By BREANNA WHIPPLE

Starring Bruce G. Hallenbeck, Martha Hallenbeck and Paul Bartholomew
Directed by Seth Breedlove
Small Town Monsters

Whether you are a skeptic or a believer, it cannot be denied that certain pockets of our planet are hotspots for unusual activity. You’d be hard-pressed to find a person unfamiliar with the mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, for example. Furthermore, places like Skinwalker Ranch in Utah have been documented extensively after multitudes of reports of various phenomena – UFOs, ghosts, cryptids, ancient shapeshifting elemental spirits that consume human flesh… it has it all. The Pacific Northwest is another location of intrigue with phenomena ranging from UFOs and cryptids to ghosts and sea monsters. 

More often than not, all that is supernatural seems to flow collectively. It’s not at all uncommon for grey aliens to come with a side of poltergeists and shapeshifters. Evidently, where there is smoke, there is fire. And Kinderhook, New York, is one such place ablaze with the high strangeness.

Nestled in the Hudson Valley, Kinderhook is an old town with even older legends. Despite being over 100km from the village of Sleepy Hollow, Kinderhook was the inspiration for Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. (Ichabod Crane was modelled after a Kinderhook schoolmaster; plaques honour this fact in the small community.) At a glance, one can sense an otherworldly ether in this place where the veil is seemingly especially thin.

THE KINDERHOOK CREATURE is a companion piece to The Kinderhook Creature & Beyond: A Personal Reminiscence by Bruce G. Hallenbeck. Naturally, Hallenbeck guides the unfolding events chronicled in the doc. Growing up under the care of his beloved late grandmother, Martha Hallenbeck, in a home surrounded by dense woods, he has memories that read like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. An unseen, incomprehensible, supernatural threat to shock and astound lurks around every corner. Martha was once quoted as saying, “I’d love to live in a haunted house!” Bruce’s apt response was, “Grandma, I think you do.” 

“Haunted” feels like an inappropriate description.  What happens in Kinderhook is so fantastical that it is difficult to fit under a single umbrella. White, bloblike apparitions are only the tip of the iceberg. A sargantuan beast with red eyes, the doc’s eponymous creature, has been seen stalking nearby. Strange noises emanate from the woods, UFOs have been spotted, objects have levitated and strange dreams have been had… Something is very different in Kinderhook. 

To call THE KINDERHOOK CREATURE a wild-ride would be a gross understatement – the film is so full of so many unexpected twists, turns and encounters that it is a curious wonder why the area hasn’t been more widely acknowledged in cryptozoological circles until now. Again, director Seth Breedlove and the Small Monsters team have shone their spotlight on a tiny, strange corner of the world. On top of fantastic interview content, the documentary is chock-full of archival footage. Masterfully edited, THE KINDERHOOK CREATURE is made with love and attentive care, which is much deserved for a field of interest that isn’t always taken very seriously.

Of course, mystery is the source of the allure. As a species, we simply cannot know everything. Not every mystery can be solved, regardless of how advanced we become. Apelike humanoid sightings have been reported for as long as Indigenous people have been recording history with hide and stone. Theorists pore over speculations of time-travelling advanced beings, primitive species, protectors of the forest… It all sounds outrageous to those who have yet to open their mind to the possibility that there are forces at work that we simply cannot comprehend. One can easily write off the Patterson-Gimlin film as a hoax, but how can one explain the similarities in sightings from around the globe, again, for decades, if not centuries? One of the tales told in THE KINDERHOOK CREATURE mentions a sighting of a family of the Bigfoot-like cryptid. A similar occurrence is documented in the 1956 book The Long Walk by Sławomir Rawicz – a dramatic, first-hand account of a group of Gulag escapees in the 1940s that encountered a family of Yeti-like creatures in the Himalayas after fleeing Siberia on foot.

Even in the specific cases presented in THE KINDERHOOK CREATURE, there are curious synchronicities spanning a century. A woman speaks of an instance in 1981 when she and a friend skipped school to pick apples. While biking down a dirt road flanked by corn fields on both sides, they encountered a massive creature that towered above the stalks. Its gait was so wide that it was able to jump across the road with ease, its apelike arms swinging. What the girls likely did not know was that 100 years earlier, in 1881, livestock regularly went missing in the area. Locals eventually found a cave with piles of bones lying outside the entrance. Upon this discovery, they encountered a similar beast. They shot at it, nearly missing it. However, it left a mysterious lock of brown hair behind.

Breedlove has proved time and time again that Small Town Monsters is the reigning champion of quality cryptozoological documentaries. Aside from the obvious fun that naturally comes with investigating strange phenomena, much of the film focuses on Hallenbeck’s relationship with his grandmother. The bond they shared was beyond unique. They seemed to share an abundance of love, joy, fun and an appreciation for the mysterious. 

We can learn a lot from these stories, exploring history, fear and curiosity. With THE KINDERHOOK CREATURE, Small Town Monsters again proves that cryptids and the legends that surround them will never get boring.

THE KINDERHOOK CREATURE: IN THE SHADOW OF SASQUATCH is available now on digital platforms. 

Lisa Dent

Weekdays 2-6pm

A native of Rockford, Lisa Dent, heard 2 pm to 6 pm weekdays, began her radio career in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin in 1981. She has worked at stations in Minneapolis, San Diego, Seattle, and Houston. Dent returned to Chicago in 2002. (Click for more.)

The Grammy-winning composer behind the signature opening chant in the song “Circle of Life” for “The Lion King” movies is taking a comedian to court for allegedly damaging his reputation by misrepresenting the song’s meaning on a viral podcast episode.

In a federal lawsuit filed this month seeking millions in damages, Lebohang Morake, known as Lebo M, accused Zimbabwean comedian Learnmore Jonasi of intentionally botching the translation of the lyrics, central to both the Disney films and the musical theater adaptations.

“I’m getting sued for $27 million and to make matters worse, I got served the lawsuit while I was performing,” Jonasi said in a post on social media Tuesday. The post included a clip of the comedian performing at the Laugh Factory when a manila envelope is tossed onstage.

“Right now, I’m looking for a lawyer. … I can’t believe I’m getting sued for telling a joke. What kind of stupid world do we live in?” he added.

It all started when Jonasi’s appearance on the “One54” podcast went viral late last month. In the episode of “One54” cited in the lawsuit, one of the podcast’s Nigerian hosts, Akbar Gbajabiamila, prompts the comedian with “I heard you had a problem with the ‘Lion King,’ why?” He then breaks into song, trying his hand at the chant and butchering the delivery.

“That’s not how you sing it, don’t mess up our language like that,” Jonasi says, before singing the correct lyrics in Zulu. When the hosts ask what it means, he says it translates to: “Look, there’s a lion. Oh, my God.”

The hosts erupt with laughter, saying that they’d always thought the chant was something more “beautiful and majestic.”

Jonasi often uses the same “Lion King” bit in his stand-up routines. He translates the song’s lyrics from Zulu and Xhosa, two of South Africa’s 12 national languages, and offers a broader critique on the film.

In Season 19 of “America’s Got Talent,” the comedian won over audiences by joking about how American movies about Africa often confuse Africans, asking, “Why do the lions have American accents?”

The civil lawsuit accuses Jonasi of intentionally mocking “the chant’s cultural significance with exaggerated imitations,” according to the complaint.

Disney’s official translation of the opening phrase “Nants’ingonyama bagithi Baba” is “All hail the king, we all bow in the presence of the king.”

“Hay! baba, sizongqoba,” the chant continues. It translates to “Through you we will emerge victoriously,” according to Lebo M.

Lebo M’s lawyers acknowledged in the complaint that “ingonyama” can literally translate to “lion,” but said it’s used in the song as a “royal metaphor” that invokes kingship, and that Jonasi intentionally misrepresented “an African vocal proclamation grounded in South African tradition.”

Jonasi “received a standing ovation” for a similar joke he made about the song during a March 12 stand-up performance in Los Angeles, according to the lawsuit. Such viral statements, it says, are interfering with Lebo M’s business relationships with Disney and his income from royalties, causing more than $20 million in actual damages. The lawsuit also seeks $7 million in punitive damages.

The complaint also argues that Jonasi presented his translation “as authoritative fact, not comedy,” so it shouldn’t get the 1st Amendment protections afforded to parody and satire.

Jonasi and reps for Lebo M didn’t respond to emails seeking comment, but the two have been busy on social media, making alternating statements and sub-posting each other for weeks.

Earlier this month, Jonasi revealed that he’d been receiving threats on social media for offending his fellow Africans. “It was never my intention to disrespect anybody,” he said in the video posted to Instagram. “When I went on that podcast, my intention was actually to talk about African identity. … I’d like to apologize to anybody that I hurt. But my comedy was a way to crack open a window for a conversation.”

“I had no idea the chant from ‘The Lion King’ was a royal welcoming song … I speak a little bit of Zulu, so I directly translated the words, and I even spoke to some of my South African friends, and most of them don’t even know what it means. And the rest of the world thought it was actually gibberish.”

A few days later, Lebo M posted his own Instagram video, saying he had attempted to speak with Jonasi privately, but claimed the comedian had disrespected him. “You are riding a huge wave of going viral on negativity,” he said in the video.

“I would like to encourage you to please slow down. You have a long way to go. I wish you success, but you cannot disrespect other people’s cultures that gave you the first opportunity to start with and claim it’s comedy. … You continue making a mockery of my work … the likes and the viral things won’t be there when it’s just you.”

After exchanging a few more public statements via Instagram, Jonasi was served with court papers.

He shared the news online and announced he’s selling merchandise and launching a GoFundMe to raise money for his defense. The shirts and hoodies for sale feature two different designs — one reads “Look it’s a lion,” and the other “Look it’s a lawsuit, Oh, my God.” As of Friday afternoon, Jonasi’s GoFundMe raised more than $17,000.

The tense situation seemed to be cooling on Friday morning, when Lebo M posted a lengthy statement to Instagram signaling a shift from an impending courtroom showdown to what his team is calling a “white flag moment.”

According to the post, Lebo M’s team has contacted Jonasi to “explore the possibility of a structured settlement.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.