Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot

I saw this as an 8 yr old back in 1978 as part of a double feature with the Harrison Ford/Carl Weather's WWII flick "Force 10 from Navarone." I would discover later on that "Force 10" was considered by many critics to be one of the worst movies of 1978, but after watching it in tandem with "Sasquatch" I thought it was so much better than "Sasquatch." The thing is I was really excited about seeing "Sasquatch." It was the MAIN reason why my siblings and cousins went to the movies that day. So we were all surprised by how much more we enjoyed "Force 10" over "Sasquatch."

"Sasquatch" is cheesy. Even when I was 8 yrs old I realized that. A docudrama about a group of hippie dippie scientists and backwoods guides who are determined to capture a sasquatch. They put together an expedition with all their supplies loaded onto packhorses and head out to "bigfoot country." They keep referring to "bigfoot country" as a place marked out on a map. And when they find some bent over trees, they quickly point out that these are the borders of "bigfoot territory."

The thing I remember the most about this movie was that it was boring. The vast majority of this movie is like a poorly funded National Geographic special- lots of pretty shots of the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. In the end, the expedition sets up camp in some meadow in the heart of "bigfoot land" and then devise all sorts of outposts with tripwires to capture a bigfoot. Of course, the big hairy guy and a bunch of his friends are not so obliging. They attack the scientists by throwing paper mache boulders at them. These scenes are so phoney looking that even the most gullible child will be rolling his eyes at them.

The ONLY good thing about this movie are the retellings of the legends of bigfoot. The hippie scientists and guides sit around the campfire and tell stories and the film then recreates the story. An American Indian legend of the creature is portrayed by an Indian boy being chased by a bigfoot. The famous attack on a miners' cabin in Ape Canyon by several bigfoots is also recreated. And the best story- the eerie story of two trappers who unfortunately entered the valley of a particularly nasty bigfoot. In one scene a trapper is kneeling down examining strange footprints and all of a sudden a huge shadow looms over him. That actually was pretty creepy! However, these brief moments do not make up for what is mostly a pretty dull, cheesy movie.

I saw this film back in Fairmont West Virginia in 1979 as a ten year old who had a typical little kid's fascination with Bigfoot. I guess I still do as a matter of fact. This film follows a fictional expedition into the woods to find this legendary creature and put a homing device on its neck so they can track its habitat (there is actually a law on the books providing a heavy fine and a jail term to anyone who kills a Sasquatch believe it or not!). The film opens with beautiful shots of the woods, the best you will ever see outside those wonderful National Geographic specials) THEN! this spooky Jaws like music starts playing and you hear HIM creeping thru the woods and the animals start to panic and run away and you hear this blood curdling call and you see the shadow of the Sasquatch. This is the Holy Grail of Bigfoot films, the best I have ever seen next to Sunn Classic's The Mysterious Monsters. The guys in this expedition are not the best actors in the world and its kind of funny watching them. I particularly remember this camp cook who was real clumsy and this old fart who was the last of the mountain men. The film is really scary in some parts. It gives you the feeling that the expedition is being followed as rocks keep raining down on them. The best parts of the film is where they go over actual historical sighting of Bigfoot. They even show the famous Roger Patterson film of the creature. There is a story in there that was written by President Teddy Roosevelt in a book he wrote about his days as a cowboy. He heard this from an old trapper named Bauman about how he and another man ran into a pretty mean Bigfoot and this other man was killed (this is the only case I have ever read where a Bigfoot showed a really mean nature, I have always wondered if maybe another person did it!). They also tell the famous Mount Saint Helens story about the miners in 1924 who were attacked in their cabin by a tribe of Bigfeet. The attack is pretty scary especially when one of the miners looks out the window and finds hes staring one of the monsters right in the face! I remember seeing this is the theatrical version of the film I saw but its not on the video version I bought. It was the part that scared me the most as a kid. It shows a little Indian brave out hunting alone and you see a Bigfoot stalking him. He comes face to face with the monster and it begins to chase him. It was horrifying to watch and maybe thats why they took it out of the film. The final scene in the film where they set up the trip wires and the Sasquatch attack is very well done even while the Bigfoot costumes look more like Chewbacca from Star Wars. This is a good film to watch on a dark night when you are all alone.

I finally acquired a dubbed copy of Sasquatch recently. Last distributed by VCA, the video is nearly impossible to find.

But my efforts payed off. I remembered this movie as great fun. It plays up on the scary idea of hairy giants running rampant in the woods yet it looks for all the world like a old national geographic documentary.

And despite noticing lots of obvious flaws through my considerably older eyes, I still had great fun watching it again.

Find a copy, make some popcorn, and turn off the lights........

The commercials for this movie are what sparked my interest in unexplained phenomena. I was six at the time, and one of the commercials featured a guy flying a plane over a Pacific Northwest forest. He looks down and sees a huge dark figure walking along the forest edge. The camera closes on the pilot's incredulous face, and the narrator ominously says, "What does this man see?". These commercials scared the crap out of me at the time. I only saw this movie about ten years later. It's pretty good, with dramatizations of several real sasquatch encounters, most notably the Ape Canyon incident (as told by Fred Beck in many Sasquatch books). In style, the movie is similar to Legend of Boggy Creek: low budget, creepy atmosphere, and the monsters are never directly shown. If you are into this sort of thing, and if you can find this movie to rent (good luck), I would recommend it.

This is the best bigfoot movie ever made. I went into it expecting the usual documentary with the usual "experts" and eyewitnesses swearing up and down that bigfoot existed. I was surprised to find this one was actually kind of scary. Bigfoot apparently isn't afraid to defend his turf in this one and terrorizes some loggers who spend the night in a cabin. I still remember scenes from it 21 years after seeing it in a theater. I wish I could find a copy on tape cause I would love to see it again.