Bigfoot

When pilot, Joi Landis (Joi Lansing) has engine trouble, she's forced to parachute into the deep woods. Unbeknownst to Joi, she's landed in BIGFOOT country, and is quickly abducted by the creature.

Simultaneously, a bunch of bikers have arrived, looking for a place to party.

Oh dear!

A bikini-clad biker babe is nabbed by the beast, after she and her boyfriend disturb a yeti burial mound! We soon discover that there's a whole tribe of bigfoots -bigfeet?- and they're looking for love! Can the bikers, along with a local junk dealer named Jasper (John Carradine) rescue the women before the hairy horrors do the unthinkable?

THIS MOVIE CONTAINS: #1- Sex-starved sasquatches! #2- A biker called "Dum Dum"! #3- A lackadaisical bigfoot vs. Bear battle! #4- Ms. Lansing running around in her awesome outfit! #5- A forest ranger played by none other than intergalactic omni-star, Doodles Weaver! #6- Awe-inspiring bigfoot costumes (aka: men dressed as goggle-eyed piles of lint)! Toss in some twangy music, complete with bongo drums, and you know you're watching a divine spectacle!

EXTRA POINTS IF: You can count how many times Ms. Lansing screams her beautiful head off!...

Released in 1970, "Bigfoot" was one of the first quasi-horror films devoted to the legendary beast-man, if not THE first. It relays the story of a couple of girls kidnapped by some bigfoot creatures and the mixed posse of country police & bikers who seek to find them.

Unfortunately, this is Grade C filmmaking all the way. For instance, the opening credits don't appear until almost the 10-minute mark. Most the scenes leading up to this are overlong time-wasters, like Joi Lansing walking up to her small plane and entering. Totally pointless! I guess they had to pad this turkey somehow, which is only 83 minutes long as it is. Also, most of the "acting" is laughable, and I mean that literally.

For me, the film's worthwhile for three reasons only: (1.) The gorgeous Judy Jordan in a bikini, mostly tied up to a tree (also check her out in 1973's underrated Western "The Gatling Gun"); (2.) the cool hippie-era score; and (3.) the nostalgic badness of it all, which is sort of entertaining.

The movie was shot at Big Bear Lake and San Bernardino National Forest.

GRADE: D

Classic 70's drive-in rubbish. Rubbish script, rubbish acting, rubbish costume, rubbish cinematography... and then there's Joi Lansing. Joi is what gets this movie a star...not for her acting though. She gets a star for being an absolutely delicious movie babe. They don't make 'em like Joi anymore...

There's a vastly superior movie out there called The Ninth Configuration, written and directed by William Peter Blatty. In that movie about an insane asylum dwells a character named Frankie Reno who feels compelled to do an all dog production of Shakespeare. Now, should Frankie ever film the fruits of his labor, I'm convinced it would yield a better movie than Bigfoot.

We're talking about a film whose production appears to consists of "whatever can fit in the back of a pickup truck" filmed at what I'm assuming was a breakneck pace to get a product in the can and distributed to America's drive-in theaters (maybe 'drive-thru' is a more appropriate term.) What I'm trying to say is, I hope minimal time and resources were dedicated to this movie because the technical merits are so abysmal that the clearly deteriorating print from which the incorrectly framed DVD was made may actually be an improvement to the original projection over 30 years ago. I wish I were exaggerating.

Seriously, it defeats the purpose of a serious critical analysis (want proof, check out the cheesy DVD cover art). Instead, dear reader, I present the "fun" aspect of Bigfoot.

I enjoyed how Joi Lansing piloted a plane that, not surprisingly, crashes … but not before a leisurely conversation with air traffic control while grips stand outside the obviously grounded plane and shake it back and forth to simulate mid-air turbulence. I giggled with condescending glee seeing this pilot parachute out, descend, and then cut to her on the ground wrapping up her chute (my guess is the budget couldn't afford the ladder to simulate a landing.)

Let's not forget the masterful camera-work of the motorcycle gang riding through the woods – shots designed to instill an uneasy, slightly nauseating sensation, by vigorously shaking the frame as if … as if … the cameraman was sitting in the bed of a truck that had no shocks! And there's a brilliant moment in the "party" montage where it looked like someone dropped the camera.

What brilliant economical editing too! Why show the plane taking off? Crashing? Or Joi landing? And the quick cuts showing the editorial equivalent of nothing to show the plane going down (I guess).

Oh, and when Bigfoot's henchmen (littlefoots?) kidnap the pilot and the bikini-clad girl (what's her name?) – these two women are tied to barely visible saplings, so their surprisingly calm conversation comes across as two high-school broads hanging around the cafeteria gossiping. "So, which of the furry guys who kidnapped us do you think is the cutest?" Wait, it gets better, the bikini clad-babe (maybe it was the pilot in her … whatever the hell that outfit's supposed to be) gives us a quasi-scientific run down of what these creatures are.

A little bit later, glorified monkeys checkmate the rescue party in a battle of wits, the rescue party is tied to saplings next to the girls where they all uncannily resemble disgruntled company lay-offs waiting in line at a soup kitchen.

How 'bout John Carradine's car which the hare could outrun even if the tortoise gave him cement shoes and broke his legs. What am I saying? The tortoise could take an ice-pick to the hare, push the corpse down a hill and the dead body could outrun that car (not to mention require less maintenance to keep running.) Speaking of John Carradine, I hope you like ham and cheese with your turkey.

And I learned a very valuable lesson from Bigfoot: contrary to popular myth, dynamite does not actually require a fuse. It only requires a moron to throw it and boom!

I have a theory that films like Bigfoot are made as a self-help tool to make suicidal filmmakers feel better about their work. Even the most talentless hacks can watch it with the comfort of knowing, "well, I can do better than that. Maybe life is worth living."

Bigfoot (1970)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Various women are being kidnapped and it turns out Bigfoot and his clan are behind it. Apparently their race is dying off so they're needing women to have more creatures with. Jasper B. Hawks (John Carradine) gets the idea of capturing one for the money while a biker gang goes after the creature to get their women back.

Bigfoot was always my favorite mythical monster when I was a kid and I was always disappointed because there really aren't too many good movies about him. I continue to watch movies on Bigfoot yet they continue to get worse and worse. This film doesn't have the greatest reputation around but it's certainly a real hoot and a rather fun film as long as you don't take it too serious.

I mean, just take a look at the sequence where the three hot ladies are tied up talking about why they have been captured. This here alone shows that the film wasn't supposed to be taken serious and then you throw in a biker gang and you've got pure drive-in madness. There are some really nutty scenes throughout this movie but the greatest thing about it is the fact that they don't keep the monsters off screen. Nope, the monsters are constantly on the screen and there are multiple ones as well as children!

The cast is also a lot of fun as we get Joi Lansing as one of the victims, Chris and John Mitchum and even Ken Maynard has a small role. Then there's Carradine who eats up the picture just like it was a big bowl of spaghetti. He's really a lot of fun here as he adds in the camp as this redneck looking to make a quick buck. His final line delivery, ripping off the KING KONG ending, is pure joy.

As I said, BIGFOOT isn't a masterpiece and it's not even a really good movie but if you enjoy these low-budget monster movies then there's plenty here to enjoy.