Blood Stalkers (1976)

          It’s probably best to begin by listing all the things this low-budget horror flick is not. Despite the title, the subject matter doesn’t concern vampires or zombies or any other plasma-craving monsters. And lest any of the following remarks give a different impression, Blood Stalkers is not a good movie by any measure. It’s amateurish and goofy and sluggish, burdened with clichéd characters and trite dramatic situations. Having said all that, Blood Stalkers has tangential connections to Bigfoot, who was very much in vogue at the time this picture was released, and the picture hits its stride as a nihilistic shocker during the final 30 minutes or so. All of which is to say that if you dig the elements contained herein, Blood Stalkers makes for an adequate empty-calories snack.

          The sketchy narrative begins with two couples driving into the Everglades for a vacation. Mike (Jerry Albert) recently inherited a remote cabin, and he’s brought his reluctant wife, Kim (Toni Crabtree), and their friends Daniel (Ken Miller) and Jeri (Celea Ann Cole) along for the ride. Upon arriving in swamp country, Mike clashes with a grubby gas-station proprietor (Herb Goldstein), who gives the standard get-outta-here-if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you rap. Naturally, because he’s a character in a dumb horror movie, Mike ignores the advice. Things get weird immediately thereafter, because three gun-toting slobs, who look less like Deliverance rejects and more like members of a redneck militia, show up at the gas station to wave guns at the newcomers. Again, Mike proceeds despite the clear danger to himself and his friends, which means that logic is not a factor in what follows. After Mike’s group settles into the cabin, they’re frightened by mysterious creatures that are referred to by locals as “blood stalkers,” whatever that means. The siege grows more intense each passing night, with hairy Bigfoot-like monsters eventually putting their hands on members of Mike’s group.

          Eventually, the movie develops a queasy sort of tension because things get ultraviolent, complete with over-the-top gore. None of it makes much sense, but it’s hard to look away from bizarre scenes featuring slow-mo chases and cuts to gospel singers. (Don’t ask.) And while the onscreen Bigfoot stuff is a bit of a tease, the offscreen connection to Sasquatch lore is real. Robert W. Morgan, who wrote and directed Blood Stalkers in addition to playing one of the menacing rednecks, appeared in several ’70s documentaries as a self-proclaimed Bigfoot hunter. He cut a memorably ridiculous figure in those projects, so it’s unsurprising that Blood Stalkers, his sole directorial effort, is simultaneously earnest and stupid. For better or worse (mostly worse), Morgan approached his contributions to ’70s pop culture with fierce commitment.

Blood Stalkers: FUNKY

Creature from Black Lake (1976)

          Another swampy story about a backwoods monster with similarities to Sasquatch, Creature from Black Lake plods through a simplistic and somewhat uneventful storyline until climaxing with a passable action/suspense sequence. For devotees of Bigfoot cinema, one decent vignette of a hairy biped laying siege to a college student in a panel van might be worth the price of admission, especially since the sequence, which is set at night, has a measure of creepy atmosphere. For other viewers, watching the rest of the movie just to enjoy a few low-grade thrills won’t seem like a fair trade. In other words, proceed with caution. The picture begins well, with Joe Canton (Jack Elam) and his redneck buddy steering a canoe through a swamp until they glimpse a bizarre creature and flee, only to have the creature emerge suddenly from the water and pull Joe’s buddy below the surface. Then things slow down. In Chicago, students Pahoo (Dennis Fimple) and Rives (John David Carson) hear rumors about the monster menacing a community in Louisiana, so they embark on a research trip.

          While trying to find the much-discussed Joe Canton, the boys clash with a sheriff who doesn’t want his citizens riled up by rumors. Later, they hook up with two local girls and go camping with the girls in the hopes of getting lucky—only to endure an attack by the very monster they’re researching. Lest this give the impression the storyline is picking up speed, however, the whole business with the panel van happens during a subsequent confrontation. Although Creature from Black Lake is mostly drab from a cinematic perspective, cinematographer Dean Cundey—later to break big with Halloween (1978)—lends moodiness to nighttime scenes. The picture also benefits from the presence of familiar character actors Elam and Dub Taylor. Elam gets the meatiest bits, including a monologue about encountering boars slain by the creature, but there’s only so much one can do with dialogue along these lines: ‘If I hadn’t been drinkin’, I’d have blown his butt off!” Taylor does his usual angry-old-coot routine. As for the leads, they’re competent but milquetoast. All in all, this isn’t the worst guy-in-a-suit creature feature you’ll ever encounter, but it’s far from the best.

Creature from Black Lake: FUNKY

Mysteries from Beyond Earth (1975)

          Let’s assume for a moment that you’ve been deprived the joys of ’70s pseudoscience documentaries, either because you weren’t alive at the time these oddities played in theaters or because your investigations into ’70s cinema haven’t taken you down this particular rabbit hole. Consider Mysteries from Beyond Earth your ideal gateway drug. While this low-budget hodgepodge doesn’t match the fervor of the enjoyably shameless pseudoscience docs that Sunn Classic Pictures made in the ’70s, Mysteries from Beyond Earth hits so many different topics that it’s like a sampler platter for the genre.

          Hosted by journeyman Hollywood actor/director Lawrence Dobkin, who imbues every line with some combination of dramatic pauses or overwrought gravitas or practiced amusement, Mysteries from Beyond Earth draws a line connecting nearly every paranormal phenomenon that caught the public’s attention in the ’70s. The reasonable notion driving the piece is that there’s more to life on Earth than humans yet understand, but, in classic pseudoscience fashion, the filmmakers go way too far by treating every loopy theory for unexplained events as if it’s credible. With more focused movies of this type, such as those from Sunn Classic, taking deep dives into specific topics makes outlandish theories seem almost persuasive thanks to the accumulation of “evidence.” Mysteries from Beyond Earth favors quantity over quality. Here’s a partial list of topics the filmmakers cover in 94 breezy minutes: ancient astronauts, Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, biofeedback, black holes, crionics, Easter Island, the Egyptian and South American pyramids, Kirlian photography, Satanism, Stonehenge, time travel, UFOs, Uri Geller and other manifestations of psychic phenomena, voodoo, and witchcraft.

          Cobbling together newsreel footage, clips from other productions, and various and sundry interviews, the movie uses an abstract, prismatic pattern as a transitional device while hurtling from one topic to the next. Dobkin often poses questions in voiceover, with editing suggesting that on-camera speakers are responding directly to his queries, and the filmmakers tweak every element possible to achieve the desired effect of disquieting ambiguity. In a particularly laughable scene, U.S. Congressman J. Edward Roush is made to seem as if he’s validating UFOs, though what he really says is, “My imagination tells me that perhaps . . .” That’s pseudoscience in a phrase, the thrill of contemplating what might be without the hassle of collecting proof. How far into the weirdosphere does Mysteries from Beyond Earth travel? One section of the movie explores the old Jules Verne concept of a secret civilization at the Earth’s core, with Dobkin explaining theories about our planet’s “inner sun.” Trippy, man.

Mysteries from Beyond Earth: FUNKY

Bigfoot: Man or Beast? (1972) & The Mysterious Monsters (1976) & Manbeast! Myth or Monster? (1978)

          Notwithstanding drive-in hit The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), a fictional feature shamelessly marketed as a documentary, the entertaining cycle of nonfiction films exploring a certain mythical creature commenced with 1972’s Bigfoot: Man or Beast? Comprising simple reportage following Sasquatch enthusiast Robert W. Morgan as he searches the Pacific Northwest for signs of his elusive quarry, Bigfoot: Man or Beast? is rational but sluggish, mostly because Morgan lacks dynamism. Short, muscular, intense, and bald except for a jet-black circle beard, Morgan affects a tough-guy persona complete with strident speeches about how the scientific community’s skepticism makes him “mad as hell.” As Bigfoot: Man or Beast? trudges along, writer-director Lawrence Crowley features interviews with people who claim to have seen creatures in the woods, plus long scenes of Morgan hiking through forests.
          Although Crowley never gooses the movie with fabricated scenes, he devotes considerable screen time to the infamous Patterson footage of an alleged California sighting; similarly, Crowley doesn’t challenge people who say things like, “If this footprint was faked, the person doing it had to be an absolute expert in human anatomy.” During the underwhelming climax, Morgan and TV actor Sam Melville (The Rookies) travel to a spot where a Bigfoot sighting is anticipated, but then a forest fire erupts and, according to Morgan, drives Sasquatch into another area. Convenient! (FYI, Crowley repurposed much of this material for an expanded feature titled In Search of Bigfoot, which was released in 1976, and some prints affix the title Bigfoot: Man or Beast? to the longer version.)
          A few years after Crowley’s picture was released, the ’70s Bigfoot craze peaked. In 1976, Bigfoot, as portrayed by Andre the Giant, appeared in a classic two-part episode of The Six Million Dollar Man's third season. (The hirsute anthropoid returned for several not-so-classic installments of both Six Million and its sister show The Bionic Woman, with Ted Cassidy assuming the role at the end of the cycle.) Also in the mid-1970s, Harry Winer’s The Legend of Bigfoot (1976) and Ed Ragozzino’s Sasquatch, the Legend of Bigfoot (1977) were bogusly marketed, Boggy Creek-style, as documentaries, and the creature was inevitably featured during the first season of the Leonard Nimoy-hosted pseudoscience-doc series In Search Of . . . , with a Bigfoot episode airing in April 1977.
          The same year Sasquatch tussled with Steve Austin, Mission: Impossible star Peter Graves hosted feature-length doc The Mysterious Monsters, proof positive that 1976 was a glorious time for gullible young moviegoers. This one was unleashed on the world by those titans of pseudoscientific docudrama, Sunn Classic Pictures. Essentially a filmed news report in the you-are-there vein, with Graves playing the role of an intrepid investigator, The Mysterious Monsters includes several vivid re-creations of Bigfoot sightings. Using performers in frightening Bigfoot costumes, writer-director Robert Guenette stages various spooky scenes; one vignette features a group of Boy Scouts sleeping in the woods until noises wake them, at which point the boys discover a hairy intruder in their midst. Guenette crams a lot of data into 90 minutes, with Graves dramatically grouping eyewitness sightings, footprints, hair samples, and the like as “exhibits” proving Bigfoot’s existence. In a clever touch, Guenette grounds his argument by citing various modern discoveries that upended common beliefs (for example, the Komodo dragon), though the film’s logic strains when Guenette spends about 15 minutes “proving” the existence of the Loch Ness Monster.
          Nonetheless, The Mysterious Monsters is so lively that it’s easy to go along for the facts-be-damned ride. At one point, Graves takes a box containing a plaster cast of an alleged Sasqautch footprint to—well, let’s let him explain it. “I went to Peter Herkos, the world’s foremost psychic detective, at his home in Los Angeles,” Graves says, gravely. Then, once Herkos is holding the box, Graves asks, ”Can you psychometrize what is in here and tell me something about it?” The Mysterious Monsters may not be defensible as journalism, but it’s tremendous fun as a cheesy thriller.

          Sasquatch’s popularity continued in 1977—Bigfoot and Wildboy debuted as a segment of Saturday-morning kiddie program The Krofft Supershow, eventually becoming a short-lived 1979 stand-alone series —but the creature’s stardom began to dim in 1978, when yet another “documentary” was released. Discarding all pretense of truthfulness, Manbeast! Myth or Monster? features the usual inventory of creature sightings, framed by scenes of a narrator/host “leading” the inquiry. Considering that writer-director Nicholas Webster obviously scripted every line—the actors aren’t good enough to create verisimilitude—the movie feels pointless and tacky from start to finish. Hollywood makeup artist Rob Bottin (who later worked on John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing) created elaborate Bigfoot costumes for vignettes of creatures hanging out in the forest, running from pursuers, and scaring those who stumble upon them. Whereas The Mysterious Monsters used this gimmick in moderation, however, Manbeast! Myth or Monster? shows its creatures far too often. Thus, despite Webster’s low angles and moody lighting, the film somehow manages to make Bigfoot boring.

Bigfoot: Man or Beast: FUNKY
The Mysterious Monsters: GROOVY
Manbeast! Myth or Monster?: LAME

Snowbeast (1977)

          Bigfoot was so ubiquitous in mid-’70s pop culture, you can’t blame the guy for wanting to take a vacation. So instead of thumping around the forests of the Pacific Northwest, as he did in countless movies and TV shows during this period, the Artist Sometimes Known as Sasquatch spends Snowbeast chilling at a ski resort. Made for TV and running a brisk 86 minutes, this low-budget thriller boasts a coherent script by Joseph Stefano (who, in better times, wrote Psycho for Alfred Hitchcock), and features a handful of competent actors who keep things lively. Robert Logan, star of the Wilderness Family movies, plays Tony, the manager of a Colorado ski resort owned by his tough grandmother, Carrie (Sylvia Sidney). When a terrified skier reports an attack by a mysterious creature on a ski slope, Carrie (in true Jaws rip-off fashion) demands the incident be kept quiet so panic doesn’t derail the resort’s upcoming winter carnival. Tony starts to investigate the attack, but he’s distracted by the arrival of one-time Olympic skiing champ Gar (Bo Svenson) and Gar’s wife, investigative reporter Ellen (Yvette Mimieux). Cue the psychodrama!

          It turns out Tony once dated Ellen, and Gar has been gun-shy about skiing since his Olympic success. So, in addition to the usual business of a monster attack every 10 minutes or so and semi-suspenseful scenes of Our Heroes snowmobiling around the woods and looking for Bigfoot, Snowbeast features the type of contrived character interplay one usually finds in Irwin Allen disaster movies. The sheer number or events in Stefano’s script sorta makes up for the film’s lack of genuine terror, and even though Snowbeast feels padded—a sequence of Mimieux snooping around the woods goes on far too long—Snowbeast basically delivers the B-movie goods by introducing archetypal characters and then keeping the audience guessing about who will survive. The monster stuff is disappointing, of course, but director Herb Wallerstein wisely limits our glimpses of the titular critter to flashes of claws and feet, plus one or two split-second peeks at the creature’s hairy face. This is cheesy stuff, without question, but by the low standards of ’70s Bigfoot cinema, Snowbeast is fairly entertaining.

Snowbeast: FUNKY

Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1977)

By using documentary-style elements such as a narration track filled with facts and figures, plus a linear storyline tracking the drudgery of a scientific exploration (think Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom), executive producer/story author Ronald D. Olson creates an immersive but unpersuasive illusion that Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot is a re-creation of something that actually happened. Presumably, this fakery was used to obfuscate the paucity of, for lack of a better word, “money shots”—Sasquatch only has about 10 minutes of screen time in the entire picture, most of it in flashbacks that Olson uses to illustrate old stories the movie’s characters share with each other while sitting around campfires. The bulk of this picture comprises dull footage of explorers venturing into the wilds of British Columbia to search for Bigfoot. Supervised by scientist Chuck Evans (George Lauris), the group of explorers includes such clichéd types as a gruff mountain man, a skeptical big-city reporter, and a stoic Native American. After meandering through pointless interludes—frolicking with raccoons, tussling with mountain lions—the group reaches a valley believed to be Sasquatch’s lair. Then, in the final scenes, the explorers set up surveillance equipment around the valley and endure a nighttime assault by an unknown number of creatures. Director Ed Ragozzino relies on quick cutting and silhouettes to create a low-grade sense of danger, and composer Al Capps provides a Jaws-style motif that rumbles on the soundtrack whenever Bigfoot appears. (The monster is primarily depicted through point-of-view shots, another rip-off from Jaws.) Getting to the climax requires a great deal of stamina on the viewer’s part, and the payoff isn’t nearly worth the trouble—because by the time the picture concludes with a silly theme song (“There in God’s country, he just wants to be left alone”), mediocrity has given way to monotony.

Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot: LAME

Shriek of the Mutilated (1974)

Ostensibly a Bigfoot flick but really just a psycho-killer/Satanic-cult gorefest made in the trashy Herschell Gordon Lewis style, Shriek of the Mutilated is completely devoid of redeeming qualities. The acting is atrocious, the storyline is moronic, and the thrills are nonexistent. The picture even fails as an excessive splatter movie, because the special makeup effects are amateurish. Following a few random vignettes that get the movie off to a disjointed, uninteresting start, the story proper begins when college professor Dr. Ernst Prell (Alan Brock) organizes a group of students for an expedition into the woods where a Yeti has allegedly been sighted. (Why a Yeti and not just Bigfoot, since the picture is set in America rather than Asia?) Prell loads a group of bland young adults into a van and schleps them to the remote home of his colleague, Dr. Karl Werner (Tawm Ellis). Karl’s a strange cat who’s balding on top but wears a graying ponytail, and he favors creepy ensembles of turtlenecks and way-too-tight pants. He’s also prone to florid lines like, “Your Yeti waits for you still, Ernst.” Before long, the college students start getting killed during attacks by a “monster” who’s really just a dude wearing a gorilla suit that seems like it’s made out of white shag carpeting, some pasty makeup, and a pair of dime-store Dracula fangs. It turns out the doctors are actually cultists who lure students to the woods, dress up like Yetis to scare them, and then kill the students for pagan rituals. This plot “justifies” close-ups of decapitated heads and dismembered limbs, none of which have any shock value—more like schlock value. Literally the only amusing moment in the whole movie is the scene during which one of the college students sits at the piano and croons a ditty he’s written about the situation: “On the prowl, hear him howl, here comes the Yeti now!”

Shriek of the Mutilated: SQUARE

The Capture of Bigfoot (1979)

Fungus scraped off the bottom of the Sasquatch-cinema barrel, The Capture of Bigfoot is a no-budget dud in which the redneck denizens of a small, snow-shrouded town blame a string of murders on something called “The Legendary Creature of Arak,” a white-haired Bigfoot/Yeti/whatever rumored by Native Americans to haunt the mountains surrounding the town. During this interminable movie, scheming entrepreneurs attempt to capture the monster for purposes of financial exploitation, while police officers try to determine whether the killings are the work of man or beast. Badly acted, incompetently filmed, lazily edited, and padded with meandering bits like pointless party scenes and unfunny “comedy” vignettes, this is one of those grade-Z creature features that only contains about 10 minutes of actual monster action, so trudging through the flick’s entire 92-minute sprawl is a monotonous chore none but the masochistic should attempt. Toward the end of the picture, once “The Legendary Creature of Arak” is finally captured, he/it is revealed to be a neatly groomed giant with a smooth white coat, a pointy head, and a scowling orange face; closely resembling the ridiculous “Mugatu” alien from the original Star Trek series, this critter ain’t the most formidable of beasties. Plus, the monster turns out to be quasi-benevolent, which makes all the previous scenes depicting the creature as a savage killer seem nonsensical in retrospect. And so it goes for the rest of this abomination, which offers nothing in the way of amusement, entertainment, novelty, or thrills.

The Capture of Bigfoot: SQUARE

Bigfoot (1970)

          My vote for the weirdest of the myriad ’70s movies about Sasquatch, this no-budget oddity transforms everyone’s favorite Pacific Northwest man-beast into an old-fashioned movie monster in the King Kong mold. When the disjointed flick begins, fast-talking drifter Jasper B. Hawks (John Carradine) drives through a forest with his idiot sidekick, Elmer Briggs (John Mitchum), while big-breasted blonde Joi (Joi Lansing) flies a small plane over the same area. Joi’s engine conks out, so she parachutes to safety. Arriving on the ground, she strips out of her flight suit into a mini-dress (!) and screams because Bigfoot has emerged from the woods to attack her. Then laconic biker Rick (Christopher Mitchum) rolls into the woods with his curvaceous girlfriend, Chris (Judy Jordan), who for no good reason is wearing a bikini (!). She stumbles onto a Bigfoot burial ground, and then screams because Bigfoot has emerged from the woods to attack her, too. Because, of course, smooth-skinned white chicks make Bigfoot’s blood boil.

          Rick seeks help, but only Jasper (remember him?) believes his story; Jasper offers aid because he plans to capture a Bigfoot for freak-show exhibition. Meanwhile, Peggy—still wearing her swimsuit and, of course, sporting perfect hair and makeup—wakes up tied to a tree beside Joi, who also has perfect hair and makeup. They’re being watched by three Bigfoot creatures (portrayed by actors in ridiculous monkey suits), so Joi and Peggy scream some more. Then Jasper, Elmer, and Rick trek through the woods, bickering all the way, until they reach the Bigfoot lair. Before long, more people get tied to stakes, more people scream, and Rick’s gang of hog-riding biker buddies arrives for a big brawl with a bunch of Bigfoot creatures. Oh, and it turns out the monsters who’ve been guarding the women are the hairy brides/sisters/whatever of the real Bigfoot, a giant ape-like dude.

          Bigfoot is a truly awful movie, combining a doofus storyline with shoddy production values and terrible acting, but it’s arresting in a fever-dream sort of way. Carradine’s supposed to be a formidable big-game hunter, but he’s an arthritic, emaciated senior dressed in a suit and tie. Christopher Mitchum, the son of screen legend Robert Mitchum, is supposed to be a tough-guy biker, but he’s a passive nebbish who politely refers to Carradine’s character as “Mr. Hawks.” Jordan and Lansing are so outrageously curvy—and so nonsensically underdressed—that their scenes feel as if they were guest-directed by Russ Meyer. The movie toggles back and forth between second-unit location shots showing actors full-figure from a distance and cheesy soundstage footage with the principal cast in close-up, so it’s like the flick drifts in and out of reality. Bigfoot creatures get more screen time here than in virtually any other ‘70s Sasquatch movie, which is not a good thing—prolonged exposure highlights the bad costumes. And we haven’t even talked about the upbeat honky-tonk music that plays during suspense scenes, or the incongruous surf-music cue that appears whenever the bikers are shown driving. Oh, and at one point, a lady Bigfoot wrestles a bear.

Bigfoot: FREAKY

The Legend of Bigfoot (1976)

          A certain shambling man-beast with oversized lower extremities was so prevalent in ’70s pop culture that he permeated not only fiction and nonfiction films, but also sensationalistic schlockumentaries that combined fabrications with facts. For instance, The Legend of Bigfoot purports to contain real footage of a Sasquatch, but the footage is so obviously juiced that only the most gullible viewers could be swayed. Presuming, of course, that any viewers can stay awake long enough to see the money shots. Overall, The Legend of Bigfoot is a tedious compendium of G-rated animal sequences, tied together with florid narration by the man who shot the images, Ivan Marx. Marx explains that he was working as an animal-control specialist when he started hearing rumors about Sasquatch sightings. He then spent months trying to find the elusive monster. So, about 25 minutes into this interminable record of his search, Marx includes a blurry shot of a silhouetted shape moving behind a tree line.

          Emboldened to get an even closer look, Marx keeps investigating, eventually becoming annoyed at his own lack of results. Thus, we’re treated to the following petulant voiceover: “I took a job up in the wilderness near Vosburg, Washington. I had to photograph a cinnamon bear in its natural habitat. You want a bear? Here’s a bear. Piece of cake. I always got what I set after. Except bigfoot.” The shots of the cinnamon bear are crisp, and in fact all of the images except those of the actors pretending to be Sasquatch are fine; the problem is they belong in some Disney nature documentary, not this supposedly thrilling journey into the unknown.

          Director Harry Winer, tasked with shaping Marx’s underwhelming footage, clearly had no choice but to pad The Legend of Bigfoot with nonsense. (For instance, we spend several minutes watching cute fox cubs cavort around Marx’s ranch.) Eventually, Marx gets another eyeful of monsters during the movie’s lifeless climax, triggering this narration: “I began to shake all over. I could barely keep hold of my camera.” And what’s featured in the accompanying shot (which, it should be noted, is perfectly steady)? That would be two silhouetted actors in bigfoot costumes washing their bodies in a forest stream. Whatever, man.

The Legend of Bigfoot: SQUARE

The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) & Return to Boggy Creek (1977)

          Hollywood set decorator Charles B. Pierce launched his career as a low-budget auteur by producing, directing, and photographing this ersatz documentary about sightings of a Sasquatch-like creature in the swamps of Fouke, Arkansas. Presented with very little synchronized sound (most of the commentary is provided by a narrator), the movie trudges through dull re-creations of encounters with the shambling man-beast. Pierce isn’t a bad cinematographer, at least when he’s got enough light for proper exposures (which isn’t always), so some sequences have passable atmosphere. With Pierce’s camera picking out evocative details like the way tree shadows fall across murky water, the best images in The Legend of Boggy Creek reveal why Pierce made his living embellishing cinematic visuals. Unfortunately, every other aspect of the picture explains why his directorial endeavors were limited to cheap drive-in attractions. Working with screenwriter Earl E. Smith, Pierce fails to generate any narrative momentum. It’s true that certain vignettes of slow-witted rednecks tromping around their backwoods hovels have a certain lurid appeal, but Pierce’s inability to deliver the horror-flick goods grows tiresome—since the picture comprises scenes of people reacting to something the audience cannot see, the whole movie is a tease.

          Worse, the movie feels padded, even though it runs less than 90 minutes. This is especially true when Pierce cuts to montages featuring godawful original songs. Yes, there’s actually a “Creature Theme,” a melancholy country ballad explaining the loneliness felt by the unseen monster. (Sample lyrics: “Perhaps he dimly wonders why/ there is no other such as I.”) Still, many ’70s moviegoers found The Legend of Boggy Creek sufficiently unsettling to make it a substantial hit—the movie earned a reported $20 million despite costing only $100,000 to make.

          An inevitable sequel followed in 1977, but Return to Boggy Creek was made without Pierce’s involvement; furthermore, Return to Boggy Creek is a fiction film rather than a fake documentary, and it’s also a kiddie movie. The plot concerns redneck children getting rescued from danger by a benevolent Bigfoot, and the biggest star in the cast is “Mary Ann” from Gilligan’s Island, the one and only Dawn Wells, who plays the kids’ worried mama. (Still cute as hell, by the way!) Interminably slow and stuffed with embarrassingly bad acting—the main character is played by amateurish teenager Dana Plato, who later achieved fame on the sitcom Diff’rent Strokes—Return to Boggy Creek is vanilla-flavored tripe of the least digestible variety. Apparently content to pretend Return to Boggy Creek didn’t exist, franchise originator Pierce returned with an “official” sequel, 1985’s The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek, Part II, widely regarded as one of the worst movies of the ’80s. After Pierce died in 2010, a new gang of no-budget filmmakers created the quasi-remake The Legend of Boggy Creek (2011), a home-video production featuring a guy in a gorilla suit.

The Legend of Boggy Creek: LAME
Return to Boggy Creek: SQUARE

The Six Million Dollar Man (1973)

          Surprisingly, the first onscreen appearance of beloved ’70s superhero Steve Austin has more than a hint of darkness. Adapted from Martin Caidin’s novel Cyborg, this TV movie begins with former astronaut Austin (Lee Majors) working as a test pilot. After the experimental plane he’s flying crashes, government operative Oliver Spencer (Darren McGavin) approves the $6 million procedure of replacing Austin’s damaged body parts with lifelike, super-powered bionics. The procedure is executed by Dr. Rudy Wells (Martin Balsam), the bleeding-heart yin to Spencer’s coldly calculating yang. When Austin wakes from surgery and discovers what transpired, he’s enraged at being turned into a freak. Nonetheless, Austin agrees to conduct a covert mission in the Middle East, the purported goal of which is rescuing an American hostage—but in fact, Spencer engineered the mission as a test. He allows Austin to get captured, then waits to see if the “Six Million Dollar Man” can escape without assistance. Suffice to say he does, but that success merely triggers an oh-so-’70s bummer ending: Spencer orders Austin into an artificially induced coma, keeping him on ice until some future mission.

          The Six Million Dollar Man is highly watchable but quite gloomy, and thus a world away from the escapist vibe of the resulting series. After the first Steve Austin movie scored in the ratings on March 7, 1973, a pair of follow-up telefilms were broadcast in the fall of the same year, taking the character in a totally different direction: Wine, Women, and War and The Solid Gold Kidnapping awkwardly shove Austin into James Bond-style adventures. Featuring comic-book plots and a goofy theme song performed by Dusty Springfield, both movies are enjoyable but far too derivative. Once the weekly Six Million Dollar Man series launched in January 1974, Majors’ aw-shucks stoicism and the spectacle of bionic-assisted heroism took center stage, with Austin reworked as a devoted government servant thankful for a second chance at life. Although the first episode introduced the series’ iconic opening sequence (“We can rebuild him,” and so on), the show didn’t reach cruising altitude until later seasons, thanks to recurring tropes like Austin’s mechanized love interest, the Bionic Woman, and a robotic version of Bigfoot (first played by wrestler Andre the Giant). In the context of what followed, the original 1973 pilot movie offers not just the foundation for a fun franchise, but also a window into a more serious version of The Six Million Dollar Man that might have been.

The Six Million Dollar Man: FUNKY