411mania.com: Movies - 31 Years, 31 Screams: Abominable

Some movies just have such a crazy premise that you can't help but be curious about them. Snakes on a Plane was such a film. After all, what else could it be about but snakes…on a plane. I wonder if they'll have the kosher meal. However, motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane have nothing on the premise of Abominable. Imagine this – and stay with me – it's Rear Window but with the legendary snowbeast replacing Raymond Burr as the killer.

As if that wasn't enough of a selling point, it has some of my all-time favorite B-list actors — some good, some not so good — Matt McCoy is the guy they called when Steve Guttenburg turned them down for another Police Academy movie. Then you have Dee Wallace Stone, or "E.T.'s mom" as Scream so eloquently put it. Lance Henriksen, who deserves one of those "Lifetime Achievement Awards" just for the sheer bulk of crappy movies he's made watchable with his presence. Then, there's the late, great Paul Gleason. You'd know him from playing some legendary douchebags such as the principal in The Breakfast Club and the lieutenant who does everything wrong but won't admit it in Die Hard. Basically, he made a career out of playing the same character over and over again, but you know what – it worked! We also have scream goddess Tiffany "No, I'm not Pink, motherfucker!" Shepis along for the ride as one of the coeds across the way.

With a cast like that, you know you're in for quality crap – the kind of crap you bust out when you're entertaining guests.

McCoy plays Preston Rogers, a widower who's returning to the mountain where his wife lost her life just six months earlier. Although Preston is in a wheelchair and a bit disturbed by the memories of her fall, his therapist thinks it would be a good idea if he spent the weekend on the side of the mountain just to confront his fears. I don't know that that form of therapy has ever worked. Obviously, Preston can't make it alone, so he's accompanied by male nurse Otis (Christien Tinsley), who does all the cooking and eye-rolling. He's no Thelma Ritter, but then who is?

By the grace of God, a gaggle of coeds (including Joel and Shepis) arrives at the cabin next door to have a little get-together to celebrate one of the girl's wedding – kind of like a bachelorette party without all the dildos. Normally, this would be the start of a beautiful friendship – or at least the start of a letter to Penthouse Forum.

Unfortunately for Preston, Otis, and the girls, they picked a weekend when a dangerous abominable snowman (Michael Deak inside of a goofy looking costume) has decided to forage for food. He raids a ranch for some cattle and a little dog, leading the rancher (Rex Linn) to enlist the help of his buddies (Jeffrey Combs and Lance Henriksen) to hunt the damned thing down and kill it. That doesn't go nearly as well as it went in Jaws, and all three hunters are killed by the time we hit the mid-point.

With nothing better to do, Preston starts looking out the window with his binoculars, and that's when he spots ~~Thorwald killing his wife~~ the beast carting off one of the pretty girls (Ashley Hartman). Well, he doesn't exactly see anything happen, but one second she's there, and the next her cell phone is lying on the ground and the trees are rustling.

Of course, because Preston's nerves are really jangled about returning to the point where his beloved wife died, Otis refuses to believe him. Preston even tries to contact the police, but the Sherriff (Gleason) doesn't want to bother with a long car ride, so he ignores Preston's pleas. No, seriously. That's the reason given, and coming from Gleason's mouth, it's totally believable.

With Otis riding the Night Train to sleepyville on the couch, Preston resumes watching for the creature. He spies the girls getting into an argument and Tracy (but I'll just call her "Tiffany" because that's how I roll) getting a drink thrown in her face. This gives Schifrin the opportunity to work in some boobage as Tiffany strips down to shower. That's when the film sacrifices a lot of credibility. See, no self-respecting heterosexual man would spend his time scanning for a freaky red-eyed monster when a naked Tiffany Shepis is lathering up right across the way. I mean, in the horror community, Tiffany's ass is at least as legendary as Bigfoot.

Otis wakes up and agrees with me (with helpful zoom right in on Tiffany's spider tattoo as he looks through the binoculars just to drive home the fact that he's a pervert). In a typical "Tiffany Shepis Moment," the creature reaches through the window and snaps her in half while dragging her out into the wild. If you had given me a cast list and told me one of the cast members was going to get snapped in half, I would have answered "Tiffany Shepis" every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Of course, Otis happened to look away at that very moment, so only Preston witnessed it. Even the other girls didn't hear it because they have the music up so loud. It turns out the music is what is drawing the creature back to the house over and over again, so Preston drugs Otis, who was just getting in his way anyway, and screams a warning to them. The girls wind up playing "red light/green light" with the beast as Preston looks on helplessly from his wheelchair. That doesn't go well, as only Amanda (Joel) makes it out of the house and over to Preston's alive. We knew she would, though, because she looked up and smiled at Preston when they first arrived, thus cementing herself as "the nice one." You knew it wasn't going to be Tiffany because *someone* had to die a gruesome death, and you knew it wasn't going to be C.J. because…well, C.J. was a cunt throughout the whole movie.

So, we have a paraplegic Preston trying to calm down Amanda and come up with a plan to get them down to the car so they can get the hell out of there. Of course, that's a lot easier said than done, and that's what third acts are for.

Like a lot of Sci-Fi Channel-level movies, you can't go into Abominable expecting a Halloween or Rosemary's Baby. It's fun, entertaining crap. Nachos and cheese instead of chateaubriand. On that level, it works quite well. Everyone plays it straight, with the exceptions of maybe Henriksen and Gleason. Henriksen, in particular, gets in a funny speech about "the Darwin Awards," moments before running off to hunt for the creature inside of a cave, thus demonstrating the principle.

Director Ryan Schifrin (son of legendary Hollywood composer Lalo Schifrin, who provides the score here) does an adequate job with what he has. Obviously, a good 80-percent of the film is Preston looking through his binoculars and then reacting to what he sees. The real problem Schifrin runs into is that he's ripping off one of the all-time classic movies, so the viewer is constantly comparing his work to Hitchcock's, and that's just too tall an order to take on.

The 411: A surprisingly entertaining slice of a cheddar cheese with scenery-chewing performances from Henriksen and Gleason. The formula is tried-and-true, so it's just a matter of putting the camera out there and letting the actors do their thing. Yeah, it's no Rear Window, but it's a little better than most of the crappy Sci-Fi Channel films you see. B

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