HALF HUMAN (1958)

  So this movie started off originally as the 1955 Japanese film JIN YUKI MAN. It was director Inoshiro Honda's follow-up to GODZILLA and is basically a variation on KING KONG. The monster here is a large bigfoot/ape/abominable snowman creature who along with his son comes into contact with a couple of skiers resulting in some deadly encounters. Just like with that film when it was brought to America it was re-edited to include a bunch of scenes with American actors(most notably John Carradine). The bits off original movie that are left, about a third of the original film, are voiced-over by Mr. Carradine which gives everything a weird silent movie vibe that really drags things down. Luckily all the monster mayhem is on view and at just a little over an hour(the Japanese film is 94 minutes long) it moves briskly enough. 

 The original version apparently is not something the Japanese are very fond of due to how it depicts the natives and it hasn't been released on any home video format there.

50s Twin Terrors Thrill Show!

THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT (1975)

 Not to be confused with this SASQUATCH film or this one either,  this might be the worst of the Bigfoot movies from back in the golden age. It's mostly just nature footage of animals running around and then some reenactments of "spooky" Bigfoot encounters all done in that familiar fake documentary style that many of these films employed. The narration, by obsessed Sasquatch hunter, Ivan Marx, is equally absurd and sleep-inducing. Marx was in one other Bigfoot flick a couple of years later titled IN THE SHADOW OF BIGFOOT. If it's anything like this one, though, I think I can safely skip ever watching it.

SKULLDUGGERY (1970)

 Burt Reynolds meets Bigfoot?? Kinda, sorta. Bigfoot here is actually a whole clan of ape-people, or Tropi as they are called. Most of the movie though is just a typical jungle adventure until our group discovers these primitives. Then Burt uses the Tropi as slaves to work a mine, then his drunken partner bangs one of the female creatures and impregnates it, then Burt gets upset because some rich guy wants to also use the Tropi as slaves. Amazingly the film then devolves into the worst of genres before it ends, the dreaded courtroom drama! William "Blacula" Marshall plays an attorney who calls everyone a filthy racist if they don't think the ape-people are human-beings deserving of the same rights as everyone else. Finally a militant black power dude with an afro shows up to make fun of the mother ape and it all ends on a very downbeat note. Apparently the original cut of this film was more intensely about race-relations but in this finished version that only comes up in the last 15 minutes or so which seems a bit jarring and out of place.  Ultimately this film sounds a lot better when describing it then actually viewing it but it is odd enough that it keeps you watching just to see what the hell is going to happen next. Sadly the payoff is pretty dumb.




                                                      TROPIS: MAN OR APE?

THE CAPTURE OF BIGFOOT (1979)

 I've been watching a few bigfoot flicks lately and this one is a pretty entertainingly silly one. Chock full of the usual folky music of the 70s that these almost always have it also doesn't shy away from showing us the bigfeet monsters(who in this case are actually more abominable snowmen since the whole thing takes place in the snow-covered wildlands of Wisconsin) which is nice. There's a kid bigfoot and a mama(or is it papa?) bigfoot who may or may not turn out to just be misunderstood snow people by the end of the film. George "Buck" Flowers plays his usual bearded mountain-man-looking character and Bill Rebane directs with a style that seems like it woulda fit better in a 50s monster movie than something from the 70s but it does lend everything a simplistic charm. Coulda used some more blood and guts though. AKA THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT

VHS horror!:

SASQUATCH: THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT (1977)

 70s fake-ass-documentary about a band of Bigfoot investigators who travel into the woods to find our elusive title creature. It's basically what would happen if you took that show IN SEARCH OF... and stretched out one of those reenactments that they would do to feature length and then threw in some random animal fights this is the result. Luckily I really liked that show as a kid and this movie probably woulda scared the crap out of me as a kid with it's rock-chucking not-very friendly monster(or monsters since there seems to be more than one on occasion). Watching it recently it does seem a bit dull at times but still an interesting look back at what people were obsessed with in the past before they all were hypnotized by their shiny phones.
 Not to be confused with THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT which was a different and allegedly more "truthful" documentary about ol' Sasquatch that came out a couple of years earlier.

                                      Back when G-rated movies could still be scary!!:

     

BOGGY CREEK II: AND THE LEGEND CONTINUES...(1985)

 The cool thing about THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK is that it was shot in a pseudo-documentary style way before those sorts of things became nauseatingly overdone. For this sequel director of the original semi-classic, Charles B. Pierce, decided to ditch all that and just tell a regular Bigfoot tale and throw a bunch of flashbacks into it. He also decided to give himself the starring role and have his son co-star. I guess it's cheaper than getting actual actors that you have to pay. There was already a BOGGY CREEK II that came out back in '77(aka RETURN TO BOGGY CREEK) but Pierce didn't have anything to do with that and decided to ignore it in his numbering system. In fact this whole project was a response to Pierce not being included in the first sequel. I have not seen that particular film yet but I know it stars Mary Anne from GILLIGAN'S ISLAND and Kimberly from THE FACTS OF LIFE so that seems like a must-see to me. This BOGGY CREEK II is kinda forgettable except towards the end when a lecherous smelly-looking mountain of a man, who conveniently lives in the swamps, enters the film. Also Bigfoot, or The Creature as he's referred to here, has a little kid creature. The whole Bigfeets family is not something you see in many of these films.   
 Also this is a pretty good MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 episode, so watch it on there if you have to. AKA THE BARBARIC BEAST OF BOGGY CREEK PART II

CREATURE FROM BLACK LAKE (1976)

 The best thing about this might be that it gives legendary character actor Jack Elam top-billing. Best known by most people as that crazy, bug-eyed doctor who keeps injecting himself in CANNONBALL RUN. Off the top of my head I can't think of anything else that gave him such a starring credit. Unfortunately he isn't really the star of this. That would be two college boys/knuckleheads on a mission to study the swamp monster/Bigfoot creature referenced in the title(One of these two, Dennis Fimple, would go on to play the grandpa in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES). Bigfoot shenanigans ensue and things get crazy. This would probably make a good double-feature with THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK since they both deal with the same hairy creature. Also they're both good examples of hicksploitation meeting bigfootsploitation.
 When I was a teenager I had a poster of this movie hanging on my wall but never bothered actually seeing the movie. I think I assumed it was a crappy TV-movie so I didn't bother. Back then if it wasn't a slasher movie or a zombie gore-epic I probably woulda been disappointed anyway.
 AKA DEMON OF THE LAKE

SNOWBEAST (1977)

 This abominable snowman creature takes on skiers at a resort. They don't show the monster too much so he actually looks pretty decent (pretty closely resembling the Wampa from EMPIRE STRIKES BACK). He does pretty good in the murdering department also up until he runs into Bo Svenson who ends up being pretty bad-ass when he's done sulking about some athletic loss of some sort. This was a TV-movie so there's not a whole lot of blood, it's not really all that scary and it's about average for these 70's Bigfoot-type of movies but you can find it on cheap-o DVD's or online for free which makes it at least worth one viewing if you dig crappy Bigfoot romps.
 There's a 2011 SNOW BEAST with John "Bo Duke" Schneider that looks like a pile of garbage.

NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980)

 Based on the gore content alone this might be the greatest Bigfoot movie ever made! If you took your typical Bigfoot on the loose flick and threw in a creature that rips intestines out of people, hacks them with axes, spears them with a pitchfork, pulls off arms, rapes women, kills girl-scouts and is just an all-around surly bastard you would get this. In the big standout scene our angry monster even rips a guys cock off while he's taking a piss! That's one mean son-of-a-bitch there! There's also a weird bit with some backwoods folks who worship our hairy monster and sacrifice women to him. While not a very well-made film, the music score sounds like it's lifted from a SESAME STREET skit and for some reason they shoot the big super-violent attack scene at the end in super-slow-motion which is pretty dumb, the movie is overall a good watch for horror junkies looking for something a bit insane and it definitely never falls into that extremely boring area that some of the earlier, documentary-style, 70's Bigfoot films do.

BIGFOOT: THE MYSTERIOUS MONSTER (1976)

 Hosted by Peter Graves, who's probably best known today as the guy from AIRPLANE! and BIOGRAPHY but back in the 70's was mostly known as the guy from MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, this is basically an overlong episode of IN SEARCH OF... I would imagine, much like certain episodes of that show, parts of this this movie where they recreate encounters with various Bigfoot creatures woulda probably freaked me out as a little kid. Watching it today you can't help but notice that all the Bigfeet are just jackasses in rubber masks. Apparently lots of footage used here was taken from a TV-special about elusive monsters and then re-cut for a theatrical run. Because it's so long we also get a bunch of stuff about the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman thrown in as a bonus. Overall it's a pretty goofy but fun throwback to a time when this stuff was a hugely popular fad and everyone and their mom loved the idea of Bigfoot running around out there somewhere.
  Looking back at this stuff from the vantage point of living in 2012 where everybody owns a cellphone, if any of this nonsense was even remotely real I'm sure we would have tons of pictures and movies taken of this creature but of course nowadays he's not all that popular so that never happens. I have heard there is some ridiculous TV series running currently where they search everywhere for our rascally hairy monster and, of course, find nothing but I'm sure it doesn't have anywhere near the camp value of this film.

THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK (1972)

 Director Charles B. Pierce was a bit of a trend-setter with THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN in '76 which was an early slasher type flick and this one which kind of sets down the blueprint for the whole pseudo-documentary thing that became popular with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. In addition to that it's also an early example of a Bigfoot movie which became quite a popular genre throughout the rest of the 70's. He smartly used a bunch of non-actors and shot in a fairly straight-forward documentary style with reenactments of supposedly actual events which only adds to the realism. It also reminds me a bit of that show IN SEARCH OF... which it also predates.
The monster itself is technically not a Bigfoot since he lives in the swamps of Arkansas and seems more soggy but their aren't many differences besides that. The movie itself seems a bit over long since there's really no plot and just a bunch of little scenes of monster shenanigans but it is a fun spooky watch and I do recall catching this when I was younger on a TV showing and being a little creeped out by the whole thing thanks to the overall atmosphere created. My favorite scene has got to be the guy trying to take a shit until the old bog monster interrupts him. The main negative for me would be the terrible folk-songs that pop up during the movie that could have been shortened and cut down on that running time a bunch.
 Amazingly this movie was a huge box-office hit and packed drive-ins all over for a while after it was released. It was also the 7th highest grossing movie of 1976 which is incredible for something that looks like it was shot in someone's swampy, woodsy backyard. It was truly the time of real independent film-making where anyone with enough guts to try and make a movie had a shot. Too bad those days are long gone.
There was a RETURN TO BOGGY CREEK in '77 which didn't really have anything to do with this one and a BOGGY CREEK II in '85 also directed by Pierce, which I've only seen on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER and it seemed pretty awful. There's also a couple of more recent BOGGY CREEKS(including this piece of crap here: BOGGY CREEK) but I'm gonna stick with the original.

MONDO FORD (2000)

This is a short spoof of not only Mondo movies but also wacky conspiracy theories in general.  If, like most sane humans, you find people that are obsessed with conspiracy theories to be insane lunatics that should seek mental help immediately you will probably find a few laughs here.  The film is made to look like it was created in the 60's and the narration is just some snippets of a "Learn To Speak Italian" album which I think makes it even crazier.  You get aliens, Bigfoot, and even the Loch Ness Monster showing up to enjoy the JFK assassination plot goofiness.  This originally played as part of the Tromadance short film festival and is part of that DVD.  I've never seen any of the other shorts on there and buying Troma DVDs is a risky business that you should partake in at your own peril so be warned.

BOGGY CREEK (2010)

My recollection of the original 70's THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, from catching multiple TV showings about 30 years ago, is a little foggy but I do recall it being a sort of pseudo-documentary thing about a Bigfoot monster in a swamp in the Southern U.S.A. Sort of a feature length episode of IN SEARCH OF... without Leonard Nimoy's great narration. It was sorta spooky and atmospheric, at least from what I remember as a kid watching it. This movie here doesn't seem to have anything to do with the original recipe. It's not a remake and it's not a sequel(there already was a sequel in the late 70's). I guess it's what the cool kids call "a re-imagining"(which means they just stole the title). This movie basically plays like a crappy slasher flick complete with uninteresting characters that you don't care about. I do generally love slasher flicks and I also do generally love Bigfoot movies but this mash-up isn't what I hoped it would be(NIGHT OF THE DEMON still holds the crown in that mixed-up genre). I noticed one of the young fellows in this just seems to be here to show off his 6-pack abs and dreamy good looks(too bad I don't know any 14-year old girls into horror movies I could recommend this to). Our featured crazy-psycho slasher is a tall hairy monster with sharp fingernails. He also likes to eat people but only a little nibble(to show who's boss I guess). Also he doesn't kill women, he takes them back to his secret Bigfoot lair to screw and make more Bigfoots. I'm not sure what the lady Bigfoots do but this movie isn't worth thinking that much about. It's also probably not worth wasting your time on watching unless you prefer horrible pop music, shitty modern editing(shaking the camera a lot) and boring kill scenes to go with your slasher/monster flick. Another thing that pissed me off was the non-ending where nothing is really explained. I would give this movie one star for starring an actor named Texas Battle. That name is awesome! I gotta go back and re-watch the original sometime to forget about this.

BIGFOOT (1970)

John Carradine, a bunch of bikers and a few rednecks star in what may be one of the first Bigfoot movies of the 70's and what also might be one of the dumbest Bigfoot movies ever.  In this one Bigfoot is the head of a whole family of Bigfeet and they kidnap big boobed girls to mate with.  They try to rip-off KING KONG with some unconvincing shots designed to make Mr. Foot look way bigger than he is.  What makes it extra stupid is the rubber masks and flea-bitten costumes all the creatures wear.  It's kind of a cool idea to have bikers fighting against Bigfoot but these aren't exactly the toughest looking bikers or the scariest looking monsters I've ever seen.  With its intentional camp factor this whole film seems just one sliver away from turning into the 60's BATMAN TV show.  Haji from FASTER PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! shows up in a small part.  I think my favorite part of this is the far-out soundtrack.  Only check this one out if you dig extra goofiness in your garbage cinema.

MANBEAST! MYTH OR MONSTER? (1978)

Bigfoot, along with UFO's, The Bermuda Triangle and The Loch Ness Monster were super popular subjects throughout the 1970's.  There were tons of movies, books and TV shows dedicated to these and other stupid, easily-explainable mysteries but I suppose those were different times when people wanted to believe in the existence of scary monsters and magical beings like Evel Kneivel for example.  This made for TV documentary about Bigfoot (here called the Manbeast!) is basically just an overlong version of the 70's TV show IN SEARCH OF... without the Leonard Nimoy narration(this one is narrated by professional animal and monster hunter Peter Byrne).  In fact this thing was based on a book titled IN SEARCH OF MYTHS AND MONSTERS so there ya go.  Directed by Nicholas Webster, who is best known for the holiday gem SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS, all the actual "encounters' with the Manbeast are recreated here with people in cheesy costumes(by Rob Bottin who would go on to do the much superior FX work on THE THING among other big films) and told in such an earnest way that everything seems so very silly.  Check it out if you dig 70's TV or just Bigfootsploitation in general covered in lots of unintentional cheese.

THE GEEK (1971)

The tender story of a rapist Bigfoot creature known here simply as "The Geek".  Probably one of the most inept pieces of film I've experienced in a long time.  I've seen a 15 minute version of this film and a 45 minute version(which includes more very unattractive hardcore sex footage) but neither one feels totally complete since both version conclude with our main characters vowing revenge and then never getting it.  The plot, as it is, concerns a group of hippie couples who go camping in the Pacific Northwest woods.  We see them screw a few times and then they finally meet "The Geek".  Now this particular Bigfoot looks like just another overly hairy hippy wearing a partial gorilla suit and some dark paint.  Our hippie heroes try to make friends with the monster but instead wind up having their women raped and then getting beaten silly in an absurd slap-fight/shove match with the horny creature.  The unending footage of the campers walking is almost unbearable and the sex scenes are far from sexy but I feel this is a film that should be seen just for the spectacle of a rapey Bigfoot.

All the excitement of a home movie from 1971!: