Curse of Bigfoot (1976) Movie Review
They embark on an archaeological field trip with a man who says he’s an expert. Five adolescents who are interested in archaeology and their instructor go along. They unearth a large number of prayer sticks and a few pieces of rock. I’m not even fooling around when I say this. That’s what the film’s plot required them to locate. Sticks of faith! A mummy is discovered in a cave after a slew of pointless sequences in which the protagonists hang about or eat. Eventually, the mummy comes to life as a Bigfoot monster and wreaks destruction. As a result, their instructor became a grumpy old man since three of the students had to be institutionalised.
Not only have I uncovered something even more unusual than the elusive Bigfoot, but I’ve also found some very good stuff in this film.
So, let’s take a look at what transpired. A 1963 film named Teenagers Battle the Thing is the core of this collection. It was never made public. An prolonged exposition was made in 1976 to build up the last hour of the picture, which was that original early 1960s movie, starring two of the original youngsters. It begins with 30 minutes of exposition in which a man (or woman, we couldn’t tell) in a pantsuit is attacked by the titular monster, a teacher in an unknown Introduction to Monsters class tells a story about two men who are attacked after seeing the monster, and a surly guest speaker enters the classroom and tells the class his story—the story of the original movie. Then it quickly ceases.
In between, what are the most significant narrative points? The film has a lot of extraneous shots of slow-driving trucks, shots of the teenagers and two adults scaling a mountain, strange day/night continuity errors made weirder by having dialogue about seeing stars, conversations about going into town to buy pop, a minute-long scene involving a character giving another character some money for an orange pop, and a few shots of the mountain. Due to the time period of this film, the monster seems to be a man dressed in a costume. I don’t think it’s appropriate. I’m not sure why the producers of this opted to display a close-up of the monster, which has an erroneous eye, dubious teeth, and missing patches of hair. Just take a look at the book’s cover.
I suppose living in a cave for tens of thousands of years can do that to you. Even though this is billed as a horror picture, it’s difficult to contain one’s laughter everytime the monster appears on screen. This film’s acting is on par with the writing, and it’s odd — though not shocking — that none of the cast members had been in another film before.
Many of the uncredited cast members, such as Manos: The Hands of Fate’s Debbie, did. Wow, that’s an interesting thought. Manos: The Hands of Fate and this garbage are the two films you’re in at the same time. Those are the kinds of things I consider a career. Also, it’s the director’s sole film to date.
Even though no one else in Bad Movie Club had a problem with it, I still had to give everyone a pep talk halfway through the movie to convince them to keep their swagger and finish the film. Curse of Bigfoot is a mind-numbing bore that takes a seemingly interminable amount of time to get to any kind of narrative and seems to be a strange experimental picture nearly.
