SASQUATCH: THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT

d. Ed Ragozzino (1976)

Cryptozoology was all the rage in the mid 70s, and Big Foot was very big news in entertainment indeed, like a hairier Elton John. This curious film follows an expedition to find the legendary man of the woods, bringing together a motley group of scientists and native guides who spend months travelling into the heart of British Columbia, a densely forested wilderness covering 365,000 square miles*: the perfect place for a furry hominid who has absolutely no interest in being captured, prodded about and put into a zoo.

The film is documentary style, interspersed with recreations of famous Big Foot sightings and attacks. It's a mix of travelogue and nature film, and is really rather restful. There's some light comedy at the expense of the comical cook (who is, nevertheless, a crack shot), but mainly its just sun dappled shots of men on horses making their way carefully and slowly through a succession of beautiful, lonely settings.

There are a couple of animal attacks: a bobcat tries to eat a horse and is shot (the attack is staged, but the shooting looks authentic and leaves a bad taste) and a grizzly bear attacks an inattentive sentry (this was apparently achieved by putting Tootsie Rolls on a stuntman's shoulders, and letting the trained bear have a nibble). This latter sequence is hard to watch without smiling, probably not the intention.    

After a long while, the expedition hears a piercing and blood-chilling scream: finally, they are in Big Foot country. Big Foot clearly doesn't like visitors as he and a few friends very quickly trash the camp, throwing boulders and tree trunks with insouciant ease and breaking all the high tech equipment and a few limbs. The expeditions plan to shoot one with a tranquiliser dart comes to precisely naught, and, in the blessed relief of the morning, thoroughly defeated and lucky to be alive, they pack their smashed up shit and head for home.

We don't see much of Big Foot, just some huge, shaggy, shadowy figures in the dark, but it's enough. I don't necessarily believe in Sasquatch, but I don't necessarily disbelieve, if you know what I mean. If there is something out there, and there just might be, it will come and say 'hi' when it's ready, maybe never, which, ultimately, seems to be the moral of this tale: Big Foot likes its privacy, so don't mess with it. 

* To put this into perspective, this is the equivalent area of the entire British Isles and surrounding sea, half of Belgium, all of Luxembourg and France as far as Paris. It not only makes you realise that Big Foot could hide there indefinitely but also makes you wonder what else is in there.