Cinematic Sasquatches Part IV:
No End of Sasquatches

Dan & John Field's maximo-amateur no-budget Curse of Bigfoot (1972) was retitled on video Teenagers vs. the Thing; aka, Teenagers Battle the Thing (1976).

The 1972 version retained some footage dating to the 1963, since even the 1972 version had incorporated aging student-film footage the original director just couldn't let go of. In the first exhibited version, it was about one hour long, inclusive of found footage probably recycled from an industrial film about logging.

The 1976 version had new footage added, providing a tragic bit of work for down & out John Carradine. It got limited vhs distribution in North America & Europe, & somewhere along the line it got re-released on a double-bill dvd with Cathy's Curse (1977) with the original title restored, so is now generally listed as Curse of Bigfoot (1976), though the copyright of the oldest footage can still be spotted in the credits.

All of which means there exists three levels of incompetence, ultra-incompetence, & superduper-incompetence at work on this dreadful movie. The directors got worse as the years ticked by. It's told partly in flashbacks to justify the mismatched footage.

It's about a mummified Sasquatch (a costume which looks like papier mache plus what one critic suggested was "made out of grandma's old wigs") guarding an Indian burial ground. The mummified critter is carted from the desert back to the teenagers' California town, where it comes to life causing idiotic mayhem until someone sets it on fire.

For camp value, intentional or not, it's not impossible to enjoy this turd, but it works best with a couple beers & some rude friends.



James C. Wasson's famously bad Night of the Demon (1980) is about a nasty bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest.

Folks who never got a chance to see Curse of Bigfoot are under the impression Night of the Demon is the worst sasquatch film ever made, but really it's a toss-up. This one's got the bonus gore content, & in England it got itself banned for thirteen years.

Although the monsterlooks like a musty old gorilla costume (worn by stuntman Shane Dixon), the gore FX are done in slow motion & are brutal.

The sasquatch even rips the pecker off a biker. When in 1993 it was finally legally released in England, it was with allowed through the censors only after the violence was muted with the complete removal of the infamous pecker scene.

Then there's the undeserved fate of innocuous girl scouts. Known to rape women, the bigfoot has an unpleasant halfbreed offspring by a crazy skank of a mountain woman.

The director didn't know how to edit (or anything else about filmmaking) so the extensive use of flashbacks make it even more confusing than it needed to be.

Gore value exceeds camp value. It devolves into a "picked off one by one at the cabin" scenario void of imagination. But anyone in search of brutal slashers will probably get the same charge out this sasquatch as out of any more typical psychopath.

It's presently in circulation in the grey market -- poor copies off old vhs tapes -- as ownership of the legal rights is up in the air.



It's hard to say whether or not Prey of the Beast (2007) is a sasquatch movie exactly. The term is never used to describe the beast. But the setting is right, as it's set in the Canadian northwoods or a state part posing as same, it's hairy & it walks upright.

Though only an hour & a quarter long, it felt like it went on forever. As the tale opens, a boring homely couple camping in the woods are just about to horrify us by having sex in their tent. Fortunately a creature's roar stops the terror from happening.

The girl goes out to see if it's a bear while the guy hides in the tent. Girl gets wasted by unseen monster. Then boy takes a peep out of the tent & gets wasted in the same method of having the camera rush forward quickly.

Thank god we won't have to see those characters again. But their replacements, who are numerous & almost as short-lived, are no better.

The basic premise is people go into the woods & get wasted; it has no story beyond that. Eventually there are some gore FX, mostly quite briefly shown but some of the gore gags are quite good of kind, which is surprising considering how poorly everything else about the film was done.

For key example, when the geezer researching the beast turned out still to be alive after the beast ripped his legs off, the long discussion he had with a hiker was the one scene that I not only found grossly funny, but seemed likely it was even intentionally so.

That actor was pretty good, too, compared to everyone else, & captured something of the actual nature of moronic "sasquatch hunters" who are always out there in the woods trying to find one, & if they existed those crazy old coots probably would get their legs ripped off.

Between brief bouts of gore the filmmakers couldn't think of anything at all for padding, so we get stuff like -- I'm not joking -- four guys sitting in the woods not talking, not doing anything, then one of them clears his throat.

Eventually we get a glimpse of the mysterious woodland creature, then we see more & more of it as the film progresses. It looks like a guy wearing a musty bear rug with horns added as the lumpy head's nose & ears.

As a horned hairy ape-thing or bear-thing, lets designate it a relative of the sasquatch. One scene implies it can leap around from tree to tree, but we don't see that happening.

It pick off all the sizeable cast (it's crowded in dem dare woods) until everyone's dead except for two girls. After establishing the beast is invulnerable even to being shot point-blank in the heart, it seems it was time to just end the movie, therefore one of the girls killed it easily with a machete.

I assume this was filmed by a hoary marmot & not a wooly monkey because surely anything simian could've done better. Bad hoary marmot! Stop that! Bad!



Teens or twenty-somethings, played by fairly pathetic would-be actors, head out in the woods for drinkin' & screwin' & almost nothing else, though there's a small amount of the film devoted to the theme of the killer sasquatch.

Devoid of even marginal imagination, Bigfoot at Holler Creek Canyon; aka just Holler Creek Canyon (2006) borrows its "best" ideas from The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) & Night of the Demon (1980). But it can't even copy dreadful schlock well.

The film advertised itself with the slogan "No one ever really sees him & lives!" That includes the viewers. We never do get a good shot of the sasquatch. But there is eventually some gore including a decapitation, & don't worry about feeling bad for anyone, these dumbass characters deserve it after boring us with their terrible sex techniques.

I spotted an on-line review which called this turd one of the 100 greatest horror films of all time. Why can't cruddy filmmakers write better stealth-spam? I suppose if they could fake a review credibly they'd also be able to fake their way through a movie credibly.



Bigfoot Begins (2008) is a hastily made six-minute video comedy, "a last minute suprise" for a regional film festival, from Neil Cicierega, a young Kingston, Massachusetts filmmaker.

He afterward made the film available on youtube, on which Neil is a minor giant, having won the Youtube Award for his comedy video Puppet Pals & the Mysterious Ticking Noise (2008) which has been seen by more people than have seen many an independent feature.

Two guys, George & Billy (Ryan Murphy & Kevin James), are in the woods at night discussing their motivations for spending seven years of their lives on the quest to find "the sasquatch, the missing link, the skunk ape, the dirt monkey -- Bigfoot!"

It's a marginally funny argument with George (with a huge honking cold soar on his mouth) being out to find proof that will make them rich & famous, though Billy just wants the fun of camping in the woods & involving themselves in the lore & the myth.

George having gotten impatient with the quest for fame has arrived at an evil plan. He pulls a gun & murders his best friends. He then staples some fake fur to Billy's head & takes photos of the corpse.

But Billy unexpectedly comes back to life & becomes convinced he really is Bigfoot, remaining forever in the woods, sought by hunters.

Continue to Cinematic Bigfoots Part V:
Can it Be? Even More Sasquatch Films!

Or return to Cinematic Bigfoots Part III:
Sympathy for Sasquatch
Or start over from Cinematic Bigfoots Part I:
The Horror of Sasquatch

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl