The Legend of Bigfoot (1975)

Trailer: 

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: Something, Something, Sasquatch.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Ivan Marx? Wait a minute comrade, are you going to talk about how Sasquatches will one day seize the means of production?
• Oh this is a “documentary”. Riiiiiiight.
• Oh shit it is a documentary! We’ve never reviewed an actual documentary before. We’re in uncharted schlock territory.
• Other names for Bigfoot: Eskimos call it Bushman. The Colville Indians call it Sasquatch. The Hoopas of Northern California call him Oh-Mah. I’m learning so much already. I probably should’ve started Schlocktobertfest with this flick.
• 2 minutes in and already this flick is genuinely creepier than 95% of all Schlocktoberfest features.
• The music sounds just like Vince Guaraldi’s Great Pumpkin soundtrack. Nicely done setting the vibe right.
• OK, I know I already reviewed Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot and both are documentary style flicks released in 1975/1976 (which was the peak of Sasquatch fever!) but I swear they are two different films, believe me! Believe me like Ivan Marx believes he’ll find a Bigfoot in this movie.
• Ivan Marx lives in a place called Bear Ranch. And no it’s not a brothel for large hairy gay men.
• Coyote pups eh? Cute. It’s too bad this is a documentary otherwise I would assume those coyote pups grow up fiercely loyal and protective of the Marxes and attack the Bigfoot in the finale.
• Look I said they were cute but is the bulk of this flick going to be stock footage of random animals in the area? We already did this crap in the previous Legend of Bigfoot flick!
• Marx is a tracker by trade. How does one become a professional tracker? Is that a college major? And how does one make a living being a tracker? I can’t imagine so many people are knocking on his door hiring him to find shit in the woods.

• I wish this Bigfoot documentary was narrated by the Marx Brothers instead. Sasquatch? Thatsa-no good. What other squashes you got? HONK! One day I shot a Sasquatch in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know! HONK HONK!
• He explains he specializes in renegades, killers of livestock and “sometimes people.” Wait does he mean he tracks killers of livestock AND sometimes people (as in missing people) or did he mean he specializes in tracking killers of livestock AND people? (as in murderers?)
• He learned trapping from his dad back in Illinois. Illinois is hopping mad with traps!
• OK so mainly government officials and game offices hire him to find stuff in the wilderness. That makes sense but I’m still not sure how lucrative it is.
• Now he’s rambling on that he and his hounds were called up to Kodiak Alaska to help out with cattle-killing bears.
• He then says that this “2000 behemoth” should stick to salmon since he’s a good fisherman. Well, maybe the bear is sick of fish and wants some steak!
• He then states that ranchers were getting $5000 bounties on the cattle-killing bears and he was called in to set things straight. But he doesn’t say how. Like, did he have to kill the ranchers? Gentle persuasion?
• One rancher he met told Ivan Marx that it wasn’t bear killing his cows but a Bigfoot! But who was stealing all their lunches?!

• Marx calls bullshit on the ranchers as he investigated the dead cow and he learned that the cow had died from natural causes—malnutrition. Hahahahaha.
• He then goes on to gently mock those ranchers saying “[people] always want their questions answered in such neatly wrapped little packages.” Bigfoot slaughtering livestock is a neat little package?!
• He then says he heard of the legend of Bigfoot and how it crossed the Bering Strait before the Ice Age. So Bigfoot is over 12,000 years old?
• “I couldn’t believe a grown man would tell me that a Bigfoot was killing his cattle.” Just weeks ago Trump yelled on TV that Haitians were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, OH. So yeah, I can believe a Bigfoot story.

• “What a bunch of hogwash!” You summed up Schlocktoberfest perfectly Mr. Marx.
• Why are we in the desert now?
• Arizona University wanted Marx to track down a javelina hog for research. Excuse me, I thought this was a Bigfoot movie, not an Ivan Marx hunts down various animals movie.
• To those of you wondering, yes they caught the Javelina Hog.
• While in Arizona, Marx’s brother-in-law wasn’t so quick to disbelieve the Alaskan’s theory of the Bigfoot and tells Marx that he has something to show him. My mind is racing with possible outcomes to what his brother-in-law has possibly in his shed or barn.
• Oooh, he just took him to a petrified wood area. Bummer.
• It is Indian land and the brother-in-law showed Marx 700-year-old carvings or drawings of human-like figures with large hands and feet. Look, I know where this is going but seriously, each and every cave drawing is not a great representation of actual things. They are just terrible stick drawings on rock.
• Which is fascinating to me because if you look at ancient art, they are mostly crude and cartoonish at best. Like Egyptian art looks like a child made them. Not judging just making a point that it’s strange that the talent for art evolved as we did.
• “They were the hugest I ever seen!”
• The hair and plaster casts of a creature that Marx found and can’t identify himself was sent to a lab and the tests returned results of an unknown animal!
• He found a 600-lb brown bear with its neck broken with the same unidentifiable tracks!
• Not too much is happening. He’s in the woods and found another footprint.
• “Nauseating, musky odor made it difficult to breathe!”

• OK, so this tracker is finding foot and hand prints from a supposed Sasquatch in the area. But how come there’s never a Bigfoot dung pile? Surely the beast must take a dump from time to time and those dumps have to be massive right?
• Now he claims he actually witnessed Bigfoot in the woods. And he’s freaking out because he’s all alone in the woods with no weapons. Well of course he’s alone and there’s a Bigfoot. Bigfoots only come around when someone is solo.
• Now since Bigfoot is becoming a celebrity in the area and people are exploiting the phenomenon (like Bigfoot Burgers, Bigfoot Golf and Country Club, Bigfoot Auto Repair, First Presbyterian Church of Bigfoot), he’s mad. Green with envy actually!
• Why can’t this guy find Bigfoot’s lair? If he’s such a skilled tracker, why isn’t he following the tracks to where Bigfoot lives? I mean, this guy hasn’t shut up about his great tracking skills since the movie started.
• “…I have to be wasting my time…” You and me both, Ivan.
• Wouldn’t it be hilarious if 100s of years ago two or three Native American kids made a large costume out of bear pelts and wore it while standing on each others shoulders and scared their tribe and ever since they created the myth of a Bigfoot.
• Yeah even I can tell that’s just a bear dude.
• Ivan is clearly pissed off that he can’t find a Bigfoot and is now talking bitterly about taking on his usual tracking jobs like bears. “You want a bear? Here’s a bear.” Um no, I didn’t ask for a bear. I’ll take a beer though if you’re buying.
• Hahahahaha. Now he’s showing his footage of a Bigfoot traipsing along in the fields. It’s clearly a man in a costume. At one point it looks like the leg of the costume ripped and we can see flesh tone instead.

• “Science challenged my film!” And this film is challenging me!
• This film will take any detour in talking about Bigfoot and show us random nature footage of random animals for minutes on end that have zero to do with Bigfoot.
• Oh no a dead squirrel. Pity.
• Hello? Did I lose sound? He’s not speaking for once while we watch a squirrel try to take away the dead squirrel from the road.
• Bigfoot sightings confirmed by Canadian Lumberjacks. “They sleep all night and work all day!”
• Now he’s talking about strange mountain goats that eat pounds of clay earth, then kill themselves when they drink water because the clay earth in their stomachs turn to cement. What is happening in this documentary!
• He mentions how with so many folks flocking to the area because of the gold rush years ago, there’s a slew of stories and myths about Bigfoot. Did anyone ever assume that someone or some group invented the story of a 800-lb gorilla man that is 8-foot tall to scare off other prospectors from entering the area? Seems plausible enough to me.
• So now he surmises that Bigfoot tribes buried their dead in glaciers and that’s why we never find dead Sasquatches. OK dude. Great theory.
• He found tracks around the glaciers and even bones but those bones were not of a Sasquatch. Gee, that’s too bad. What a blow.
• Every ten minutes of this documentary gets more ridiculous and dumber.
• It’s not really burying [their] dead if they are (supposedly) dropping their dead in glacier crevices. And really, that was just a flimsy theory in the first place!
• Now he’s claiming that Bigfoot happened to survive all the white man diseases that wiped out Eskimos and Indian tribes. Again, this fool hasn’t even found real evidence of a Bigfoot but is claiming he survived tuberculosis, give me a fucking break!
• Next he’s going to tell us Bigfoot survived the Great Depression by properly stowing away his cash in a hollowed out Sequoia tree.
• Hahahahahaha. I was close. Now he’s rambling on about how Sasquatch survived the violence in the boom towns in the area. Wyatt Earp and Bigfoot actually teamed up a bunch of times.
• “Now I understood why Bigfoot steered clear of man. He had to in order to survive.” No shit Sherlock. You came up with that theory all on your own? Why would any animal fraternize with modern man? Name one animal from the wilderness that moseys over to the local saloon and gladly joins humans.
• Or maybe Bigfoot hated humans. Maybe we stink to high heaven to them.
• He just said he has respect for the elusive Bigfoot and his ability to endure. Motherfucker, you can’t find one shred of evidence that one exists!
• Marx theorizes that Bigfoot lives in the arctic circle to breed and to avoid humankind. Hey, works for Santa Claus.
• He happens to stay in a town in Northernmost Alaska that has a local artist who paints lots of paintings on, you guessed it, Bigfoot!

• OK. I get that if various areas of North America all could have their own theories and myths on a Bigfoot-like creature and that the descriptions are all very similar. However, the description of a Bigfoot isn’t that complicated. Large, very hairy, very heavy, possibly brown-ish. That’s about it. Not much of a varying description to lead on. If they had distinct horns or patterns on its fur then sure, that’s better proof of a creature. But a more human ape isn’t much in my humble opinion.
• For like 5 minutes he’s rambling on about how when he was traveling north, the sky inexplicably turned red as blood and how the spirit of the fallen Bigfoot turned into a white Raven to protect them from the red wrath of its grieving brothers. Seriously, does he think we’re going to believe this horseshit?
• Then, they spot the white raven and the natives with Marx tell him that it will bring good luck and that Bigfoot smiles upon him because he will bring word of him to the people below. Seriously, what the ever-loving fuck am I listening to? I need stronger shit if I’m going to continue.
• Why doesn’t Bigfoot just grow a part of balls, come to Vancouver and hire a publicist.
• He’s mystified that the locals in the area claim that Bigfoot is their friend. He still believes that every Bigfoot is violent yet there’s zero evidence of any Bigfoot, much less any killings it may have done.
• That is one dumb looking statue of a Bigfoot. Why does it look like a mutated Gumby?
• The locals teach him a special chant to sing on the night of the full moon and promised him that he will see the glowing eyes of a Bigfoot. Same thing works for Leprechauns.
• I don’t know how much more hokum and bullshit I can take in the next 24 minutes.
• Now he set up a walkie-talkie trap (he refuses to do the chant which is funny enough) and then waits and eats off the land of berries, lichen, gnats and millions of fish. He’s probably tripping on some magic berries.
• Hahahaha. The walkie-talkie was thrown 15 feet from when he placed it and there were no tracks around the area. C’mon man! Even P.T. Barnum thinks you’re taking this ruse too far.
• His wife notices what appears to look like car lights off in to the distance and he automatically surmises that they are the shining eyes of the Bigfoot. They are clearly shown to be two man-made lights in the distance.
• He was going to approach the lights but then dawn broke and the lights disappeared behind a rainbow. Seriously, I’m not making this shit up!
• He still thinks Bigfoot migrates like geese. Why would a 8-foot-tall missing link covered head to toe in fur migrate? Shouldn’t it hibernate given the physical descriptions?
• He then realizes that the caribou in the area have shining eyes when they scratch off velvet off their antlers releasing swamp gas from the tundra making them glow bright in the night. I though this guy was a professional nature tracker. How did he not think of this before?

• Now he haphazardly discovered the mating grounds of the Alaskan moose! Now things are getting interesting.
• But of course he also thinks it’s also the breeding grounds of Bigfoot because he’s clearly proving to us that he’s a moron.
• MOOSE FIGHT!
• And now MOOSE FUCKING!

• Welp, moving on from Alaska because he clearly will never find a Sasquatch.
• And of course from the little prop plane they “witness” a young Bigfoot near a river bank. This is so brazenly stupid.
• So his whole team are celebrating witnessing a Bigfoot (the pilot himself was the one who saw the Bigfoot at the riverbank first) yet no one is fighting tooth and nail trying to convince the public that Bigfoot exists?! And as quickly as they see these “Sasquatches” in the wild, he still complains that they can’t find any evidence. What the fuck is the point of all this?!
• All this guy is doing is farting out half-assed theories and hypotheses that any kid in elementary could possibly think of.
• So instead of him finding any evidence of a Bigfoot dining on Caribou meat, we are forced to watch wolves do it. Yippee Skippy.
• The dude’s worried about a Bigfoot slaughter like the caribou and he’s determined to protect them. Again, there’s ZERO evidence of a fucking Sasquatch you dolt! Perhaps instead of worrying how these creatures will survive in the wild (which they supposedly already do) maybe find concrete evidence they actually exist.
• Now he theorizes that Bigfoot only eats vegetation or fish and heads back to that Beaver swamp from earlier. This is getting kinda sad and pathetic now.
• He then plans to wait outside for a Bigfoot and even covers his own scent with ammonia. Quick question: would any animal approach an area that reeks of harsh toxic chemicals? Actually 2 questions: Wouldn’t him covering himself in ammonia more or less gravely harm him?!
• I mean, we have about 8 minutes left and this guy already has tried several times to trick us with people dressed as Bigfoot so I can only imagine what the ridiculous finale will be.
• Hey! Nice Beaver!

• Firstly, he never stated earlier in the film that the Eskimos called Bigfoot “The King of the Animals” and second, who does this dude think he’s fooling with yet again, silly footage of other dude’s in gorilla costumes.
• He also claims that he can smell the foul creature when it’s about 100 yards away. Uh-huh. I think the ammonia you covered your whole body with burned whatever shred of olfactory nerves you had left, bud.
• He then realizes that Bigfoot is a benevolent creature since the other animals in the area acted as they normally would. Again, there’s a better chance of me getting laid with Sydney Sweeney then there is him finding concrete proof that a Sasquatch exists.
• So he then states that he again has to say goodbye to this mysterious creature. Why? It’s only the most extraordinary scientific find in 100 years, surely you want to study it, track it, possibly capture one for further biological study? No? It can wait. I see. Maybe another time. I’m sure hundreds of other scientists will venture to that beaver swamp and give it thorough research after you publish your findings right? Right? RIGHT?! Fucking flake.

Final Thoughts: It’s funny but when planning this month’s list of Bigfoot Schlock it never dawned on me that I had two Legends of Bigfoot titled flicks. Both made in 1975/76 and both feature a slew of B-roll with various woodland creatures. This one tried—TRIED—to make this as much a scientific documentary has possible whereas the other one was obvious actors. Both suck and hardly entertaining in the right way. I get it though, America was in a Sasquatch fever in the mid-70s and anything Bigfoot-related was going to be demanded and produced for the Bigfoot fans. And I also understand the allure to tracking down and studying a mythological creature and hoping you’re one of the few that gets any clear evidence off the existence of the beast(s). But don’t piss on our boots and tell us it’s raining. I suppose a Bigfoot pseudo-documentary double-feature with the other Legend flick would be apropos but don’t forget your hopes up that either flick gives any clear indication that a Sasquatch creature roaming the countryside is nothing more than myth.

Score: 3 Ammonia-Soaked Tundra Beaver Swamp Gas White Ravens (out of 10)