Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot

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.

Interesting docudrama of an expedition deep into the virgin wilderness of British Columbia beyond, what the local Indians call, the Peckatoe River into the fabled and mysterious Valley of the Bigfoot. I don't really know for sure if the movie is based on real events but what is undoubtedly the highlight of the docudrama "Sasquatch the legend of Bigfoot"has to be the showing of what is probably the most graphic and convincing piece of evidence of Bigfoots or Sasquatchs existence. The October 20, 1967 Roger Patterson 16mm home-movie of a Bigfoot walking along the heavily wooded Bluff Creek Valley in Northern California that has never been dis-proved to be anything other then what's it's said to be: an authentic flesh and blood Sasquatch.

Since Paterson's death in 1972 a man named Bob Heironimus has come forwarded saying that it was him in a gorilla suit, that Patterson supposedly paid for, not a so-called Sasquatch that's really in that famous movie, to the delight of the many skeptics who for years have been unable to disprove that the film is a fake. All we have is Heironimus' word without any proof whatsoever. Heironimus did put on a gorilla suit in his attempt to show how he faked the distinct and very difficult if not impossible walk,that even the best Hollywood stunt-men couldn't duplicate, that the Sasquacth had in the film but it doesn't faintly correspond to the Patterson movie. There's no explanation from him, as well as the vast army of anti-Bigfoot skeptics, at all in how he could have made a number of footprints that had to have been made by someone weighing at least 800 pounds which were discovered at the sight just after the Patterson movie was filmed?

The movie "Sasquatch: legend of Bigfoot" has a group of people involved in finding and if possible capturing a Bgfoot, or Sasquatch, lead by Chuck Evens and his Indian guide Techka Blackhawk. The group travels some 300 miles into Bigfoot country which takes over four months. The expedition suffers a number of near-fatal attacks by mountain lions or pumas and grizzly bears, as well as running into a number of annoying and dangerous mosquito infestations, along the way to reach what is called by the native Indians the Meadow of the Three Valleys, Bigfoot Country. It's there where they make camp setting up an electric barrier of trip wires to alert Evens' & Co. if any Bigfoot had penetrated the woods around the perimeter of their campsite.

The Bigfoots who up until then were doing everything that they could to avoid the members of the Evens' Expeditionery team suddenly came out into the open after their home grounds were violated and invaded. In the dead of night the Bigfoots attacked the campsite with rocks boulders tree branches as well as with their brute strength demolishing it and wounding a number of the campers. The Bigfoots attack on the camp was so effective that the expeditionary team that had marksmen assigned to it didn't even have a chance to bring down even one of them with either a tranquilizer gun or rifle with live ammunition.

Were told at the end of the movie that there will be other expeditionary teams sent into the uncharted wilderness beyond the Peckatoe River in the years to come to capture and bring back, dead or alive, a Bigfoot. Now with almost 30 years having gone by since the movie was made, in 1977, there's still no news of a Bigfoot being either captured alive or shot and killed by any of the latter groups of Bigfoot hunters who traveled into the wilds of British Columbia in order to find one.

Interesting movie that has recently been re-released on DVD with a number of new and updated features, that includes the two Bigfoot-like movies "Snowbeast" and "The Snow Creature". The film will more then ever keep the controversy alive of the existence of a gigantic man-like, 10 foot tall 1,000 pound, humanoid or gorilla being on the loose in the dense and uncharted forests in the great American and Canadian North-West.

"Sasquatch, the Legend of Bigoot" (1978) is a quasi-documentary about a fake Bigfoot expedition deep in the wilderness of British Columbia, although it was filmed entirely in Oregon (Deshutes National Forest and Willamette National Forest). I've heard it referred to as 'the Holy Grail of Bigfoot films' and I can see why since most of the notables of the Bigfoot mythos are detailed, including the Roger Patterson footage and the 1924 Ape Canyon, WA, incident where a handful of miners were harassed most of the night by Bigfeet throwing rocks at their cabin and pounding on the walls. Regardless, it's more of a nature flick than anything else, featuring some great footage of North American wildlife highlighted by a fight between two grizzlies. It's worthwhile for Bigfoot aficionados but laid back and kinda boring, so brace yourself and remember it's from the 70s.

GRADE: C+

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........