Alaskan Monster Hunt: Hillstranded Reviewed
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on August 10th, 2011
Hillstranded, Caddy and Snooki Triumphant!
From the files of the River Journal’s Surrealist Research Bureau
What a horrible, loathesome month for afficiandos of the cryptid world. I’m a sorta’ fan of the show “Deadliest Catch” and though I’ve only seen a couple of shows, I helped pay my way through college working on a lobster boat off the Santa Barbara Islands, a relatively small boat compared with the massive Time Bandit and Northwestern ships shown on the program and one fueled, on our part at least, by cheap wine and marijuana. As most of you know, two Captains of the Deadliest Catch recently premiered that show’s latest spin-off, “Hillstranded,” featuring the Hillstrand brothers on various adventures around the Pacific Northwest.
Even before the TV show’s premier had ended the chat rooms of various cryptozoological websites (for instance cryptomundo.com) lit up with expletives, scorn and an absolute sense of revulsion and sell-out! Some of the more printable comments included, “What a couple of Yahoos!” “Is it me or did the Hillstrands seem drunk throughout?” “Unbelievably horrible, garbage, total garbage!”
The Discovery Channel show had been widely anticipated due to its hype as having filmed clear, unmistakeable evidence of the existence of “Caddy,” a 40- to 60-foot long apparent sea snake often sighted off the British Columbia coast. The resulting 4-5 second excerpt shown revealed merely an amorphous blob with a brief glimpse of a possible head.
Other, more serious, questions were raised as well. “Why is the video in black and white? Do they even make black and white videos anymore?” and “Re-reading earlier descriptions posted it seems now clear the wealth of details describing the film earlier were actually taken from the verbal testimony of the fishermen prior to getting their camera.”
Source: The River Journal
Read the rest of the article at: Hillstranded, Caddy and Snooki Triumphant!
By Jody Forest
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Interesting, I thought that the cryptozoologists who were brought in to verify a possible “Caddy” described a long video sequence of multiple creatures not just a rehash of the witnesses descriptions and that was what caused the excitement last year.
Hillstranded is an entertainment show so the question is will they release the whole tape at some point? Or will they continue to just release bits of it piecemeal in future shows?
Please correct if I’m wrong and Jody Forest in that it was just amorphous B&W video.
We really need some investigative reporting here. If I remember correctly, this story is incorrect: the buzz about the footage was based on word from people who saw the footage, wasn’t it? Then the word was that Discovery wasn’t going to show all the footage, at least not at once. And now…we have a watery version of a blobsquatch.
We need to determine the truth. What does the entire footage look like? Who saw it all, and what did they see? Is this indeed based on a bunch of hype from the apparently drunken Hildebrand bros? It needs to be put to bed.
This is the best and most honest review about this program that I’ve read so far! It couldnt be more correct… by far the worst sea serpent footage I”ve ever seen and if I ever have to see those two drunk idiots on tv again I”m gonna have to cancel my satellite services.. I wasted an hour of my life watching that crap… ah well I guess I wasnt the only one!!
I sent in a complaint to discovery channel about this program, not that it will do any good.
I have (after reading his blog) no Idea what he said ???
Well, it is good to know that the media are reading YOUR comments!!
Cheers.
I did look at the previous posts concerning the footage and this one.
Does strongly suggest footage of several animals was filmed and that they were close enough to observe in enough detail to determine for the gents examining the footage to say they were unknown creatures.
The two gents, it says, each spent hours, examining the footage.
The footage aired would not requirement hours of examination I my opinion.
I am inclined to believe the footage aired is not the footage first mentioned.
I want to know what happened to the full footage. OBVIOUSLY, Discovery used the ten seconds of footage to pimp it’s show with the Hillstrand brothers and had no real intention of actually putting forth any crypto footage worth anything.
I was going off of information John Kirk shared about the footage…and we obviously didn’t see the footage that he was able to study. Ridiculous.
The Discovery Channel and I are not in a good place and if they don’t quit playing for the sensationalism, I’m going to quit watching anything they throw out there.
Yes the show was a waste, because it didn’t really have anything to do with the show’s premise after the first two minutes.