The Legend of Bigfoot (1975)

Movie Info

I’m going to get that Bigfoot S.O.B.

Ivan Marx is a tracker.  He has spent his life hunting down animals and capturing them.  He lives in isolated woods with his wife Peggy Marx and thinks he knows all there is to know about the wild.  When he encounters a tale of Bigfoot, Ivan realizes that he might not know everything about nature…and when he sees the creature, Ivan decides finding Bigfoot is his goal.  He’ll enter the wilds to hunt down the creature and prove its existence.

Directed by Harry Winer, The Legend of Bigfoot is a pseudo-documentary horror film.  The movie premiered in Albuquerque in 1975 but received a larger release in 1976.  The film is often found in movie multipacks.

I was a crypto-creature fan when I was young (before cryptozoology was a common term).  Much like a Mulder on The X-Files, I wanted to believe…but empirical data just never really existed.  Movies like The Legend of Bigfoot were perfect fodder as a kid.

We have to recreate some video of Bigfoot with polio…let’s make it as unrealistic as possible!

The movie is quite typical of these type of movies.  It features grainy “recreations” and locations.  It has the hunter going through the wilderness, he gets leads that fail over and over again.  The problem with all these type of movies and “documentaries” (including the modern versions of these which run over and over again on cable channels) is that if the creature had been truly discovered, it would be in something better than a rotten documentary…like all news coverage.

The movie is extremely laughable partially because of the “star” Ivan Marx.  Marx provides the narration which is like a cranky cantankerous old man biting his thumb at nature, Bigfoot, and the people who don’t believe him.  The dialogue is unintentionally funny and over-the-top.

“This Bigfoot stands so still…”

With the movie being highly available through cheap prints, it suffers even more.  The visuals are already pretty weak, but copied, recopied, and scanned again, the movie’s quality has completely degenerated in many copies.  The movie is often stretched and squeezed in weird means…the already rotten poorly lit imagery is even worse (though it does give it a kitschy charm).  It does tug at your heartstrings when a ground squirrel pulls a injured ground squirrel off the road where it was hit and you also get some moose mating sequences…it doesn’t have anything to do with Sasquatch, but it is ok nature photography.

The Legend of Bigfoot is a fast watch.  It is lacking in information and visuals, but it does provide a weird niche that was somewhat ahead of its time.  The end “discovery” is that Bigfoot is migratory and non-predatory…no real evidence, no real video.  That being said, if you want a similar vein with more of a horror tone, see The Legend of Boggy Creek which at least has more moments and fun.  Ivan Marx returned with other documentaries like In the Shadow of Bigfoot (1977).