Don't let all the naysayers sway you. This is a little gem of a bad movie. By the best guess of many this is probably the very first flick to deal with the notion that the American wilderness was home to a large, unknown primate species. Back in the primitive '70's the legend was just starting to get noticed and there was not a lot of information around concerning the supposed nature and habits of the creature. This left writer-director Robert Slatzer plenty of room to let his imagination run wild, and run wild it did. In his vision, Sasquatch is not merely a wild animal afoot in the pacific Northwest, it is a full blown cave man! According to him they have a language, make stone tools, know how to tie knots and bury their dead. Naturally they are also completely beguiled by sexy white women in the best King Kong tradition, which leads them to kidnap several young ladies, one from the ranks of a biker gang. This sets the plot into motion as a group of unlikely allies sets out to locate the ladies and rescue them from the lecherous monsters.
That preceding description might have you thinking that it might not be a half bad flick. Don't get carried away. Slatzer may have a wild imagination but he's also completely clueless on how to tell a story cinematically. Suspense, pacing, believable dialogue, etc. are all well beyond his feeble abilities. There is a hilarious scene where the two beauties are bound to poles and at the mercy of the bigfeet. you might imagine that the ladies would be scared out of their wits at this point, but no. Slatzer has them calmly discuss the morphology of their captors. One girl even surmises that the child- like creature in the group is a Sasquatch-human hybrid! Ridiculous!
John Carradine and John Mitchum are completely wasted in their roles as the avaricious traveling salesmen who hope to capture one of the critters and make a fortune. Location footage is mixed with cheesy sets that are easily distinguished from the real thing. No doubt Slatzer hoped nobody would be able to tell the difference. I had hoped that the climax of the film was going to be an unintentionally hilarious rumble between the bikers and the Bigfeet, but no such luck. That would have probably taken days to film and Slatzer couldn't afford to rent the camera that long. Instead one of the creatures flees into a cave and a biker tosses in a bundle of dynamite. There is a lame excuse for an explosion and we are assured that we have just seen the end of the naughty Bigfoot, but then a cryptic message appears on the screen: "Or Is It??" As it turns out, yes it is. If Slatzer was planning a sequel it does not seem to have materialized and the world was able to get on with the understandable task of ignoring this guy's movies.
That preceding description might have you thinking that it might not be a half bad flick. Don't get carried away. Slatzer may have a wild imagination but he's also completely clueless on how to tell a story cinematically. Suspense, pacing, believable dialogue, etc. are all well beyond his feeble abilities. There is a hilarious scene where the two beauties are bound to poles and at the mercy of the bigfeet. you might imagine that the ladies would be scared out of their wits at this point, but no. Slatzer has them calmly discuss the morphology of their captors. One girl even surmises that the child- like creature in the group is a Sasquatch-human hybrid! Ridiculous!
John Carradine and John Mitchum are completely wasted in their roles as the avaricious traveling salesmen who hope to capture one of the critters and make a fortune. Location footage is mixed with cheesy sets that are easily distinguished from the real thing. No doubt Slatzer hoped nobody would be able to tell the difference. I had hoped that the climax of the film was going to be an unintentionally hilarious rumble between the bikers and the Bigfeet, but no such luck. That would have probably taken days to film and Slatzer couldn't afford to rent the camera that long. Instead one of the creatures flees into a cave and a biker tosses in a bundle of dynamite. There is a lame excuse for an explosion and we are assured that we have just seen the end of the naughty Bigfoot, but then a cryptic message appears on the screen: "Or Is It??" As it turns out, yes it is. If Slatzer was planning a sequel it does not seem to have materialized and the world was able to get on with the understandable task of ignoring this guy's movies.