BIGFOOT IS OUT THERE!

Bigfoot Directed by: Robert F. Slatzer Year: 1970 Country: USA Studio: Cheezy Flicks

From Cheezy Flicks, home to the best of the worst comes another classic slice of American exploitation and know how, with a bombshell blonde, a ham actor and a man in a cheap furry suit! Bigfoot warms up with a travelling saleman, Jasper B. Hawks (John Carradine hamming at his best), his offside Elmer Briggs (John Mitchum) who discovers some big footprints out in the woods, a gang of hepcat bike riders on a weekend bender and a pneumatic blonde pilot (Joi Lansing) who parachutes into the woods only to be captured by something hairy, all this before the opening credits even roll! When a couple of the biker types then go necking in the woods they stumble upon a bigfoot burial ground and the gal is grabbed by another hairy thing. When ol’ Jasper hears about the kidnapping he sees dollar signs and offers to help the boy get his girl back from the monsterous beast. Well, the bloke in the furry suit with the rubber mask and the bloodshot eyes. The girls it turns out are tied up to posts and guarded by a family of bigfoot or is that bigfeet? (including a baby bigfoot! ) Meanwhile after the pneumatic and gravity defying Joi tells the biker girl her theory, that the bigfoot tribe is running low and they want girls to mate with, we get lots of footage of Jasper and Co. walking through the woods, the hep biker buddies riding through the woods, trees, the bigfeet watching Jasper and Co. walking through the woods before finally the bigfeet attack Jasper and his buddies and tie them up too. Help is at hand though, the hepcat bikers have discovered the burial ground too (and the rubber mask in the dirt that strikes horror into everyone’s heart!) and are hot on the trail. You have to wonder though how the city slickers keep finding this burial ground but no local has ever stumbled upon it?! After flirting with the gal at the general store the sheriff is off hunting or sleeping or something, the ranger station (one of a string of static sets on a soundstage including sherrif’s office, general store and injun hut!) ain’t got nothing to report even though the bigfoot is at the window and we are stuck with stock footage of owls and coyotes! Never fear though, the biker dudes have hooked up with a one armed injun named Hardrock who wants revenge on that nine foot sasquatch that pulled his arm off and so now we have them trekking and riding and a looking for the hairy bloke in the suit. Meanwhile blondie Joi has been taken away to be sacrificed ala Ursula Andress in Slave Of The Cannibal God, (well she’s blond and buxom and tied up the same way) to the big kahuna himself, the real BIG bigfoot who we are told is nine foot tall but really is just a bloke in a hairy gorilla suit. A grizzly bear shows up though to spoil the honeymoon so while bigfoot and grizzly (or two guys in hairy suits) wrestle, Joi makes a getaway. Cue footage of blonde running endlessly, still defying gravity and nipple tape, with bigfoot striding behind! The bikers meanwhile find the others and save ‘em before heading up the mountain to find blondie and the big bigfoot. Blondie has been caught again and then escapes again, running away again this time to be saved by our erstwhile heroes. Some paper mache rocks fall, the crazy biker dude (there’s always one crazy dude in the gang) throws dynamite, big bigfoot dies in the cave, Jasper hustles blondie (whose hair by the way has stayed immaculate despite jumping from a plane, being kidnapped by a bigfoot, being ravaged by a bigfoot, being chased by a bigfoot and being in a bomb blast!) and that’s that. Or is it? Well, yeah I think it is actually. But then I guess ol’ Robert F. Slatzer is trying to tell us that maybe they’re still out there… after all the other bigfeet didn’t die in the blast and the baby is still out there in the wilderness, waiting to “breed with anything.” This is a shocker, slow, dumb, badly filmed, washed out and washed up but you know what? I loved it!!

It’s cornball, it’s stupid, the bigfoot ain’t anywhere near nine feet tall no matter how many times they tell us it is, the difference between soundstage and outdoors is so obvious you laugh, the lines are corny, the acting for the most is bad, except of course for Carradine and Mitchum who bring a touch of class to proceedings, Joi Lansing was in her forties by then but still looked pretty damn good for a low budget bombshell and hell, the movie is called Bigfoot, you ain’t gonna get Shakespeare are you? For fans of “those” movies, this is a new favourite. A perfect companion to Queen Kong in fact… now that’s a double act I’m sure a hustler like Jasper B. Hawks could appreciate. Special Features: A string of trailers for other fine Cheezy fare including Invasion Of The Blood Farmers, Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies and Face Of The Screaming Werewolf plus the intermission ads from the good old days of the drive-in that always bring a nostalgic tear to my eye.