Bigfoot (1969)

Jasper Hawks (John Carradine) and his feckless poltroon of a partner Elmer (John Mitchum, brother of Robert) tool the backwoods area of (let’s assume) the Pacific Northwest with their carload of tchotchkes and junk.  Meanwhile, Joi (Joi Lansing) is a pilot whose plane crashes in the same mountainous area where she is summarily captured by a Bigfoot.  Also meanwhile, motorcycle enthusiast Rick’s (Chris Mitchum, son of Robert) girlfriend Chris (the fulsomely bestowed, beauteous Judith Jordan) is likewise kidnapped by a Bigfoot.  Chris and Joi are held captive while everyone else does a lot of talking and walking in their search for them.

Robert F Slatzer’s Bigfoot does its damnedest to capitalize on the then-recently released Patterson-Gimlin footage of a Bigfoot sloping around Bluff Creek in Northern California.  Admittedly, the country had gone Bigfoot Crazy, and the beast (and regional variations thereof) swiftly became as much a pop culture icon as it was a figure of myth and speculation (this carries through to today, though in far more cynical fashion).  The first thing that struck me while watching this film was how much it reminded me of 1972’s The Curse of Bigfoot.  The resemblance is not so much in narrative content aside from the subject matter.  While I haven’t seen Curse probably since I was a kid, I clearly recall three things about it.  One, its finale (monster movie endings back then were straightforward).  Two, the monster was discovered wrapped like a mummy in a Native American burial mound.  Three, the monster makeup looked like a giant meatball that someone had dropped into a pile of dog hair and rolled around for a bit, then slapped eyes and fangs on it (and it had a habit of walking directly at the camera as a sort of transitional device).  

Bigfoot shares two of these traits, specifically.  First, the monster makeup is horrible (though, in fairness, better than that in Curse), consisting of an immobile rubber mask and an ill-fitting fur suit.  The kid Bigfoot simply has some black stage makeup around his eyes and nose.  It’s almost sad, really, these yearnings for more Pakuni-esque makeup effects that this thing evokes.  Second, is the creature’s ties to Native American culture and its own tribal structure.  The characters come upon what they take to be an Indian burial ground, but they find a dead Bigfoot in a shallow grave.  Later, a Native American woman, upon hearing of the monster, utters the word “Sasquatch,” thus giving the film a bit of cultural diversity (no, not really).  The Bigfeet are dying off, the same as the Native American tribes had been for a long, long time but had somehow only around this era really become a topic of discussion in pop culture and media in general.  Like the Stick Indians (the more maladjusted version of the Bigfoot legend in Native American mythology), these Bigfeet steal women in order to breed with them.  In essence, they play the role of savages that Native Americans occupied in many a Western.  Of course, all of this takes a back seat to the rip-roaring excitement of walking and talking or getting the latest on Sheriff Cyrus’ (James Craig) love life with Nellie (Dorothy Keller) down at the local store.

Likewise, the film calls back hard to 1933’s seminal King Kong as well as 1740’s Beauty and the Beast (to which Kong also calls back).  In the opening credits, the creature is billed as “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” just like Kong.  After the film’s climax, Jasper laments that “It was Beauty killed the Beast.”  This wouldn’t be so egregious if it weren’t so wrongheaded.  Certainly, comparisons can be made between Jasper and Carl Denham, but the Carradine character is portrayed as avaricious and opportunistic to an almost villainous degree (plus, he’s really mean to Elmer).  Denham, at least as played by Robert Armstrong, had a fatherly, caretaking connection to Ann Darrow, motivating his sometimes-selfless acts in the efforts to rescue her.  Yes, he could be myopic in his lust for fame and fortune, but he wasn’t a total jerk.

What’s intriguing in this movie is the idea of bestiality and sex in general which it puts at the forefront.  Joi and Chris are being held specifically to have sex with the male Bigfoot and carry on its bloodline (Joi somehow intuits this as if she were Jane Goodall).  Further than this, the two actresses’ pulchritude is prominently on display throughout.  By 1969, depictions of sex on screen had become much more graphic, yet Slatzer and company never go the extra mile into pure exploitation.  It feels as though they wanted to have just enough salacious teasing for the teenagers in the audience (which also explains the “biker” angle, and yes, that word should be in quotes with regard to this film) while also being chaste enough that parents could take their families to see it.  Like the beasts in the movie, the audience is allowed to get fired up about the possibilities available for sex in the film but will ultimately be denied the experience, even vicariously.  Add to this the fact that the Bigfeet have no discernible personalities.  They are pure animals, acting on vicious instinct, and this robs the film of any empathy we may have about their plight.  Unlike Kong or the Beast, who formed connections with their captives and made us care about the deep emotions that undo them, the Bigfeet are the proverbial pack of rabid dogs in need of putting down.  But, then, to expect more from this movie is to not understand it.

Slatzer varies scenes shot on location with scenes shot on stage sets.  The country store is perhaps the best lit (in a fake sense) one of its kind ever put on screen.  These staged scenes serve to give the movie the feeling of something made for television.  One can understand this, as indoor sets are far easier to control from a technical perspective, but their insertion here undermines (or augments, depending on your point of view) any of the low budget charm this film could have had.  It’s too sterile, too unnatural.  I can guess why the filmmakers chose to shoot so much filler of people ambling through forests or motorcycling through forests or chatting in forests.  It’s cheap and easy.  But I would surmise that most people would want to see this thing for a little bit of skin (a very little bit) and some Bigfoot action.  Watching actors (even the great Carradine) spout variations on the same theme over and over again with the occasional glimpse of what you’re anticipating feels more like a carny cheat (and maybe Slatzer worked in carnivals, I don’t know) than the buildup and payoff that an audience would actually want.  At least the Patterson-Gimlin footage got it right.  It’s roughly two minutes of what people desire: to have their sense of awe and wonder stoked.  Bigfoot is the equivalent of roughly ninety minutes of moving furniture, and who desires that?

MVT:  The idea isn’t bad.  It just never lives up to the come-on of its advertising.

Make or Break:  The extended scene of Cyrus and Nellie discussing the local goings-on in their neck of the woods about which no viewer in their right mind would give even the slightest shit.

Score:  3/10      

Evil Spawn (1987)

The Hollywood studio machine eats people up and spits them out.  We all know this.  It’s understood as a given for anyone entering the world of cinematic celebrity.  Aside from those who get involved in drugs and murder and sleazy sex/religious cults or whatever, there is the omnipresent threat that at any moment, the phone may stop ringing because you have been deemed too old.  The difference between the former examples and the latter is that people have no choice in the aging process.  We begin dying the moment we’re born, and careers in Hollywood tend to die very prematurely indeed.  I think (I have no hard evidence for any of this, mind you) that an actor or actress knows that their career is on the downswing the moment they receive a screenplay wherein they will be playing the parent of one of the main characters or worse the grandparent (or – Horror! – scripts for television movies).  And women get it worse than men, clearly.  Men are said to get distinguished with age.  Men mature.  Women age, and the shelf life for a top actress who can headline a film and put asses in seats (who are scarce enough to begin with) is shorter than that of a mayfly.  It’s not uncommon to be considered over the hill by the time an actress is in her thirties.  It’s no wonder that they cling in desperation to their careers by getting all manner of plastic surgery done.  The sad irony is that said work typically makes them look more cartoonish than if they had simply allowed themselves to grow old with grace.  They make of themselves a freak show, and one thing that people love to watch is a freak show (celebrity or otherwise).  I believe we’re all culpable to some degree or another in this cultural perpetuation, but to go into it and all of its permutations at any length isn’t why we’re here, so I’ll be brief.  We moan that older actors and actresses get shit parts in shit films, but how many of us would pay for a theater ticket to see a big budget film with Diane Lane playing the lead role?  Don’t lie.  The vast majority of people would either wait until it hits video or cable or pirate it off a torrent site, if it even hits their radar at all.  How many studio executives would take a chance on a project like that?  Very few, if they value their tenuous jobs.  Though the occasional bright light does shine through this darkness, these glimmers are few and far between.  All of this ties into the Kenneth J Hall (Ted Newsom and Fred Olen Ray are also listed on IMdB as directors, but if memory serves, only Hall is credited onscreen) schlockfest Evil Spawn (aka Alien Within aka Deadly Sting aka Alive by Night aka Metamorphosis).  It just does very little to save the film.

A space probe brings alien microbes (which are actually quite large for microbes as I would define them and so not actually microbes at all) are brought to Earth to be studied.  Evelyn (who pronounces her name like He-Man villainess Evil-Lyn and is played by Dawn Wildsmith) murders a fellow scientist (apparently in his garage-turned-laboratory) and takes the microbes back to her mentor Dr. Zeitman (John Carradine who really struggles just to get through his scene; I felt bad for the man, frankly), who also promptly croaks.  Evelyn approaches aging actress Lynn Roman (Bobbie Bresee, thirty-seven years old at the time this was released) with an anti-aging serum derived from the microbes, and once Lynn reaches her snapping point and decides to take the drug, the beast that has been raging inside her is finally unleashed.

Okay.  From the above synopsis, the film’s plot probably doesn’t make a ton of sense.  That’s because the film doesn’t make a ton of sense.  Characters come and go just because.  Plot threads are brought up, scarcely tied into the main plot, and then completely forgotten.  The characters all act extremely dumb and/or whiny.  The world these people exist in is entirely unbelievable, even if you look at it through the lens of trash cinema (though doing that would likely make the film a bit more palatable).  Not one of these people are motivated by anything other than plot conveniences.  The picture’s story is almost a total lift of 1959’s The Wasp Woman (and if you want to read about a seriously messed up end to a starlet’s career and life, look up some information on Susan Cabot sometime) an, to a lesser extent, both versions of The Fly, but at least in those films, the characters pretended to do something every now and then.  The lion’s share of Evil Spawn is Lynn crying about her career, bellyaching about the movie she wants to be in, and being hopelessly untethered from reality a la Norman Desmond but not nearly as interestingly (and Sunset Boulevard is another influence on this film, though Billy Wilder likely spins in his grave every time this film is screened).  Even at seventy minutes long, this film outstays its welcome.  It’s like waiting for a boring guest to leave, then he says something that briefly piques your interest and snaps you out of your stupor, but then you swiftly realize that they’re still depressingly tedious, and go back to counting the seconds until it’s all over.  The only thing this film has a plenitude of is naked women, and they are certainly attractive enough, each and every one.  Just not enough to make sitting through this whole thing worth the effort.  There’s also some gore and a relatively decent monster costume (especially impressive if the estimated thirty thousand dollar budget is to be believed), but again, it’s just too little, too late.

Outside of the fear of irrelevance embodied by Lynn in her bid to stay in the spotlight is the motif that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.  Her biographer (Ross Anderson) is essentially a meathead.  Her boyfriend Brent (John Terrence) gives the impression he doesn’t want to be seen in public with Lynn, and is cheating on her with some floozy (who he brings to Lynn’s house just so they can both become victims…I mean, just to get a little action).  Her agent (Fox Harris) is a two-faced slimewad, who dicks Lynn over for a younger client.  Her producer pal (Mark Anthony) lets her have it with both barrels when she all but begs him for a role in his next big movie (“No amount of diffusion can take that away,” re: Lynn’s wrinkles).  Naturally, there’s only so much a woman can endure, and since almost all of these characters are so deplorable and/or bland, we can’t wait for Lynn to “Hulk out” and start laying waste to them.  We’re in her corner, because she’s the victim.  Normally, audiences love films like this, but our main character in this one simply isn’t sympathetic enough for us to give a shit about her travails.  Sadly, it makes the creature/murder scenes little more than bathetic rather than cathartic.

MVT:  The only reason to watch this is for its exploitable elements (read: nudity and blood), and even then I would likely just recommend trying to find a condensation of those scenes without all the other shit.

Make or Break:  The death of Elaine (Pamela Gilbert) is the highlight of the film for a few reasons.  One, I think she’s the best looking woman in this film.  Two, she’s stark raving nude when it happens.  Three, the blood streaming down her back and into the crack of her ass does actually make a great image, all things being equal.  You got me on that one, Mr. Ray.

Score:  3/10             

The Nesting (1980)

I hate the outdoors. No, wait, let me restate that. I loathe the outdoors. Don't misunderstand me, I find nature to be wonderful to look at. I recognize its importance in the ecological balance of the planet. I like animals. But I don't like being out in nature. I used to, when I was young and even into early adulthood. But I think that my love for the woods ended around the same time I stopped imbibing large quantities of hard liquor on a regular basis (the prospect of waking up on a clump of odd-smelling dirt had lost its shine, somehow). Now mosquitoes and flying, blood-sucking pests of every stripe find me to be something of a delicacy. I can cover myself head-to-toe in Deet-formulated repellants, but I think to insects (in relation to me, at any rate) it's like A-1 on a steak. I burn in minute amounts of sunlight. Some would say that's because I don't go outside to begin with. I would say that's one of the reasons I don't go outside. Heat is not my friend, and most people who want to be out in the woods for any length of time typically want to do so on nice, muggy, sweltering days. I start sweating at about sixty-five degrees and up. I don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of all things out-of-doors; I simply don't partake in them. I certainly do not suffer from agoraphobia like Robin Groves' character in Armand Weston's The Nesting (aka Massacre Mansion, aka Phobia). I just prefer air-conditioning. 

Suffering from the aforementioned malady, author Lauren Cochran (Groves) can hardly make it out of her New York City apartment for more than a few minutes at a time, and she has a horrible (but not too horrible) fear of men. Trying everything from New Age meditation to seeing a shrink, Dr. Webb (Patrick Farrelly), Lauren decides that she needs to get out of the city to reduce her stress level. Accompanied by her unrequited would-be-suitor, Mark (Christopher Loomis), Lauren comes upon a rundown mansion, which she has never seen before, but she described vividly in her titular novel. She convinces weird old coot, Colonel LeBrun (John Carradine), and his physicist son, Daniel (Michael David Lally), to rent the place to her. Soon thereafter, Lauren has visions of "painted ladies" and phantoms moving about the place, and strange, deadly occurrences start taking place.

The late Armand Weston was a writer/director of porn movies before he made his only attempt at a "legit" film with this piece (according to IMDB, he was fired from Dawn Of The Mummy). And while the film does bear some mild adult influences (the brothel scenes, Lauren's self-caressing scene, the obligatory love scene, etcetera), it is also indicative of the adult industry of the time. By that I mean it is not strictly utilitarian in its technical aspects. The porn directors of the 1970s were often people trying to make real movies that happened to contain scenes of explicit sex in them. In this film, there are two ways that this mindset is in evidence. The first is in Weston's depiction of Lauren's ailment. When she goes outside and has an anxiety attack, he uses POV handheld camerawork with a fish-eye lens to accentuate the disorientation and menace felt by the character. The second is when Lauren imagines an out-of-body experience. Weston here employs a double-exposed ghost image of Lauren rising up from her prone physical form and moving about. It's an old school technique, but it is effective, and it helps the audience form some type of bond with the lead character (though this bond is tenuous and will be undone by the film itself later).

Films have utilized the defective lead/POV character for years. Just look at Harry Caul in The Conversation, the eponymous Barton Fink, or Mabel Longhetti of A Woman Under The Influence. What they do, essentially, is provide the story with an unreliable narrator, so that the audience can freely question almost everything it sees and hears; Was there a dead body in the truck, or was it all in her mind? You get the idea. For the sort of supernatural mystery that Weston has set-up here, it starts off on the right foot. Unfortunately, he also makes the mistake of not leaving the mystery to play out in the viewer's imagination (and, thus, question the film's reality). He explicitly answers the question of whether or not the house is haunted with a resounding "yes," which robs the story of much of its potential impact. When handyman, Frank (Bill Rowley), starts floating awkwardly in the middle of the living room, any sense of nuance goes out the window. There is a reason why Robert Wise didn't show anything unequivocally in his superlative The Haunting, and Weston would have done well to learn from that veteran director's work.

The film also deals with the divide between the heart and the mind through the supernatural elements. Lauren's psychiatrist believes that she is making connections in her mind that don't exist. Daniel believes in the possibility of the unknown, but his faith in science is stronger. By contrast, Lauren is an artist (a tortured one, to be sure) and accepts, even runs toward the embrace of the otherworldly. The first time she sees the house, she has to rent it. She follows furtive specters, no matter where they lead her (and they lead her to some odd places). Since we see all of the things happening to and around Lauren (even when she does not witness them directly), we side with her, and consequently we side with emotion. Yet again, the filmmakers try to marry the two together by the time the finale rolls around in a confused, rather hamfisted way. And it's this mash-up of the two that ultimately makes the film so unsatisfying. Rather than choose one side or the other (and actually develop it), they opt for both, and the audience therefore cares about neither. What's worse is that this attempted merger comes so late in the film, it feels like some egregious afterthought to the flat, blasé, exposition-laden info-dump that makes up the film's ending. Much like the matryoshka dolls the filmmakers almost certainly had in mind as a clever metaphor for the film's themes (nesting, get it?), it instead mirrors the observer's enjoyment, as each piece of the film opens to reveal smaller and smaller ideas, until there's not much left at all.

MVT: The best thing the filmmakers did for the film was trying to imbue it with a Southern Gothic feel, and it works when they care enough to try maintaining it. They just didn't try maintaining it for the entire runtime.

Make Or Break: The GGTMCers out there who enjoy watching unbelievably bad cinematic moments will revel in the scene where Lauren meets the slovenly Abner Wells (David Tabor, winner of this week's BEM Award). Seeing him pound on a car's windshield, his face a caricatured grimace, and his pants split down the crack of his ass is a moment you won't soon forget (no matter how much you'd like to).

Score: 5.75/10

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