Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottenhell Review from Uncork’d Entertainment
AKA: The Beaster Bunny
Directed by: John Bacchus
Written by: John Bacchus
Produced by: John Bacchus, Tom Cilkoski
Music by: John Paul Fedele
Cinematography by: John Bacchus
Edited by: John BAcchus
Cast: Jon Arthur, Kristina Beaudouin, Valerie Bittner, Alison Bodell
Year: 2014
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 87 minutes
Studio: Purgatory
Blues LLC
Distributed: Uncork’d Entertainment
Easter is the time to celebrate the resurrection of christ, eat chocolate eggs, and now it is also a time to sit down and watch a seasonal horror film. Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottonhell (known as The Beaster Bunny in the UK) is a film by John Bacchus who also created many pornographic parody videos but this film is different because, as the title suggests, it is about a Giant Rabbit set during Easter. I want to start off by saying this film is absolutely awful but it is hilarious and extremely enjoyable in a B-movie way.
Beaster Day is basically about a giant rabbit killing people in the woods while a group of dog hunters try to kill it by orders from the hippy Major. I know what you are thinking, “Is that all that happens?” The answer is, yes. I could not go more in depth, but this film isn’t about the plot, it’s about the desperate actors and the kills and this is exactly what I’m going to talk about in this review.
During the course of the film, many actors and actresses appear on screen giving a performance not even worthy of a Christmas nativity, but there is a charm to this bad acting as it adds to how low budget the film is and how lackluster the script is. While I was watching this film I did feel sorry for a few of the actresses because they got fully naked. I wouldn’t feel bad but seeing as it is for this film and I was thinking about how much they must have needed the money. To be fair to everyone in the film, an actor is only as good as the script they are given and the script was definitely written in an hour. The majority of the time when any actor tried to tell a joke, it came out wooden and dry but they are still funny because of how poorly the joke was written and how shit the acting is.
Now I feel it’s time to talk about the enjoyable part of this horror comedy. The giant killer rabbit. The Beaster Bunny is a poorly animated rabbit that moves very slowly and feels clunky which made my enjoyment level increase a lot. I am a huge fan of monster movies, especially ones where the monsters are badly animated models and this is exactly what the Beaster Bunny is in this film. I do have a slight problem with the rabbit however. Whenever it is about to kill a human there is a hard cut to a dismembered limb or dead body without actually seeing the kill. I assume this is down to the special effects budget. While I’m talking about the budget, this film cost $150,000 and it shows — the effects are passable especially for a B-movie but it could have been a bit better.
As a music nerd I constantly forget about the film I’m watching and focus on the soundtrack. This happened a little in this film but mostly during shots leading up to the rabbit showing up. During these shots, a very tense drum orientated theme plays and makes the film more of a true horror film but then the monster shows up and brought me back to the realisation of what I was watching. The rest of the score in the film was also interesting and one of my favourite points of the film.
Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottonhell is a brilliant bad B-movie. I was laughing most of the time, at the acting, editing, the script, and the giant killer rabbit. By no means is this high art — for me this is a film to put on with friends to have a good time watching or even when you are in a bad mood and need some cheering up.
