Just in case you were wondering, this movie has nothing to do with Christmas (Navidad mean Christmas in Spanish). It does however have to do with the BigFoot legend as occurring in Sublime Texas, around the Navidad area. Duane Graves and Justin Meeks team up again to direct. Meeks also plays the lead character Dale Rogers.

The legend of the wild man of Navidad is particularly personal to Dale Rogers and his family, the town sheriff also seems to be aware of certain going ons and perhaps a few other old timers around town. The small town of Sublime, Texas (at least what this movie shows us) is populated with many moonshine drinking ugly faces, vice, profanity and few women. Now, the film seems to suggest that Dale’s father was killed by a Wildman (there may be more than one). Dale has somehow established a ritual between his family and the Wildman that lives on his large property by the river bottom. Every night at the stroke of midnight Dale leaves a skinned rabbit outside his door and the Wildman leaves a token offering of appreciation, this may be like a bone or something. I guess that as long as this exchange is going on the Wildman won’t slaughter the Rogers family. I must add that this family is pretty fucked up because Dale’s wife Jean was left paralyzed and a bit mentally retarded from a car accident. Dale has the rotten luck of hiring a horny Mexican guy named Mario to look after her, feed her, wipe her drool...oh yeah and feel her up when Dale is not looking. There is even a scene where the horny bastard is smelling her panties and dropping his breeches to masturbate.

Things get rough, financially, when Dale looses his job, which appeared to be tinkering on broken farm equipment or something. He’s forced to open up the river bottom area on his property for local hunting. This is not such a great idea because that’s where the Wildman has dwelt peacefully up until now. The first hunter wounds the Wildman and the next unlucky hunter pays for it by being torn to shreds in our first real decent gore kill. The Wildman is refusing to eat the skinned rabbit and leaves Dale a fearful dismembered human foot as an offering, not to mention destroying the outside of Dale’s house. In a later scene he chases Mario through a cactus patch - god I wanted that son of a bitch dead.

Feeling guilty, as if he were inviting the hunters to their demise and warned by the Sheriff, Dale goes to church to settle his mind and ends up resolving to close the river bottom area once again. The next night the Wildman goes berserk and breaks into Dale’s residence and grabs Mario and brutally kills him. I was smiling as that bastard was kicking and screaming and finally getting what he deserved. Meanwhile Dale and his wife hide in a closet till the Wildman leaves the place and continues his murder spree to neighboring houses killing a drunk man and his wife.

News of the murders surface in town and the Sheriff decides to organize a lynch mob, (something which should have been done sooner) to hunt down and kill the Wildman. They set out on the river bottom early in the morning with just as much moonshine as firearms for each man. We get to see some more decent gore kills as the hunters die. In the end it’s Dale who shoots down the beast. As we get a better look at him I’m somewhat disappointed to see that it’s just a bearded guy with tusks covered in animal pelts.

My primary concerns are carnal. Where are the topless, sleazy Texan girls? Why only a few good gore scenes, merely seconds. I must admit that the settings and characterizations were well done. I was repulsed at these foul bearded men. The directing was also above average but I felt stuck in this hideous town with no room to breath. That was probably the intention of the filmmakers. Kudos to Mario’ s wretchedness and sexual depravity and the solid storyline. At a certain point the midnight ritual becomes repetitious and there really should have been more females in the film even if it would not have been a realistic depiction of such a town. I must admit the challenges in creating a fearful Big foot character that would be reasonably believable. The Wildman was done as best as possible, though I would have preferred the more traditional Big foot look (more ape than man). This is still a bad film with poor acting and come on now, we all love that here. Next time just remember the tits!

- Jorge Antonio Lopez