Bigfoot: Man or Beast? (1972)

Director: Lawrence Crowley

Starring: Losers and no Bigfoot

More Info: IMDB

Plot: A documentary chronicling one man's journey over a 3 and a half month period in the Pacific North West searching for SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST!

My Rating: 6.5

Would I watch it again? That's debatable, but with the right crowd - absolutely!

If you are lucky enough to see this at a drive-in theater with a bunch of your close friends and even closer bottles of booze, you'll probably love it. I was not that lucky. Just me and a buddy and a little bit of booze toward the end were all I had...but we had a pretty good time of it.

JESUS, Buddy! Are ya gonna smoke 'em out?

Here's the deal. There is no Bigfoot, or The Bigfoot as they sometimes call him. Well, at least there has never been any solid evidence of Bigfoot and, when you consider that all of the "evidence" (including the famous 1967 Patterson film) have been proven to be hoaxes and the like, you can pretty much bet the farm and your kid sister that no such creature exists...at least for reals.


Here's a fun game you can play...Take ANY of the people that tell their personal experience with Bigfoot and pause. Then, frame by frame, speak in a slow, goofy voice, making up your own version of what happened. Here, I'll help you get started...










So when going into yet another fascinating 70s documentary based on BS (that's Bigfoot Shit) but taken as fact, you know you're in for a treat.

Hey, wait a sec! Mr. Spock is on the case!!! This just got WAY cooler!


The first half hour is so riotously funny with lots of interviews from the folks who saw him firsthand. The narrator actually says at one point something like, "with hundreds, even thousands of sightings, this proves that Bigfoot is not a hoax."!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck me! I've got nothin' to come back with. You just tossed a big F U at the science community. Wait. Let's see what this scientist has to say...

"There is no concrete proof, evidence, that any of these creatures ever existed on the face of this planet. No one has ever produced a specimen, complete or incomplete, to prove that any of these animals have ever lived."

OH, SNAP!!!

Ooh, wait. Here's another one...

The hero of the story, Robert "Bob" Morgan (played quite well by himself), has found some hair on a rock next to a footprint. He sends it off to the lab. Later he gets the call from Mary, the microbiologist on Bob's team of "experts"...


MARY: You remember those hairs that you sent out to the lab about a month ago?


BOB: Yeah, yeah.
MARY: I finally got a report back from the director at the lab on those, and he feels that those are human body hair from the lower extremities.

At this point Bob is beating his pencil on the table furiously and he's clearly angry.


BOB: From the lower extremities...
MARY: It doesn't confirm absolutely but it's certainly indicative.
BOB: The circumstances under which they were found is very well documented and I think the chances of that being homo sapian is very, very remote.
MARY: Well, I am inclined to agree with you.
BOB: Thanks for making this a very, very good day.

"Well I'll be damned."

His ability to clearly sort out the evidence is astounding!

Here's Bob in his Bigfoot hunting atire...

I take it Bigfoot has a sense of humor?

This guy has been acting in monkey suits on film since 1939.


He's seen the Patterson film and says that there's no way that is fake, that it would take hours and hours to make a suit that good and there hasn't been one made yet that would allow the wearer to move like that. WHAT? This is part of their evidence? I know, I know, I know. I'm watching a "documentary" about Bigfoot. I should let it go.

HOLY SHIT! THEY FOUND BIGFOOT!


Sorry. My bad. It was just some dude...


Say, who is the Bob Morgan fella, anyway?

"By his own admission, Morgan's a tough, hard-driving man who won't rest until he's gotten the job done. An early riser, he'll often see him working late into the night. He's tough because he has to be. It's the key to survival in this mountain wilderness."

I am literally beside myself. Who does he think he is, Ben Kingsly?

"The intense heat has driven Elizabeth Mormon to take refuge under Nature's own shower." Now THIS is exactly what the picture needs right about now!

Let's have some more fun with another first-hand account with ole Bigfeets himself...




Here's Bob once again tellin' it like it is...

You know, she REALLY needs to take her top off.

Here's an artist's rendition of what that might look like...


They're sooooooo close to finding Bigfoot they can almost smell him. Suddenly! There's a raging forest fire that engulfs a good chunk of the Mount St. Helens region where they believe Bigfoot to be. With hundreds of firefighters and reporters swarming the area, Bob is livid 'cause Bigfeets ain't coming around here for a while. All their work over the past few months is for shit. WHAT? Oh, I get it. You were THIS close to finding Bigfoot and this fire has up and ruined everything? You worthless bonehead! That's a fantastic excuse for having wasted your and everyone else's time. It's always something why nobody has brought forth evidence, isn't it?


So this is how our film ends, with Bob lookin' all sad with the greatest of excuses that just fell into his lap.

"...but for Robert Morgan, it's far from the end of the road. He'll be back next year and the year after and the year after that. He'll be back for however long it takes him to satisfy the world that we are merely men among the giants."

Aw, stop it! I'm gonna bust out cryin'! Goddamn, this is pathetic...but FREAKIN' HILARIOUS!!!


Take off a couple of points for the horrendously obnoxious repeating banjo & harmonica theme and another for some boring bits as this does get a little long in the tooth and you're left with a hilarious flick that is sure to squeeze a couple of drops of pee from everyone in the room laughing uncontrollably. Great stuff. Bring on the next one.