Five-Legged Iguana

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2015

Candidate #16

WENDIGO

(January 2001)

"Wendigo is hungry. Always hungry. Its hunger, never satisfied.”

When I first saw Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter, I had already been aware of both Habit and Wendigo, but had never had the opportunity to nail either one down for a proper watch.

Having been deeply impressed by The Last Winter (which grabbed itself a ¡Qué Horror! 2008 slot) I subsequently increased my efforts to see both of Fessenden’s earlier films, without much success.

Until now.

Just in time for the upcoming Blu-ray release of “The Larry Fessenden Collection” (more on that later), Wendigo glided right up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Hey, look at me! I’m an awesome horror movie!”

And Wendigo was absolutely right.

In a teeny nutshell, Jake Weber and Patricia Clarkson get away from the city with their son (played by Malcolm in the Middle’s Dewey, Erik Per Sullivan), with spectacularly horrible results.

And while that’s all I’ll say as far as what the film is about--at any rate, some of you may be able to glean some of its thematic preoccupations from the title alone--I will go on the record as saying it makes for an excellent companion piece/double bill with The Last Winter, and, if anything, has made me even more antsy to finally see Habit.

Which may become significantly easier, with the upcoming Collection, which will feature Fessenden’s No Telling, Habit, Wendigo, and The Last Winter, all remastered in high-definition. The Collection will be released on October 20, to celebrate 30 years of Glass Eye Pix, Fessenden’s indie production company that has also brought us Jim Mickle’s Stake Land, Ti West’s The House of the Devil, and Adrián García Bogliano’s Late Phases (to name a select ¡Qué horror! few).

So, yeah. Wendigo.

See it. Or wait for The Larry Fessenden Collection.

I know I will…

(Wendigo DVD cover art courtesy of fandango.com.)