Between The Abominable Snowman and Abominable I've been on a wee bit of a Bigfoot bender recently - there are plenty more Sasquatch-based shockers here, see if you can find them, go on it's fun! - but thought I'd save the best till last.
And it's a true story.
Enjoy.
Sasquatch, the Legend of Bigfoot (1977).
Dir: Ed Ragozzino.
Cast: Chuck Evans, Terry Blackhawk,
Josh Bigsby, Bob Vernon, Dr. Paul
Markham, Barney Snipe and Hank Parshall.*
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| The
incredible story of seven men who defied death in a primitive
wilderness where no man had gone before.... and survived to tell the
shocking story of this legendary creature. |
Opening with some jaunty country type tunes over - burned out and blurry - stock footage of a variety of forest dwelling wildlife, living in harmony and frolicking about with gay abandon the mood suddenly changes and, like some kind of Disney style snuff movie, the ickle animals soon become agitated as an unseen presence (played by a big booted cameraman) stalks them off-screen culminating with the - frankly trouser filling - view of a hairy outline reflected in a stream while the sound of someone slamming a dogs bollocks in a car door echoes thu' the
forest.
And if that don't grab ya I don't know what will.
Obviously the film-makers do tho' as after some lovely Letraset titles the screen is awash with zooming newspaper cuttings all to do with Bigfoot sightings over the years climaxing with the frankly terrifying Patterson–Gimlin film, shot by Roger Patterson on October 20,
1967, in Bluff Creek, California.
You know the one, it shows Bigfoot, cunningly disguised as a tall bloke in a moth-eaten gorilla outfit, strolling nonchalantly along
a dry creek bed.
Seems legit.
The spooky voice-over guy goes on - in great detail - to explain that by 'inputting'
every piece of Bigfoot data into a 'computer' that scientists working at the real sounding "North American Wildlife
Research Centre" can discover the best place to look for him and after Govan is rejected for being too far away from the directors house the computer suggests a remote site in British Columbia.
Where luckily quite a few film-making tax breaks apply.
Enter - roughly against an old log, your dirty sausage fingers tearing at his filthy denims - Sasquatch expert and professor of tidy beards Chuck Evans (father of Chris, both of them) who has recently secured funding to mount an expedition in the hope of verifying the creature's existence.
Along for the ride is his seven man team of experts including
Native American (aye right) tracker Terry Blackhawk, stinky chinned frontiersman
Josh Aloysius Bigsby (and his faithful mule Ted), New Yoik newshound 'Bouncy' Bob Vernon, anthropologist Dr. Paul
Markham, chief cook and concubine Barney 'The Beast' Snipe and animal husbandry expert - and dog handler - the ginger prince 'Handsome' Hank Parshall who are all set to spend a few months on horseback as they descend into an uncharted wildness in order to find the mythical beast.
Or at the very least find some comfort in a nice hot piece of man ass on a cold snowy night.
No?
Just me then.
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| Erasure have let themselves go. |
And with the introductions out of they way we're off into the woods for an adventure of a lifetime.
Well it would be if an adventure of a lifetime involved copious amounts of dull, unfocused shots of various unattractive blokes on horseback, gurning at each other whilst occasionally to stop you falling asleep/slashing your wrists with boredom someone hurls a drugged cougar at a pony to up the excitement factor.
What?
It is?
Well this is the film for you.
It's not all nature shots and animal abuse tho' as at various points in the film - usually just when you need the toilet -
everyone will dismount and sit on logs whilst Josh Bigsby tugs on his beard and tells a true story pertaining to the Bigfoot.
The first of these you'll be thrilled to hear is the shit scary
Ape Canyon incident, which took place near Mt. St. Helens in Washington State in July, 1924.
On a Wednesday.
Probably around teatime.
See? I knew you'd be excited.
But for those thick plebs who have no idea what we're talking about, here goes....
Fred Beck (father of The Devil's Haircut singer Beckley Beck) and his pals - played here by a group of local winos on the promise of a hot meal and a bed for the night - were busy 'panning for gold' in the hills surrounding the aforementioned Ape
Canyon when they
began to notice evidence of unwanted visitors around their cabin.
Huge footprints in the dirt, shit in the butter dish and the toilet seat being left up, you know the kind of thing.
Putting it down to either their vivid imaginations - or wolves - the men, after a hard day looking for gold, head off to bed only to be rudely awakened not by the dustman but by a big hairy brute trying to break in and steal their shoes.
Cue much blurry day for night footage of men screaming whilst the same bit of film of a man in an ape suit, silhouetted against the sky throwing a polystyrene rock is shown about 5 times.
Obviously worried that such realism may cause the audience to faint, or at least lose bladder control, we cut straight from that terrifying tale to Barney chasing a raccoon out his tent to some top quality 'womp womp' music.
Comedy gold I'm sure you'll agree.
I had noticed at this point tho' that Barney appeared to be making a fuck load of sandwiches for everyone, which begged the question where did he get the bread from?
I mean it's a 3/4 month mission and at no point have I seen anyone carrying a freezer or even a mini-bread maker.
Hmmm, I think this documentary may be fake.
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| "My throat's killing me I must be a little hoarse!" |
Continuing into the wilderness at what can only be described as a very leisurely pace and stopping only to pad out the already threadbare plot with even more wildlife footage (this time featuring a couple of bears wrestling and a racoon drowning) the motley crew are soon (but not soon enough) on the shores of the dangerous Peckatoe River giving the static-wigged Terry a chance to ominously tell of the Native American legends that warn of passing across it.
Which is nice.
But pass they do but not without a causality.
Don't worry tho' as it's only man-child Barney's kiss me quick hat.
Phew.
As the group travel deeper and deeper into the forest the party is
beset by a series of mysterious rockfalls and are scared (OK kinda non-plused if I'm honest but I'm trying my best to jazz the film up a wee bit) to discover massive trees snapped in two.
Just as the Bigfoot is meant to do to mark it's territory.
Ulp.
With nerves frayed and a strange noise echoing from the trees the party press ever forward but just as it seems the tension is the air is fading Bob is attacked by a bear and it's only
Setting up camp for the eve it's now Terry's turn to spin a tale and this time it's the infamous story of Bauman and Jessup.
You know, the same story as featured in Teddy Roosevelt's The Wilderness Hunter** about the beaver hunters (snigger) who are sure that they're being hunted by a huge beast who walks like an man.
And who says this blog isn't educational?
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| Posh and Becks: Dogging for Beginners. |
As Terry recounts his tale a spooky 'something' watches from the woods.
The next day the group enter a
large valley called Yourmum, the final destination of the expedition and according to their research the best place to find a Bigfoot.
Apart from at the end of a big leg obviously.
To make sure they don't miss a thing the group gets to work setting up a complicated array of
high tech alarm systems around the camp - electriconic alarms, tin cans on string, the works in the hopes of at least catching a glimpse of the elusive creature.
To be honest after sitting thru the last 70 odd minutes of tree-based tedium I hoping for a wee bit more than a glimpse.
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| "And this is where I shagged your mum." |
As everyone sleeps the beast makes it's appearance, kicking over lamps and pissing on the tents as the horses go wild and the cast valiantly wave around a collection of kids BB guns.
Suddenly rocks begin to rain down on the men and Markham is injured, he can only sit and watch as a Bigfoot enters the camp and smashes his equipment.
Luckily the mix of gunfire and shouting - coupled with the stench of shite - scares the strange attackers away leaving the party to assess the damage before packing up and heading home.
No, really....that's your lot.
Tho' as a treat we do get a replay of the spooky reflection from the start.
They must have really liked that bit.
Inspired in part by the 1972 cult classic The Legend of Boggy Creek as well as the 1976 Harry Winer
docudrama The Legend of Bigfoot, the film which gave Sasquatch nut and sometime con-man Ivan Marx a platform to spout his frankly terrifying Bigfoot conspiracies, alongside those Wonderful World of Disney style nature documentaries so loved in the 60s and early 70s - Sasquatch Legend of The Bigfoot casts lone actor George Lauris (who also wrote the script) in the Marx role and populating the rest of the movie with every cliche in the cinematic book with it's mix of science, skeptics and Native American mysticism, everything about the film from it's cheesy listening MOR folk score to its aforementioned - how can I put it - leisurely pace screams no-talent cheapie but what is essentially a long, meandering, badly filmed mess of a movie somehow ends up hypnotically enjoyable and strangely entertaining.
Well it's either that or I really need to get out more.
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| "You ain't seen me....right?" |
Maybe I'm getting old or maybe, just maybe the fact that the cast seem to be if not enjoying themselves then kinda believing in what they're doing actually comes across on screen works in the films favour, making a change from the usual 'make a horror movie for a quick buck' mentality that you find around the edges of low budget cinema.
Either way whilst Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot is in no way the best Bigfoot blockbuster ever made it's far from the worst.
Just not that far.
Recommended for insomniacs and anyone who likes horses.
*OK it's not actually a documentary and they're all really actors - Chuck Evans (George Lauris). Dr. Paul Markham (William Emmons), Terry Blackhawk (Joel Morello), Josh "Aloysius" (Ken Kenzie), Hank Parshall (Steve Boergadine), Barney Snipe (Jim Bradford) and Bob Vernon (Lou Salerni).
And one of them actually went on to have a career.
**Written in 1890, Theodore Roosevelt's book
The Wilderness Hunter: an account of the big game of the United States and its chase with horse, hound, and rifle is a go to guide for anyone wanting to learn about the American frontier in the 19th century, tho' we're only here for the Bigfoot stuff so here's an extract:
"Frontiersmen are not, as a rule, apt to be very superstitious. They lead lives too hard and practical, and have too little imagination in things spiritual and supernatural. I have heard but few ghost stories while living on the frontier, and those few were of a perfectly commonplace and conventional type. But I once listened to a goblin-story, which rather impressed me.
A grizzled, weather beaten old mountain hunter, named Bauman who, born and had passed all of his life on the Frontier, told it the story to me. He must have believed what he said, for he could hardly repress a shudder at certain points of the tale; but he was of German ancestry, and in childhood had doubtless been saturated with all kinds of ghost and goblin lore. So that many fearsome superstitions were latent in his mind; besides, he knew well the stories told by the Indian medicine men in their winter camps, of the snow-walkers, and the specters, [spirits, ghosts & apparitions] the formless evil beings that haunt the forest depths, and dog and waylay the lonely wanderer who after nightfall passes through the regions where they lurk. It may be that when overcome by the horror of the fate that befell his friend, and when oppressed by the awful dread of the unknown, he grew to attribute, both at the time and still more in remembrance, weird and elfin traits to what was merely some abnormally wicked and cunning wild beast; but whether this was so or not, no man can say.
When the event occurred, Bauman was still a young man, and was trapping with a partner among the mountains dividing the forks of the Salmon from the head of Wisdom River. Not having had much luck, he and his partner determined to go up into a particularly wild and lonely pass through which ran a small stream said to contain many beavers. The pass had an evil reputation because the year before a solitary hunter who had wandered into it was slain, seemingly by a wild beast, the half eaten remains being afterwards found by some mining prospectors who had passed his camp only the night before.
The memory of this event, however, weighted very lightly with the two trappers, who were as adventurous and hardy as others of their kind. They took their two lean mountain ponies to the foot of the pass where they left them in an open beaver meadow, the rocky timber-clad ground being from there onward impracticable for horses. They then struck out on foot through the vast, gloomy forest, and in about four hours reached a little open glade where they concluded to camp, as signs of game were plenty.
There was still an hour or two of daylight left, and after building a brush lean-to and throwing down and opening their packs, they started upstream. The country was very dense and hard to travel through, as there was much down timber, although here and there the somber woodland was broken by small glades of mountain grass. At dusk they again reached camp. The glade in which it was pitched was not many yards wide, the tall, close-set pines and firs rising round it like a wall. On one side was a little stream, beyond which rose the steep mountains slope, covered with the unbroken growth of evergreen forest.
They were surprised to find that during their absence something, apparently a bear, had visited camp, and had rummaged about among their things, scattering the contents of their packs, and in sheer wantonness destroying their lean-to. The footprints of the beast were quite plain, but at first they paid no particular heed to them, busying themselves with rebuilding the lean-to, laying out their beds and stores and lighting the fire.
While Bauman was making ready supper, it being already dark, his companion began to examine the tracks more closely, and soon took a brand from the fire to follow them up, where the intruder had walked along a game trail after leaving the camp. When the brand flickered out, he returned and took another, repeating his inspection of the footprints very closely. Coming back to the fire, he stood by it a minute or two, peering out into the darkness, and suddenly remarked, "Bauman, that bear has been walking on two legs."
Bauman laughed at this, but his partner insisted that he was right, and upon again examining the tracks with a torch, they certainly did seem to be made by but two paws or feet. However, it was too dark to make sure. After discussing whether the footprints could possibly be those of a human being, and coming to the conclusion that they could not be, the two men rolled up in their blankets, and went to sleep under the lean-to. At midnight Bauman was awakened by some noise, and sat up in his blankets. As he did so his nostrils were struck by a strong, wild-beast odor, and he caught the loom of a great body in the darkness at the mouth of the lean-to. Grasping his rifle, he fired at the vague, threatening shadow, but must have missed, for immediately afterwards he heard the smashing of the under wood as the thing, whatever it was, rushed off into the impenetrable blackness of the forest and the night.
After this the two men slept but little, sitting up by the rekindled fire, but they heard nothing more. In the morning they started out to look at the few traps they had set the previous evening and put out new ones. By an unspoken agreement they kept together all day, and returned to camp towards evening. On nearing it they saw, hardly to their astonishment that the lean-to had again been torn down. The visitor of the preceding day had returned, and in wanton malice had tossed about their camp kit and bedding, and destroyed the shanty. The ground was marked up by its tracks, and on leaving the camp it had gone along the soft earth by the brook. The footprints were as plain as if on snow, and, after a careful scrutiny of the trail, it certainly did seem as if, whatever the thing was, it had walked off on but two legs.
The men, thoroughly uneasy, gathered a great heap of dead logs and kept up a roaring fire throughout the night, one or the other sitting on guard most of the time. About midnight the thing came down through the forest opposite, across the brook, and stayed there on the hillside for nearly an hour. They could hear the branches crackle as it moved about, and several times it uttered a harsh, grating, long-drawn moan, a peculiarly sinister sound. Yet it did not venture near the fire. In the morning the two trappers, after discussing the strange events of the last 36 hours, decided that they would shoulder their packs and leave the valley that afternoon. They were the more ready to do this because in spite of seeing a good deal of game sign they had caught very little fur. However it was necessary first to go along the line of their traps and gather them, and this they started out to do. All the morning they kept together, picking up trap after trap, each one empty. On first leaving camp they had the disagreeable sensation of being followed. In the dense spruce thickets they occasionally heard a branch snap after they had passed; and now and then there were slight rustling noises among the small pines to one side of them.
At noon they were back within a couple of miles of camp. In the high, bright sunlight their fears seemed absurd to the two armed men, accustomed as they were, through long years of lonely wandering in the wilderness, to face every kind of danger from man, brute or element. There were still three beaver traps to collect from a little pond in a wide ravine near by. Bauman volunteered to gather these and bring them in, while his companion went ahead to camp and made ready the packs.
On reaching the pond Bauman found three beavers in the traps, one of which had been pulled loose and carried into a beaver house. He took several hours in securing and preparing the beaver, and when he started homewards he marked, with some uneasiness, how low the sun was getting. As he hurried toward camp, under the tall trees, the silence and desolation of the forest weighted on him. His feet made no sound on the pine needles and the slanting sunrays, striking through among the straight trunks, made a gray twilight in which objects at a distance glimmered indistinctly. There was nothing to break the gloomy stillness which, when there is no breeze, always broods over these somber primeval forests. At last he came to the edge of the little glade where the camp lay and shouted as he approached it, but got no answer. The campfire had gone out, though the thin blue smoke was still curling upwards.
Near it lay the packs wrapped and arranged. At first Bauman could see nobody; nor did he receive an answer to his call. Stepping forward he again shouted, and as he did so his eye fell on the body of his friend, stretched beside the trunk of a great fallen spruce. Rushing towards it the horrified trapper found that the body was still warm, but that the neck was broken, while there were four great fang marks in the throat. The footprints of the unknown beast-creature, printed deep in the soft soil, told the whole story. The unfortunate man, having finished his packing, had sat down on the spruce log with his face to the fire, and his back to the dense woods, to wait for his companion. While thus waiting, his monstrous assailant, which must have been lurking in the woods, waiting for a chance to catch one of the adventurers unprepared, came silently up from behind, walking with long noiseless steps and seemingly still on two legs. Evidently unheard, it reached the man, and broke his neck by wrenching his head back with its fore paws, while it buried its teeth in his throat. It had not eaten the body, but apparently had romped and gamboled around it in uncouth, ferocious glee, occasionally rolling over and over it; and had then fled back into the soundless depths of the woods.
Spooky eh?
