Bigfoot (film)

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Bigfoot
Directed by	Robert F. Slatzer
Produced by	Anthony Cardoza
Written by	Robert F. Slatzer
Starring	John Carradine John Mitchum Christopher Mitchum
Music by	Richard A. Podolor
Cinematography	Wilson S. Hong
Editing by	Hugo Grimaldi Bud Hoffman
Release date(s)	1970
Running time	84 minutes
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Bigfoot was a feature film (properly categorized as a Z-movie) which, ironically, consisted of some well-known actors and family namesakes in the cast.

It was produced and released circa 1970. It starred John Carradine as "Jasper C. Hawkes" an idealistic and chatty Southern traveling salesman. The film was directed by Robert F. Slatzer and co-starred Chris Mitchum, Joi Lansing, Doodles Weaver and Lindsay Crosby. It was produced by Tony Cardoza and was a "Gemini-American Production". Portions of the film were shot in (undisclosed) mountain wilderness locations where the legendary creature, Bigfoot, (of the film's namesake) was alleged to have been sighted by a number of persons.

The film (which may have been originally intended as a horror spoof on King Kong) is risqué and has sexual implications. It is a corny, cheaply-made, campy but entertaining adventure which runs for about an hour and a half.

The character portrayed by John Carradine has the most substance in a film (now almost long forgotten) which seems to not have been an original blockbuster at the box office.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The basic plot involves people (including a young woman who bailed out of a troubled airplane and a motorcyclist's girlfriend) who are captured by the legendary ape-like creatures in the mountainous Northwest and the scheme of a party of Hawkes-led huntsmen (bumbling at first, but in terms of rescuing the captured women, [not safely trapping, as the business-minded Hawkes was hoping to do all along, Bigfoot (actor James Stellar, the gigantic 'King of the Woods', in a monkey suit) alive for public exhibition profitability] victorious {with the help of others} in the end) and hip young college people riding cheap imported motorcycles to rescue the captured young women. In the middle of the film, the skeptical sheriff's department and the ranger's station are notified of the women's disappearance, but to no avail on the part of the authorities with respect to actually searching for the missing women. The unlikely heros in the very end are a hardy, gun-toting old mountain man who had previously lost one of his arms during a historical encounter (this encounter is not dramatized in this film as a flashback) with the gigantic, erect animal and one of the idiotic dynamite-armed bike riders. The old man hero's wife, an Indian squaw, prophesizes "bad medicine" (for Bigfoot, that is) just before the final man-vs.-Bigfoot showdown.