such a good job of playing the “creepy old guy who could be a serial killer”, or the “possibly shady law enforcement guy” that he literally becomes a part of the movie.

Did you know Lance Henriksen is the guy responsible for the summoning of “Pumpkinhead”? He also was the creepy slimeball of a movie producer in “Scream 3”, the elder leader of the nocturnal undead family in “Near Dark”, and of course, the self-aware android, Bishop in the “Aliens” movies. Digging deeper, I also learned that James Cameron even originally wrote the character of the “Terminator” with Lance in mind, imagining a machine that could “blend into a crowd”, but he ended up re-casting Lance as Det. Vukovich when they decided to take the “Terminator” character more in the direction of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Like, seriously! How have I never been aware of Lance Henriksen before?! On top of his impressive acting resume, the man himself is even more amazing, in a “normal guy blending into the crowd” sort of way. He is by no means your typical “actor-type”. Lance is originally a painter and currently a ceramicist by trade and hobby and is very philosophical about the spiritual aspects of his art. As a child, his dad was a merchant seaman and his parents divorced when he was 2. Lance dropped out of school at the age of 12, hitchhiked across the US picking up random jobs such as shoe-shining and fruit-picking, and was actually illiterate until the age of 30. As a result of this, he has an extremely serious work ethic which he applies to his acting. It’s also the reason why he accepts most roles and takes them all very seriously. His dedication to acting makes you forget that you’re actually watching a low-budget Sci-Fi B-movie as he mesmerizes you with his intense performance.

Lance has described his dedication in this quote:

“You know something, if you’re not acting, you’re not an actor – you’ve gotta work. No way around it. I remember Andy Garcia – we had done Jennifer Eight (1992) together. And Andy, I think, was probably making a couple of million for that movie, and he looked at me one day and he goes, “Hey Lan, you work too much, you shouldn’t work so much”. And I said, “Alright Andy, if I was making a couple million a movie, I wouldn’t work too much. I wouldn’t need to work ‘too much’!” Everybody has their own life to live, and I love doing the work, so what I am I gonna do? He hasn’t done the same kind of roles I have. But it’s lucky for me, because I’m really having a good time”.

Frank Black action figure

This is just a brief glimpse into the man that is Lance Henriksen. The more I read about him, the more I had trouble limiting the info that I was putting into this “blog post tribute” to him. He is not just the iconic Sci-Fi B-movie/TV actor that I originally saw him as, he’s also your regular “guy next door” who worked his way up through the ranks to become a star and still remains as humble as he was when he used to sell his own handmade pottery out of the back of a truck. He truly enjoys himself when he is acting and it shows in his work. What I consider his greatest role, that of Frank Black in “Millennium” deeply affected me in the intensity of his portrayal, no doubt a direct reflection of his deep love and commitment to each of his acting roles. I hope to meet Lance Henriksen someday and have him sign my “Frank Black” action figure that currently glares at me from a shelf in my closet, so I can tell him just how much I admire him not just as an actor, but also as the “down to earth, blend-into-the-crowd” kind of regular guy that he is.

To learn more about Lance Henrisksen as “Frank Black” and the fan campaign to bring back “Millennium” in TV or movie form, please visit the excellent site, BacktoFrankBlack.com and join the movement!