By Todd Garbarini
Bigfoot
was all the rage in the 1970s and it seemed as though you could not look
anywhere without hearing about it. Alternately known as “Sasquatch”, Bigfoot is
the description given to a large, man-sized hirsute creature reputed to live in
the woods in the Pacific Northwest section of the United States. There have
been many “sightings” over the years of this creature, with many people
claiming they have photographed and even encountered it. The Loch Ness Monster
off the coast of Scotland was yet another subject of mystification and intrigue which rebounded in popularity
during the 1970s.
As
a youngster, I recall not fully giving credence to the notion that this
“monster” really existed but also being unnerved by the myriad docudramas that
attempted to explain or hint at some sense of veracity when it came to
discussing the subject. My favorite show at the time, The Six Million Dollar
Man, pitted the titular hero Steve Austin (Lee Majors) against Bigfoot (an
unrecognizable André René Roussimoff, better known as André the Giant) in early
1976, with its less successfully sister show, The Bionic Woman, continuing
the storyline later that year, with Ted Cassidy now all dolled up for a fight. Leonard
Nimoy’s episode of In Search Of…, which aired in New York on Monday, January
31, 1977, explored the possibility of the creature’s existence. Three months
later we were subjected to the TV-movie Snowbeast, a fun film about patrons
at a ski resort being terrorized by a rampaging killer beast, essentially Jaws
set in the snow. Bigfoot even became a humorous throwaway line by Roberts
Blossom in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, also
from 1977.
In
addition to docudramas, there have also been a good number of films about
Bigfoot coming into contact with humans, but the results are never pretty. Joy
N. Houck Jr.’s Creature from Black Lake (1976) is one of those
low-budget, independently lensed thrillers that made the rounds throughout the
Midwest but never seemed to make it to larger markets such as Los Angeles,
Chicago or New York. Filmed during September and October of 1975 and released regionally
on Friday, March 12, 1976, Creature begins with an image that could have
just as easily been pulled from the ending of John Hancock’s Let’s Scare
Jessica to Death (1971) but gives way to two fishermen (one of whom is
character actor Jack Elam) in a motorboat in the Louisiana swamps. The younger
of the two gets pulled into the water by a creature that is mostly heard rather
than actually seen. Meanwhile, two graduate students, Pahoo (Dennis Fimple) and
Rives (John David Carson) head to Louisiana to look into the existence of this
mysterious creature in the hopes of getting townspeople to talk. Joe Canton
(Jack Elam, who I first saw in the ill-fated TV show Struck by Lightning,
which co-starred Jeffrey Kramer, in September 1979) opens up about it in his
own crazed way. However, Sheriff Billy Carter (Bill Thurman) not only refuses
to speak about the subject but admonishes the students to leave.
Grandpa
Bridges (lovable Dub Taylor) is another community member who is initially
reticent about the creature since it terrified his wife. However, when money is
waved in front of his face, he has a change of heart and permits the students
to break bread with his family. All is well until Pahoo’s parapraxis sends Mrs.
Bridges into a frenzy, incurring Grandpa’s wrath and sending them on their way
to investigate on their own.
Dismissed
by most critics at the time, Creature is an entertaining film that
benefits immensely from stellar camerawork by future John Carpenter alumni Dean
Cundey. The film has never been properly represented outside of a theater
before having been shot anamorphically but cropped for its New York television
premiere on CBS after midnight on Friday, November 30, 1979, while later finding
its way into syndication on channel 9 in New York in the early 1980s. Unless
you were one of the folks who caught up with the film under these circumstances
or through one of its several DVD releases, the best way to see it now is on
the excellent Blu-ray from Synapse Films which is mastered from a 4K scan of
the original camera negative, a vast improvement over all previous airings and
releases.
There
is a feature-length audio commentary with writer Michael Gingold and film
historian Chris Poggiali. They expound upon the film’s merits and detriments and
speak enthusiastically about both the movie and the Bigfoot subgenre. Both men
are erudite and articulate and it makes for an entertaining and informative
listen.
There
is also a 19-minute extra called Swamp Stories with Director of Photography
Dean Cundey which is exactly what it says it is. If you are interested in
Mr. Cundey’s background and a discussion of the technical aspects of the production,
this piece is very interesting.
Lastly,
we have the theatrical trailer and the radio spot!
Oh,
how the radio spots for horror films freaked me out when I was a kid!
A
very cool package indeed, topped off with reallynice cover art by the late
great Star Wars alumni Ralph McQuarrie.
Click here to order from Amazon