Review: Beast Man: Nightmare of the Amazon

Pat with a well-known Mapinguary model in the city.
Image credit National Geographic.

Beast Hunter (titled Beast Man in the UK), although a short series - consisting of only five episodes - might just be the best cryptozoological TV series since MonsterQuest - in fact, it probably beats MonsterQuest.

The series follows biologist Pat Spain, great-nephew of Charles Fort, as he travels to five different locations around the world, searching for the local cryptid. Fort was an American scientist who researched phenomena such as ball lightning and raining fish, which were dismissed in his time but are now known to be fact.

In the series, Pat searches for the Mokele Mbembe, Mongolian Death Worm, Cadborosaurus, Orang Pendek, and Mapinguary. Of course, this review is interested in the Mapinguary episode, "Nightmare of the Amazon". It's one of only three TV episodes searching for the Mapinguary (Monsters Underground not withstanding), and, once again, the sceptic comes back apparently a believer, for lack of a better word.

The episode's reconstruction of the Mapinguary.
Image credit National Geographic.

Pat starts off by interviewing two locals, Lydia and her father Teofelo, who begrudgingly give him a description of a Mapinguary attack on them. He soon realises that most of the natives in the area are wary of outsiders, and not willing to share their stories and beliefs. To remedy this, Pat goes to a local pastor for help, who advises him to become a tribal initiate.

Pat travels into the rainforest to a small village, where there are three other young initiates. The initiation, it turns out, is to wear gloves filled with dozens of hallugicen-laced bullet ants for five minutes. Although they only bite for five minutes, the pain lasts for twenty-four hours: bullet ants have the most painful bite of any insect.

After testing himself by letting a single ant bite him, he's the final of the initiates to actually take the test. As the local children gather around the building and seem to take pleasure in his pain, Pat returns to the boat and begins hallucinating that he's still wearing the gloves. The recreation of his trauma, which we see in short bursts, also suggests he sees his hands as giant claws. Pat's narration ominously ends for the second break: "here, in a remote corner of the Amazon, I'm losing my mind."

Five hours later - we don't see whatever hallucinations Pat had in that timespan - the crew takes him onto the boat and dunks his hands in a trough of icy water, which a still tipsy Pat describes as the best feeling in the world.

Pat initiating into the tribal community. "So in America, the rite of
manhood is go out to a bar and grab a beer with your
father. Here, you wear a glove filled with bullet ants."
Image credit National Geographic.

Sequences like these feel very realistic (and of course, that's because they are real), and bring the series above the likes of Destination Truth and even MonsterQuest (which never had a full-time host for people to get to know). The entire format is also rather attractive, with Pat actually doing a lot of research and getting to know the natives before carrying out his search: and no dramatically misleading narration at every ad break (looking at you, MonsterQuest). At just under an hour long, no episode of this series feels drawn out or filled, and the whole hour is actually captivating and interesting.

Now wearing a global badge of honour that he hopes will inspire trust throughout the Amazon, Pat is told by another initiate of a man downriver, Edinalo, who was attacked by the Mapinguary. Pat interviews him, and does a rundown of aggressive Amazonian animals that could be the culprit. He settles on the giant anteater.

Noting that mistaken identity cannot ingrain a belief so deep within so many cultures, Pat goes to see a giant Mapinguary parade float at the city of Parintins. The floats creator tells him that the Mapinguary exists on another plane of existence, which the natives travel to when they eat certain plants (in layman's terms, he says they see the animal when they get take drugs).

In the script for this episode, a bit of deleted content can be read from this part. A folklorologist explains that the Mapinguary is the protector of the forest, and that it attacks people who harm the Amazon. Pat sees this version of the animal as a kind of ecological superhero, and he likes it. The folklorologist also appeared in Destination Truth's Mapinguary episode.

Pat then goes to see a man who believes the animal is real: Dr. David Oren. Oren tells him that he believes the animal is a ground sloth, and even shows him a footprint, which unfortunately is never mentioned again, and is not examined. We don't see it, but Oren also gives Pat his own version of a Mapinguary call. Pat then travels to an unnamed museum to look at the mammal fossils, specifically a ground sloth skeleton (the animal appears to be a mylodontid).

Next, Pat travels to the Katiriana reserve, on the edge of our geographical knowledge. A deleted "scene" shows Pat in a jungle area (presumably a jungle area, as we can only read the script for this part), explaining that this area is off-limits to hunters. He sees what appears to be large tracks, and sets up a camera trap. In the final cut, we never see or hear of the camera.

Pat visiting the ground sloth skeletons at a museum..
Image credit National Geographic.

After hearing some literal campfire stories, Pat investigates the possibility that the legend of the Mapinguary is merely a cultural memory from when the ground sloths were around. Lining up most of the villagers, he demonstrates that it would only take a few generations to go back to a time when ground sloths were known to still exist. Another deleted sequence shows Pat interviewing Glenn Shepard, Jr.. This is another positive aspect of the series: Pat makes sure to interview all the experts, and properly prepare for a search, as opposed to running into the jungle head-first.

We are then introduced to Geovaldo, a hunter who claims to have shot and perhaps killed a Mapinguary. He'll become important later on.

Pat then goes on a night investigation with his team, in an area where his native guides refuse to go. He blasts Oren's call - a slowed down sloth scream - and actually gets a response, which is ruined somewhat by the cameraman moving around. Although the microphones fail to pick it up, Pat's cameraman also heard the sound. A deleted scene shows him searching his camera but finding nothing, although he does quote that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The next morning, Pat shows Geovaldo a number of animals to see if he can identify them. Some African animals are also thrown in to make sure Geovaldo is reliable. He fails to identify the bear and rhinoceros, and describes the gorilla as "some kind of monkey", which makes sense - they aren't animals he would ever see. He recognises the tapir, but that isn't the Mapinguary. For the sloth and anteater, he says the arms and claws are like those of the animal he saw. Then, it comes to a model ground sloth (a Megalonyx at Iowa, to be precise). Geovaldo says the animal is basically the same, but the one he saw had larger claws.

Pat observes excitedly that the only way Geovaldo could have seen this animal is if it were alive and well out in the rainforest. Pat, apparently mostly convinced, ends on a positive note:

We know that 96% of this last great wilderness remains unexplored. We also know that 1/3 of all mammals declared extinct in recent centuries have been found to still exist.

Add this to what I've learnt out here, and there's only one conclusion: although as yet there's no smoking gun we need to take David Oren's theory very seriously indeed.