The Legend of Bigfoot

It is extremely unlikely that a filmmaker today would make a movie like "The Legend Of Bigfoot". Even if by miracle it happened, there is no way a film distributor would try to release it to theaters. And all that unlikelihood is a good thing, if you ask me. If you are looking for proof of Bigfoot or at least a serious examination of the theory, you would best look elsewhere. I don't know who Ivan Marx is (or was), but he sure doesn't come across as an authority on the subject of Bigfoot. When he uncovers the few moments of "proof" in the movie, he says that authorities (who he never specifically identifies) back up his claims. But most of the movie is not a serious look one way or another to Bigfoot's existence. In fact, the movie plays like they took a number of wildlife home movies with Marx, added a few minutes of linking footage as well as a lot of boring and unconvincing narration, and waited for the audience to fork over its bucks. I am sure people who saw this movie back in 1976, even those that were kids, were really let down by this documentary. Don't join them.

I got this film in the Mill Creek Drive-in 50-pack film collection. This is not a grand documentary but there is something fun about it to watch. What makes this film enjoyable is the narrator believe it or not.

Our narrator is very enthusiastic and narrates the story well. Believe it or not he is the highlight of this film. Almost comical to listen to him because he sounds overly crazy about finding Bigfoot but it's good!

This documentary has a lot of stock-footage and older photos as well as some quirky dramatization footage. There is some historical information about society and bit of information of historical information of Bigfoot (to take with the grain of salt).

If you are remotely interested in Bigfoot then I would recommend this film. It is actually entertaining.

5/10

I got this movie in a blister pack for a dollar with another movie. Being a armchair detective about Sasquatch, Yowie and Alma I was interested in what this was about. I never heard of Marx, but I did see once the footage of the "limping" or sometimes pegged "waltzing" bigfoot. Even then I thought it was odd. It did in fact looked like someone in a cheesy gorilla suit waltzing about.

Most of the footage in the film was dull and as everyone else here has posted "way off course of the topic." But one has to remember that when you are hunting something that is hard to find Nature is going to come with it. In some respects this reminded me of "Legend of Boggy Creek." Thank god there was not crooner singing "Hey Travis Crabtree......." But again lets remember if the movie used strictly his footage, the movie would be only about 20 minutes long.

The last bit of footage has me raising an eyebrow with some interest. Having seen not 1 but 4 of these beings and a hell of a lot closer than probably Marx would have wanted, I always get a cold chill when I look at filmed footage or listen to its cries. While the supposed young one does nothing at all for me, the supposed older bigfoot gave me some severe cold chills. The younger one looked too thin and his acts too rehearsed or fact. The older one was massive in size. so I am at odds that the footage of the younger bigfoot maybe fake along with the waltzing bigfoot. If the waltzing/limping bigfoot film is real then one need to consider: 1) Could such a creature so lame survive? And if so how much more or less elusive can he be compared to a healthy creature? Sure such a lame creature would not find it easy to get away from hunters and others.

2) That the creature is not JUST lame but deformed, as his one arm was always on his chest and looked stiff and his one leg looks like its stiff all the way up to the hip.

My last statement is directed to Marx' comment about Sasquatch eating habits. Front evidence collected all over North America, it seems these creature have a huge diet and many rancher and farmers have found cattle, goats, pigs, chickens, fish, dogs, deer and other animals half eaten. Remember in the film, it all starts off with the killing of cattle and a bear???? Oh yeah in one report a roaming bigfoot was even treated to peanut-butter sandwiches which it seemed to enjoy.

Not a bad film. A lot better than Boggy Creek if you ask me.

...I mean, empirically, this film is a disaster- grainy stock footage, utterly no useful information about the Bigfoot legend, oddly tangential narration...but my fiancée and I had an absolutely great time watching the thing. It's utterly bazonko portrait of a cranky, loony obsessive old coot making the most tenuous points in pursuit of his lifelong obsession is worthy of the full-on MST3k treatment. I mean, sure, they've already done the Bigfoot-y 'Legend of Boggy Creek 2', but this 'documentary' offers comic possibilities aplenty. There's the 'critchety old man' angle, the 'discursive, seemingly completely-unrelated stock footage to fill up running time' thread. The possibilities are endless. This came included with one of the invaluable Mill Creek 50 Movie value packs, and, if the other 49 films included turn out to be total nothings, I feel like I'll have gotten my money's worth on this one alone. I'll give it a '4', just because we're walking around with big, goofy smiles right now...

This weird hybrid of nature footage, first-person narrative and fictive content is unimaginable as a theatrical release today--but such oddball packages (mostly from "Sunn Classics"), and many Bigfoot-themed features, managed to get fairly wide release in the 70s.

People dislike this cuz it's mostly the narrator's phony reminiscences (re-enacted on screen as if they were shot while happening) of his career as a naturist eventually obsessed with that rarest of alleged critters, Bigfoot. We only glimpse the latter in climactic footage of what very much looks like a tall guy in an ape suit. (The famous raw footage of an alleged Bigfoot is much more convincing, if not entirely so.) It's like an especially crudely-crafted episode of "Wild Kingdom," plus a couple actors in fuzzy focus and hairy suits.

This is an oddity, but hardly a fascinating one. Indeed, it's a bit of a slog, with no real payoff. There are better Bigfoot movies. If that's what you're into.