LEGEND OF BIGFOOT

Your Drive-In Report by Hubbs Kowalski

(Editor’s Note: The following was sent in an email by Kowalski, somewhere in Georgia)

Poobah,

I found this drive-in in Clarkston, GA called the Rita. Shows triple features every night! It’s like heaven…but with BBQ! And PBR! Anyway, my laptop is acting the fool but I’m going to try to hammer this out. If the keyboard fucks up again, I’ll have to wait till I get to a library or some shit.

The tour is going good. We had four people show up last night. If you or Harvey could Western Union some dough to get us to Kentucky, that’d be pretty fuckin’ rockin’.

Hubbs.



LEGEND OF BIGFOOT (1976)


Directed by Harry Winer

Written by Harry Winer and Paula Labrot

Rated G

Sometimes catching the first flick of the night at the drive-in is a bummer. Tonight was a triple feature at the Rita, a drive-in I found in Clarkston, GA, that started with THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT, which I was pretty excited about. I love that Bigfoot. The way he just walks around, leaving footprints, taking a shitty picture and stinking up the place. It turns out though that THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT, while having a bit of Bigfoot in it, was really just one of those nature films from the 1970’s padded with stock footage.

You know the kind I’m talking about. The ones that put animals together that would normally not ever interact. Like cats and coyote puppies. Coyote puppies and skunks. Coyote puppies and chickens. Cougars playing with rabbits. There’s a lot of that here in BIGFOOT. It’s pretty cool, but you either need to be shit-faced drunk or terribly hung-over to appreciate it. Why? I don’t know why. It’s just one of those strange genres that can’t be enjoyed unless your inebriated or suffering.

The pic focuses on Ivan Marx, a tracker who hunts renegade animals for various people when the animals come around and start fucking up the natural order of things. Then somehow he gets hooked on Bigfoot to the point that his “head is reeling with Bigfoot”. That’s a pretty fair description of my mindset going in. Except I got no Bigfoot. I got coyote puppies and skunks, but no Sasquatch.

Marx is a pretty dramatic motherfucker, too. Throughout the narration, he’s “mystified”, “uncomfortable” and “prejudiced”. For a backwoods tracker, he’s a complex man.

Once he gets the Bigfoot bug, he gets all self-righteous in his demand for people to believe in Bigfoot and the use of Bigfoot’s name to sell things, like Bigfoot was God or something. All I know is that this shit is boring. This ain’t no NIGHT OF THE DEMON, I’ll tell you that. Ain’t nobody getting their junk ripped off by an evil Bigfoot.

So around the time of the eviscerated dead bear frozen in death with a seig heil pose, I wandered over to the other lot to see if Freddy was in row 8 to get some weed. Freddy, I was told by the management of the Rita, always has the best weed if not the best taste in movies. I scored a dime bag, smoked that shit and LEGEND OF BIGFOOT didn’t get any better. It was too late.

I expected better from director Harry Winer, the gaffer on Ken Osborne’s WOMEN UNCHAINED. Lately he’s been doing a lot of TV, directing VERONICA MARS and stuff.

Well, at least I was ready for Treat Williams in NIGHT OF THE SHARKS. NiGGhht……fuuuuckkkk KKkeboOArDDDDD