by Stephen Vagg

We sight 10 key entries in bigfoot-sploitation.

Sasquatch Sunset is an American film about a family of Sasquatches, on a quest to find others of their species. This prompted Stephen Vagg to revisit the big foot/Sasquatch film genre. It’s not a huge one – audiences generally prefer creature features about real life animals as opposed to fictitious ones – but there are still a few out there…

1) The Patterson–Gimlin film (1967)

Not a feature but one minute of footage of Big Foot (apparently) striding through the woods. Is it real? Or fake? What’s not in doubt is the film was a sensation and seen around the world, helping diversity Northern California tourism away from its over-reliance on redwoods. This film is what really kicked off the Bigfoot craze and why so many Bigfoot movies are done in a pseudo-documentary/found footage style.

2) Bigfoot (1970)

Take a genuine boozy icon (John Carradine), add ageing starlets (James Craig, Joi Lansing) and nepo babies (John Mitchum, Lindsay Crosby), mix in Bigfoot and you get this. You can smell it from here. The quality of Bigfoot films is generally not that high and Bigfoot helped establish that template. After all, you only need some woods, a few actors and a hairy bigfoot suit.

3) The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

The story of a Bigfoot style-creature, the Fouke Monster (based on a real myth, if that makes sense). Directed by Chares Pierce in docudrama style, it cost $160,000 and became a box office sensation, earning $5 million at the box office. Where that sort of cash goes, imitators follow – there were Boggy Creek sequels, remakes and rip offs, the latter including Sasquatch, the Legend of Bigfoot and The Legend of Bigfoot (It also inspired the docudrama horror genre, best exemplified by The Blair Witch Project).

4) Night of the Demon (1980)

This has been described as the first Bigfoot slasher, which is as good a description as any.  It’s a nutty, anything goes kind of movie and thus inevitably has a strong cult.

A fan made this trailer.

5) Harry and the Hendersons (1986)

The best known Bigfoot movie? This was a big deal in its day, with Steven Spielberg attached as executive producer and John Lithgow as star. It’s a broad comedy with Harry/Bigfoot smashing things, exasperating dad Lithgow. A lot of people adore this film, in part because they saw it as kids. It’s a rare Bigfoot movie to win an Oscar – for make up (Rick Baker) – and it spun off into a reasonably successful TV series as well as kicking off a boom in Bigfoot kids movies (Bigfoot: The Unforgettable Encounter, Little Bigfoot.) We are certain that there are plans to reboot it.

6) Drawing Flies (1996)

Curio about Gen X slackers looking for Sasquatch, which came from Kevin Smith’s View Askew Productions. It was executive produced by Smith and Scott Mosier, and features many of Smith’s then stock company such as Jason Lee (who plays the lead), Jason Mewes (quite a big role), Scott Mosier, Ethan Suplee, Joey Lauren Adams and Smith himself. Shot in between Mallrats and Chasing Amy, the film was actually written, directed, and edited by filmmakers Malcolm Ingram and Matt Gissing. It’s shot in black and white a la Clerks but doesn’t have Smith’s gift for characterisation or dialogue. The movie does foreshadow Smith’s later interest in horror in films such as Red State and Tusk. He godfathered a number of other low budget films around this time, including Vulgar and Big Helium Dog,

7) Strange Wilderness (2008)

More Gen X slackers meet Bigfoot only on a much bigger budget. This stars Steve Zahn, Justin Long and Jonah Hill along with a starring support cast (Ernest Borgnine) and was from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions. Despite this, it was a big flop – Zahn didn’t have the pull of Sandler, or even Rob Schneider.

A more successful Gen X take on Bigfoot was John C Reilly’s cameo as Bigfoot Daddy in Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny.

8) Bigfoot (2012) and Willow Creek (2013)

We are grouping these together because both were directed by actors. Bigfoot is a Syfy channel-Asylum work directed by none other than Bruce Davison with a campy cast including Danny Bonaduce (Patridge Family), Barry Williams (The Brady Bunch), Sherilyn Fenn (Two Moon Junction) and Alice Cooper.

Willow Creek was a found footage horror film directed by none other than Bobcat ‘Zed in Police Academy films’ Goldthwait!

9) Exists (2014)

You know how the directors of The Blair Witch Project made a bunch of other movies that no one has really heard of? This is one of them from Eduardo Sanchez, a found footage horror film about a Bigfoot type creature.

10) Pottersville (2017)

A Christmas film that revolves around Bigfoot? Well, kind of – it’s not an official Christmas movie, rather, one set at Christmas, about a guy pretending to be Bigfoot to help the tourist trade. It’s got a knockout cast: Michael Shannon, Judy Greer, Thomas Lennon, Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks, and Ian McShane. It’s a sweet movie and nice to see Shannon channelling his inner Tom Hanks/Steve Martin and Lennon using an Australian accent.

Special Mention > Missing Link (2019)

Animated film with a lot of A-list talent behind the mic (Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Zach Galifianakis) about a scientist who finds Bigfoot and the yeti. We haven’t included yeti films in this list – they are their own genre (the best being Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman) but this one has both, so it gets in. The movie was a box office flop. Maybe the title, with its hints of evolution, scared off the red state audiences.

We should also give a shout out to Throwback (2014), an Australian Yowie movie.

Sasquatch Sunset is screening at the Brisbane International Film Festival on 26 October and 1 November 2024, more info here.

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