Judge Maurice Cobbs saw Bigfoot once, but it turned out to be Chewbacca.
Is Bigfoot real? You will believe after viewing this fascinating collection.
People have always had a fascination for myths and legends unsupportable by fact or logic or reason; such as ghosts, demons, witches, and Keynesian economics. In the United States, no such legend has endured with such widespread fascination as the idea of some sort of primitive ape-man that lives in the wilderness…though such legends are certainly not exclusive to North America. Here, the creature may be called the Wild Man, or Nuk-luk, or Sasquatch, but he might be best known as Bigfoot, a name derived from the larger-than-human 'footprints' that are found from time to time and continue to drive the legend. Now, from Reality Films—fine purveyors of sensationalistic crap 'documentaries' and lunatic conspiracy theories—comes this beefy compilation: Two-hundred and fifty minutes of fuzzy videotape, anecdotal stories, indecipherable night-vision footage and amateurish computer animation meant to prove, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Bigfoot lives.
Look, I loved that John Carradine creature feature as much as the next kid who used to stay up for the late, late movie (it's all about Joi Lansing…the most scalding hot Mormon the world has ever known, am I right?), but there has never been any concrete evidence to support the existence of such a creature. The idea still steams along in popular culture, though, and there has been no shortage of people who have tried to prove that the folklore is reality. In fact, there have been those who have all but devoted their lives to just this objective. One such, ah, Bigfootologist is mild-mannered health care provider Esther Schritter, who is the focus of the first featurette on the first disc, "Bigfooting in Oklahoma." Bigfooting? Esther describes the childhood encounters that sparked her fascination with the Hairy One, and then details her efforts to find one of the creatures. This ineptly-filmed documentary provides nothing of value as far as proving the existence of the mythical beast is concerned (the payoff is a blurry few seconds of footage that might slightly resemble a bipedal creature if you squint and happen to have extreme cataracts), but the anecdotes related on fuzzy footage by folks in attendance at some sort of Bigfoot festival may be mildly interesting to someone, somewhere. Ah, who am I kidding? This is garbage.
Let's see, what else have we got here? "Tale of the Honey Island Swamp Monster." Quick spoiler: The tale was baloney, but at least they come right out and admit it. And they even managed to find a colorful rustic type who has one of the rather elaborately-rigged shoes used to leave fake footprints and perpetrate the hoax. It makes for a mildly amusing half hour, but it does as much to prove the existence of Bigfoot as it does to prove the existence of the tooth fairy. The third featurette is on so-called "Swamp-Apes," basically the Southern-fried variety of Bigfoot and yet another thing there ain't no such thing as. It puts forth some half-convincing theories in the amateurish style you'll be used to by now (assuming you've managed to stick with this badly-filmed, poorly-edited mush) before spinning off once more into the realm of utter crackpottery. But it hardly makes an airtight case for the existence of some sort of hairy bipedal cryptid lurking in the Southern glades and underbrush. So much for Disc One.
Disc Two is The Wildman of Kentucky: The Legend of Panther Rock, and you just better watch out, buddy, because these guys have figured out the power of video filters in cheap desktop editing programs, and they are not afraid to use them! There's nothing particularly compelling on this disc, but man, oh, man, it's certain to be the most grueling one hundred and twenty minutes you'll experience in your cryptozoological scholarship. Not only do we cover Bigfoot and similar cryptid creatures, but we also get bonus rumors about other nonexistent creatures that supposedly roam the woodlands of flyover country. Werewolves? Gimme a cotton-pickin' break. This is supposed to convince me? I can only recommend watching this if you have a thing for laughably incompetent computer animation that looks like video-game cutscenes from 1996, or if you need a demo reel of all the video filters available in Windows Millennium Movie Maker.
This is the sort of thing I'd like to say would only appeal to hardcore Bigfoot enthusiasts, but I can't even say that with a straight face. I can't imagine that the dedicated Bigfootologist (that's really what they are, by the way, I didn't make that word up, I swear!) would want anything to do with this cheaply-made landfill fodder. And frankly, if you want to watch something about Bigfoot, it just doesn't get any better than 1972's The Legend of Boggy Creek (best experienced at your local drive-in), which doesn't convince anybody that there is such thing as Bigfoot either, but at least has the virtue of not overwhelming you with criminally inept production values.
Guilty. Feed them to the Sharkticons.
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