In summary, a group of older students go on a field trip in search of Big Foot. Sounds straight forward enough but Dawn of the Beast is a very busy movie. There are monsters, cannibals, zombies, terrified students and, several sub-plots including a romance of sorts and an abduction. Oh, and there might or might be a vampire / zombie as well. The character in question certainly exhibits some vampire like traits.
It's a B movie which gets cracking almost from-the-get-go. Once it would have made great drive-in material though it's gore quotient would have made it a stand-out. It's not especially gory by todays standards but it certainly is compared to the days when William Castle ruled the world of window mounted speakers.
It is no great secret, but the film is dripping with Wendigos. Being Australian, I had to look them up. I discovered there is a psychosis called Wendigo psychosis. It is a fear of developing a lust for human flesh or becoming a cannibal. It pretty much sums up the film - fear, experienced by the cast if not always the viewer, cannibalism and, a smattering of gore.
In the end it comes down to a battle between monsters, but an awful lot of stupid decisions are made by the cast of characters before, and after, this. It is difficult to pick a stand-out among the cast. All are adequate, none are particularly brilliant. Perhaps they weren't expected to be. In these days of gender equity, it is nice to see a scream queen and a scream king in competition.
The real stand out is Jared Balog who is responsible for some of the monsters' make-up and I'm guessing the gore and entrails.
Production values are OK. (I suspect there wasn't a huge budget.) Anna Shields' script is also OK, the cast are suitably tongue in cheek and the monsters are quite good. Director, Bruce Wemple, keeps things jollying along.
Dawn of the Beast is OK in its own terms. It's a movie for a few mates (girls are mates too), a few beers and a big bowl of corn chips.
