Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan

Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan (2013)

What It Is: Well, it’s a really terrible straight-to-video movie about a bunch of morons at a first-time offenders’ boot camp out in the wilderness. Pretty soon they run into Paul Bunyan, who looks something like a super mutant from Fallout wearing a flannel shirt and starts chopping everyone in half with his axe. Local crazy wilderness guy Joe Estevez gives everyone shelter in his cabin, where he tells them about how Paul Bunyan was a good (giant) kid and kept to himself until a group of settlers killed Babe the Big Blue Ox and ate him, driving Paul Bunyan into a rage and turning him into an axe-wielding slaughterhouse who tolerates no outsiders in his woods. There’s also a subplot of some kind involving Foreman Bill, played by Grizzly Adams, but it’s never particularly clear how his stuff relates to the main story, such as it is, until he and all the gun-toting militia guys who hang out at his bar show up at the end to deal with Bunyan. Then there’s a song called “The Ballad of Paul Bunyan,” which is about Paul Bunyan going nuts and killing a bunch of people with an axe.

Why You Should Watch It: Honestly, if you need someone to tell you why you should watch a direct-to-video horror movie called Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan, you probably shouldn’t watch it at all. The very fact of this movie’s existence makes my life just that little bit happier. There’s so much about this movie that amuses me to no end. That they included Babe the Big Blue Ox at all is delightful, and even better/worse since he’s a really awful CGI blue ox. Paul Bunyan’s size is also never consistent -- he could be anywhere from fifteen to forty feet tall from shot to shot because it’s a terrible green-screen effect -- which actually is consistent with the folk tales, which also never seem to agree on his size, but I don’t think the people who made this movie were thinking about that. The “early 19th-century settlers” look like they shop at TJ Maxx.

The thing is, I’m reasonably certain that the people who made Axe Giant are aware of all this, if only because the alternative is so unlikely. The Wrath of Paul Bunyan is a cut below the Asylum’s movies, and that...actually takes some effort. I think the people behind Axe Giant just run with it anyway, for what it’s worth. It’s not particularly jokey or self-aware, because the premise is ridiculous enough. If the title alone doesn’t at least make you giggle, this is probably not the movie for you. If it does, then the rest of the movie probably will too. For all its awfulness, it’s an enjoyable train wreck. Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan has heart, damn it. It is probably better than Think Like A Man or Grown-Ups 2. That's my endorsement.

Available On: Netflix, Hulu, YouTube. Seriously, it’s on everything except Amazon Prime. The YouTube stream is official. Please, do not pay money to watch Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan. I promise I’ll review something actually good next week.