Simply Perfect

Sadly Over-hyped

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

BIGFOOT is a trashy Z-flick that manages to cash in on or rip off all kinds of popular trends from the period. The main thrust of the story, about a family of Bigfoot creatures living out in the forests who kidnap young women for procreation, has obviously been inspired by the supposedly genuine Roger Patterson Bigfoot footage that was shot in 1967 and released to much notoriety. This film even stages a homage in which one of the Bigfoot creatures strolls across open woodland just like in the movie. This flick becomes even more intriguing when watching, as it transpires that the director was responsible for a couple of shoddy biker flicks before he made this and, sure enough, a 'biker gang' are soon involved in the proceedings, although it has to be said that these bikers look more like university students! The idea of bikers vs. Bigfoot is a good one but this film ruins it through shocking execution. The biggest problem is that the scant running time is padded out with endless upon endless scenes of bikers riding through the woods, cars driving through the woods, sometimes just landscape shots of the woods itself. There's about one few second scene of Bigfoot 'action' and the rest of the running time is made up of talking, which is boring. The characters are paper-thin and the actors are all poor, despite the presence of a few notables including John Carradine, hamming it up in a monster flick as only he knew how; brothers Christopher and John Mitchum, both sons of Robert with none of his ability; Joi Lansing, a cheesecake starlet who strips down to a flimsy dress early on and stays that way throughout; Bing Crosby's son Lindsay, who makes no impression whatsoever; even an ex-western star, Ken Maynard, severely down on his luck.The cast alone and cheese factor saved this from the list of 'very worst films' I've amassed, but there isn't much to get excited about here. I thought things might pick up with the introduction of dynamite and a one-armed Bigfoot hunter, but I was wrong. The creatures – for there are a whole host of them running about in the murk – look like a cross between 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY's apes and those cavemen brothers from the cartoon series WACKY RACES. Needless to say that the costumes are tatty beyond belief and the multiple references to KING KONG only serve as a reminder of what trash this is. BIGFOOT crashes and burns from the very beginning and is a total waste of time.

There is no excuse for a movie this bad. Absolutely no excuse whatsoever. Not merely the fact that it has some good quality cast names in it (John Carradine, John Mitchum) but because it is completely treacherous not only to the industry and the art form, but to the filmmakers themselves. Making a movie like "Bigfoot" is like constructing the Empire State Building out of cardboard and expecting people to work in it every day without ever hearing a shred of complaint. It would also be astonishing that anybody even let you get that far. It's astonishing here, too.We all know the cult legend of the Americas' simian wonder. Well, as this movie would like us to believe, there is not just one Sasquatch, but dozens of them. And even though they are described (in the film) as being nine feet tall, in reality they're just stubby, man-sized fuzzballs who carry around clubs and sticks and tie people to trees with...I'm not sure what that was or how they got it. And I don't want to waste my precious brain cells pondering over it.Anyway, whatever. You've got a fashion model (played by real life fashion model Joi Lansing) who crashes her plane in the wilderness and is kidnapped by some lecherous Sasquatches. Then you have some rowdy bikers. One of their girls, while wandering about the woods in nothing but her bra and panties, is kidnapped by another. Her boyfriend sees the big ape and recruits a pair of goofball con men and they all embark on a mission to rescue their girls from the men in ape suits.The con men are played by John Carradine and John Mitchum, of all people. These two marvelous talents who were so wonderful in so many movies are the only ones involved in this treacherous production who act like professionals. Though they could have easily just hammed their way through (and nobdoy would have blamed them) they stick through to the end, even though they can't come within a lightyear of saving the movie."Bigfoot" looks and sounds as if it were made by a group of bottom feeders who had never seen a movie before in their lives. The photography is grainy and amateur and the audio on the soundtrack is so poorly assembled and recorded that you find yourself constantly adjusting the volume on your TV set. The screenplay is just the same set of words and phrases being repeated over and over again and the editing is absolutely horrendous. There is a horrible shot where Joi Lansing is on the run from a Sasquatch. She runs past us in the foreground and keeps on running until she's against the horizon. Then the Sasquatch appears to follow her. Between that point and the first one, we never cut away or adjust camera speed. Add to the fact that Joi Lansing was apparently trying to imitate Fay Wray in her screams and coming across as irksome. And the scene where she crashes her plane is missing not one, but several key shots so that we don't even get the whole picture of what has happened.I don't think I even need to touch on the special effects.This is one of the worst, most unremittingly agonizing and horrible movies ever made. As a person who has been and worked on a movie set and knows the pain and pressures that go into making a film, I find it absolutely appalling that anybody would even proceed and suffer their way through the production of something like this. The business isn't even that much of a money-maker for the cast and crew. It's the executives who really get the dough. So why bother unless you're at least going to put up an effort? There are other jobs out there. Other careers.

My dad had a pair of Cinemacanica 35mm projectors and he bought this film. If he paid more than a nickel for it he was over charged. Then again, this movie was so bad that he decreed that if my brothers or myself acted out of line, then the perpetrator would be sentenced to watch this film.Needless to say I watched this film many times and my father wore out the print. Maybe he did get his money's worth out of it. Heck! I bet my dad would gladly have paid a thousand dollars for this as much as he made me watch it.By the way, this movie caused terrible trauma for me. I've never been able to watch another movie with Christopher Mitchum. He has to be the worst actor of all time.

Well, that was the quote on my video box by someone from THE POST. So, judging by that rather anonymous endorsement, I knew I was in for a real treat. Not to mention the box artwork, which features a large, vaguely ape-like creature tossing a motorcycle (yay! a hybrid biker/monster flick!) Toss in John Carradine, and the blurb "America's abominable snowman... breeds with anything!", and you've got yourself an epoch du frommage. The uncomfortably long (and silent) travelling scenes, the paper mache sets, the unbelievably bad bigfoot makeup(or shall I say BigFEET?), the dinner-theatre-style acting, wonderfully inane script - all a testiment to the ultra-low budget that this "classic" drive-in flick flaunts in spades. Demands repeated viewings.