Raunchy, R-Rated 80s Sci-Fi On Tubi Can’t Choose A Monster, So It Uses All Of Them

By Robert Scucci
| Published 24 seconds ago

The synopsis for 1988’s Demonwarp on Tubi reads: “After a Bigfoot-type creature attacks them in the woods, a father and daughter suspect they’ve stumbled onto a nest of aliens in a hidden spacecraft.” The synopsis for the same title on Rotten Tomatoes tells a slightly different story: “A man whose daughter was kidnapped by Bigfoot rescues topless teens from alien sacrifice in the woods.” While both of these brief rundowns are technically accurate, they’re totally underselling just how absolutely insane Demonwarp is.

Demonwarp does not have a Wikipedia page.

“So, is it about Bigfoot or aliens?” is probably the question you’re asking yourself right now, and the answer is “yes.” There’s Bigfoot, aliens, demons, human sacrifices, horny teenagers looking for one of their uncles who mysteriously vanished, and a man whose daughter was kidnapped by a cryptid at the beginning of the film who’s trying to warn everyone so they can get the hell out of dodge before it’s too late.

Every so often, a movie is so out of pocket that you can’t help but admire the audacity, and you just have to let it happen to you. Demonwarp is one of those movies, and if you only watch a couple of these every year as part of your semi-annual sanity check, make sure this one finds its way onto the list.

Demonwarp Is Total Insanity

Demonwarp is totally bonkers, so let’s unpack what actually happens. One weekend while renting a cabin in Demonwoods (really), Bill (George Kennedy) is playing a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit with his daughter Julie (Jill Marin). Suddenly, Bigfoot comes out of nowhere, trashes the place, subdues Bill, and runs off with Julie. The film then smash-cuts to a bunch of sexy teens a couple of weeks later, heading to the same cabin.

The reason they’re staying at this specific cabin is because the group’s leader, Jack (David Michael O’Neill), is looking for his uncle Clem, who went missing some time ago, presumably for Sasquatch-related reasons. Jack doesn’t tell his friends, Fred (Hank Stratton), Carrie (Pamela Gilbert), Cindy (Colleen McDermott), or Tom (Billy Jacoby), the true nature of the trip, instead pretending they’re just hanging around Demonwoods to party, but he does attempt to scare them with stories about Bigfoot whenever the opportunity presents itself.

No later than the first shower scene, everything goes to hell in a handbasket. The gang has a run-in with Bill, who’s been on edge ever since his daughter went missing and isn’t afraid to get violent. All he cares about is finding Julie, and everything else in his way might as well be collateral damage. Meanwhile, two women, Tara (Shannon Kennedy) and Betsy (Michelle Bauer), are romping around looking for a supposed hidden cache of marijuana plants they’d like to harvest so they can do some partying of their own, but they end up having their own violent encounters with whatever, or whoever, is running amok in the woods.

From here on out, it’s chasing, screaming, Bigfoot, zombies, more Bigfoot, demons, aliens (because why not?), and the realization that none of this makes any sense. The only reason there’s a weird sequence involving a preacher and his horse before Demonwarp kicks off is to establish just how insane this movie is going to get, like maybe suggesting a prophecy of sorts is being fulfilled, allowing the viewer to throw all logic out the window. 

This Is What We Play For

Relentlessly paced and clocking in at only 91 minutes, Demonwarp is about as unhinged as it gets when it comes to low-budget sci-fi horror. It’s Friday the 13th with Bigfoot. It’s a horde of zombies that might also be aliens. It’s a bunch of sexy teenagers with pump-action shotguns who suddenly become expert marksmen despite the fact that they’ve probably never even gone camping once in their lives. None of this is supposed to make any sense, but everything moves so quickly that you just say “screw it,” suspend all disbelief, and enjoy picking up exactly what Demonwarp is throwing down.

The knee-jerk reaction most people have to films like Demonwarp is that they’re “so bad they’re good.” I hate that phrase because I don’t think this movie was ever intended to be good. There are budgetary limitations, sure, but this doesn’t play out like somebody trying their best and failing so spectacularly that it becomes comical. Instead, it feels like the kind of passion project that came out exactly as intended, and half the fun is watching and wondering how much further Emmett Alston could escalate things before there’s nowhere left to go.

Demonwarp is built differently, and it’s streaming free on Tubi as of this writing. If it’s been a while since you’ve gotten a little weird, you owe it to yourself to check this one out.