Reviewed By: The DarkSider 1/28/10
THE PLOT: No matter how you cut it, primates=funny. Perhaps its the the fact they pick their butts in public or urinate in their mouth on accident or fling poo to prove a point. I don't know, it all comes back to funny. So when my pal William over at The Bearded Weirdo Reviews said he was throwing together a roundtable involving our close relatives (strictly speaking of William and myself), I was happy to join in. I decided to once again go the cryptozoology route and tackle yet another stinker of a Bigfoot movie. It made me wonder if in fact Harry And The Hendersons was the only decent Bigfoot film out there in existence.
Our Sasquatchian adventure begins one day with two fellows on a dog sled in a wintry area. On top of the sled is a giant crate they apparently McGyvered. Footage of this goes on for what seems like an hour while a pseudo-Crosby, Stills and Nash sounding song plays in the background. Out of nowhere they stop for the evening and have a chat. The two banter away about how they’re going to be rich with their latest capture. However, they are attacked from behind by a huge Bigfoot creature. It tosses one of the guys (or I should say his obvious stunt dummy) and beats the snot out of the other one. The smaller Bigfoot inside the makeshift cage escapes and heads out into the woods.
Meanwhile back at the trapper lodge, all the men are shocked to find the surviving trapper, Hank, being pulled to safety the next morning. Olsen ,the head honcho, and his lackey Jake take Hank to the hospital. Side note, Jake is played by long time film journeyman George "Buck" Flower. If you don't know who he is, he's pretty much type cast as the bearded loony in a lot of films. He says things like "critters" to describe animals...etc, etc, etc. He's good at what he does and earns his paycheck, that's all you need to know.
Cut to our "hero" game warden extraordinaire Garrett who is arriving home to his wife. She asks him where their son Jimmy is and he informs him he is out with his new birthday present. That would be a gun. Ah, the days of childhood innocence where having a gun as a kid didn't mean you were a nut job. The two decide to get in a little hanky panky until Garrett is called in on the Bigfoot case. Immediately he seeks the professional advice of Jake who is one of few people who believe in Bigfoot. Also, somewhere it is explained that the Bigfoot was herald as a guard of the area by the Native Americans. All of that won't matter to the plot though. Meanwhile, Olsen puts a ten grand bounty on a Bigfoot capture.
Garrett and Jake head out into the wild and discover the other trapper's body from earlier. They also come across some big footprints. All of this is done in a rather slow screen time killing manner. Cut to Jimmy who is in the woods playing all up until he comes face to face with the little Bigfoot. The two have a brief stare down until Bigfoot offers up this happy expression...
Garrett has a sit down with the town's Sheriff Cooper. The two decide they both have a rather large problem on their hands seeing the body count is starting to rise slowly. Garrett does some searching and puts two and two together with the help of his family. He hypothesizes that the Bigfoot was only protecting it's young when it attacks. I'll just go with that one. He also seeks out the help of a local Native American named Daniels who I guess we can assume knows the creature on a first name basis or something.
Meanwhile, Bigfoot does a little spying on the local ski lodge. A bunch of white people are together dancing like white people to white people music. A young couple decides to leave the party but end up being fodder for Bigfoot. Local law enforcement is rather PO'd at this and decide to take immediate action. However, Olsen continues with his own plans. First he takes out Garrett while Jake looks on like an idiot and then he successfully captures Bigfoot later that evening using a Scooby Dooian trap.
Daniels finds Garrett and Jake and sets them free. He gives Garrett a mystical talisman that will allow him to communicate with the creature. I guess we should assume Bigfoot relates to tacky jewelry. Garrett sends Jake to go find Cooper while he heads off to set the creature free on Daniel's request. However, Jake becomes roadkill for Olsen who takes him out.
The next fifteen minutes prove to be even more painfully slow as the previous one hour plus. Olsen takes Bigfoot to a little shack with a cage in it and heads off to brag to local drunkards about his capture. Meanwhile, Garrett works...ever so slowly...on getting the creature out of it's cage. Cooper arrives to arrest Olsen which leads to a silly car chase scene. Throughout, the tires end up spinning on the ice making sounds like a siren. Great work sound department. Anyhow, in an ending that fizzles out quickly Garrett frees Bigfoot and Olsen finds himself burned alive inside his shack. Bigfoot, along with little Bigfoot who apparently survived his gunshot wound, live to do whatever Bigfoot people do in their spare time.
Sigh...this movie was a hard one to get through. I'd say the primary reason is theres really no idea of good pacing in the film. The theme repeats itself over and over again with reckless abandonment.
1.) People hang out in the woods.
2.) Bigfoot arrives to reek terror.
3.) People search for clues
4.) Repeat steps 1-3 multiple times.
There are characters-a-plenty, 90% of which offer any assitance in developing what little story this film has to offer. Rather just a whole bunch of god*nmed research into what their names were for this review.
I do have to admit though the Bigfoot costumes weren't as bad as I imagined they would be when I started watching this endeavor. That and the crisp wintry surroundings were a nice touch to have in a Bigfoot film. However, this one just ends up not even halfway decent on all levels. In other words its like a trip to the monkey cage at the zoo. You have decent expectations but only end up covered in excrement.
My fellow reviewers have a selection of films based on all sorts of monkey madness. For all the angry monkeys out there look on the bright side, at least you don't look as ugly as most of us reviewers do. Click on the banner to get swinging.
You're A Grand Old A-Hole
(the A-holes of the film get their moment)
Bigfoot
Rather pissy and understandably so. How
would you like it if one of your closest relatives
lived all the way in the Hoth system.
Olsen
He likes to save money on construction
costs by chucking his men through windows.
Overall Grade
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