Ah, a new year. What a time! Saying goodbye to 2025 and its respective Chippendales wall calendar, saying hello to 2026 and its respective Chippendales wall calendar. It's a time for promises and hope (I know things are hellish out there, just go with it) as we refresh and reflect. I've been doing a lot of reflecting since the ol'...uh, ball dropped and during my reflectin' times I've had some major realizations. The first is that although my brain had me thinking the contrary, I have not, in fact, finished up my Chilling Classics Cthursday journey through the Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection. Somewhere, someway, somehow, I'd crossed it off the to-do list of my mind. Should I be concerned I'd given it the signed-sealed-delivered-up yours! treatment when the finish line is actually still around 13 films away? It's possible. Likely, even! But hey, I can't be held accountable for lapses like that. It's hellish out there, in case you didn't know.
My second realization is this: Today is Friday! But you know what, who cares? Do "days" and "time" even matter anymore? I would argue NO they do not, and I'm not just saying that as some weird way to cover up the fact that I am posting a Cthursday post on a Cfriday. Besides, when you take into account Realization #1, this post going out on the wrong day makes total sense. It's a theme, okay.
On the bright side of these Memento moments: hey, Chilling Classics Cthursday is back, hooray! And I'm kicking off my grand return with a little curio called The Legend of Bigfoot (1975), which brings me to my next major realization:
I think I love Bigfoot?
Honestly, it might not be strictly true, but I can't deny the facts, which are as follows:
-- I've been to the International Cryptozoology Museum on more than one occasion! There I was absolutely delighted by exhibits like...someone's painting of a Bigfoot, or a glass case with a hairball in it and a little placard saying, like, "Bigfoot fur?"
-- I think about that scene in the 1980 film Night of the Demon where the Bigfoot grabs two Girl Scouts by the arms and makes them stab each other to death rather often
-- I watched some documentary a couple of years ago about a Bigfoot maybe committing some murders...? Look I don't remember the name of it but it was good
-- I finally saw Willow Creek! As a found footage aficionado I was prone to like it and I sure did, especially the scene that seems to be the most divisive: The long sequence in the tent where we just listen to stuff maybe happening outside of the tent. It was intense and a terrific example of how found footage's ability to put the viewer in the midst of the action (or in this case, the anticipation of the action)
-- When RNGesus chose The Legend of Bigfoot for this week's movie, I thought "oh neat" or something along those lines
So you see, Your Honor, while I never really thought about it all that much, the evidence strongly points to the incontrovertible truth that I love Bigfoot. Again I say: What a time!
As a certified Bigfoot lover (not in a weird way), how did The Legend of Bigfoot stack up? Well, first of all, let's make sure we're talking about the right movie here. Please do not confuse The Legend of Bigfoot with any of these other films:
- The Bigfoot Legend...Lives
- Bigfoot: Beyond the Legend
- Beyond the Legend: Bigfoot Gone Wild
- Bigfoot: The Legend is Real
- On the Trail of Bigfoot the Legend
- Bigfoot: Still Tracking a Legend
- The Legend of Billie Jean
Now that we've established that...The Legend of Bigfoot is a...documentary? Hmm, can a film be a documentary if the approach is straight-up sincere but the subject matter is less so? It's not a mockumentary, but is it then a pseudo-documentary? Is the taxonomy dictated by the proven scientific veracity of the topic? Hold on while I take another huge bong rip and think about it.
Let's just call it a cryptodocumentary for anti-simplicity's sake. In this cryptodocumentary, a wildlife tracker named Ivan Marx finds some big-ass footprints and a ball of unidentifiable hair (gross) and decides to put his skills to the test to search for Bigfoot.
Marx and his wife Peg hit the road in their red VW Bug and travel all up and down the west coast chasing leads, listening to tales from hunters, "Eskimos," and "Indians" (it was the time, okay), and trying to capture irrefutable evidence that ol' Sassy exists. Yes, somehow the scientific community didn't just give Marx an "oh dip, I guess Bigfoot is real!" when presented with the hairball and plaster casts of the footprints. The nerve! And these same people think I should be vaccinated?? Please.
Looks super real to me for sure! Science is the worst.
Marx nabs some genuine, bonafide Bigfoot footage in Washington--footage that the scientific community once again refuses to verify. Jerks.
Marx draws Xes and circles on a map that correspond to sightings and stories, and the patterns lead him to conclude that Bigfoot is a migratory creature, and our intrepid couple takes off in pursuit. They travel from the desert to the Redwood forest to the tundra. They hit Oregon, Wyoming, Alaska, and head all the way up into the Arctic Circle.
Things get trippy at times as Marx temporarily abandons his scientific methods in lieu of a more folklore approach to finding the elusive cryptid; after an aurora light show (the screen kind of oscillates between white and red...?) Marx gets a hot tip from a phantom white raven that eventually leads to a long-distance nocturnal encounter with Bigfoot's bright, shining eyes. They are definitely not headlights!! Nor are they superimposed!! They are Bigfoot eyes. Sadly, Marx is unable to get a better look because come morning, the Bigfoot eyes have "disappeared behind a rainbow."
This causes Marx to wail (à la James Brolin-as-George Lutz) "I feel like I was coming apart at the seams!" and get back to his tracking roots...and man, there is a huge payoff! We are eventually treated to so much Bigfoot footage it's nuts. With extended sequences of a Bigfoot and a juvenile Bigfoot eating grass and kind of splashing in some water, Marx totally dunks on the brief Patterson-Gimlin footage. And believe me (yes, I'm talking to you, science) this is definitely a Bigfoot and a juvenile Bigfoot. It is not a man and his wife in costumes! Sure, the Bigfoot seems more regular-man-sized and not the 8-foot-tall, 500-pound beast that leaves 18-inch footprints as Marx describes. That's just a...uh...a trick of the film. Everyone knows that the camera subtracts 350 pounds and a few feet!
Yeah those vaguely humanoid-shaped black blobs are the Bigfoots. The transfer is pretty terrible ("In the Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection?" you shriek. "Say it ain't so!"), reminiscent of the atrocious AI upscaling of Roseanne that's currently on Peacock, wherein no text is legible, background elements are frequently but smears, and elements occasionally look superimposed. And don't even get me started on the extreme cuts and editing! Two minutes have been excised from each episode, which is a-fucking-lot considering the episodes are only 22 minutes to begin with. Jokes are gone, characters are magically transported from one room to another, conversations end mid-conversation, and there are jarring close-ups and framing. Haven't I suffered enough over the years as a Roseanne fan? Does Grok have to take this, too??
Anyway, while it reminds me of that AI upscaling, for the most part the blobby blurring of imagery actually works to The Legend of Bigfoot's benefit as the fakery comes off as less fake if you can't, you know, make out any details. Not that this stuff is fake of course!
The majority of this film--the entirety of which is narrated in voiceover by Marx himself--is nature footage. Some of it is distressing and I'm thankful for that blobby blurring: Goats committing ritual suicide, an injured squirrel limping along, a squirrel mourning its dead mate, animals hunting other animals, the scene of a caribou slaughter by human hunters. None of it is explicitly graphic, but that doesn't make it any less impactful. At other times, the blobby blurring is a bummer because the footage would probably be terrific under more highly-defined circumstances. I want to see the majesty of the massive and metal AF antlers on the caribou and the moose!
"Curio" is indeed the right word for The Legend of Bigfoot. It's an entirely self-serious endeavor composed of equal parts Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, the Tippi Hedren film Roar, and found footage sometimes-almost-but-not-horror. It's as much about Marx and his journey as it is about Bigfoot itself, as his tale weaves in and out of science and folklore and touches on 70s newly-hot topics like environmental awareness, colonialism, and violence against indigenous people. At times, this results in the sense that the entire affair is a little padded on occasion, but there is all that big, beautiful, blurry, blobby Bigfoot footage at the end. Footage, I might add, that the scientific community still refuses to verify! As a certified Bigfoot lover (not in a weird way), I find this completely unacceptable and just more evidence that science has never done anything good more me. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to finish this big glass of room temperature raw milk and watch Roseanne! Season 10 I mean!
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