| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Fantasy |
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THE CAPTURE OF BIGFOOT
Rating: 
USA. 1979.
Director/Producer – Bill Rebane, Screenplay – Bill Rebane & Ingrid Neumeyer, Photography – Ito & Bela St Jon, Special Effects – Gary Zeller, Makeup – Vince Prentice & Tom Schwartz, Production Design – Will McCrow. Production Company – Studio Film Corp.
Cast:
Stafford Morgan (Dave Garrett), Richard Kennedy (Harvey Olsen), George ‘Buck’ Flower (Jake Turner), Wally Flaherty (Sheriff Cooper), Katherine Hopkins (Karen), Otis Young (Jason), John Goff (Burt), John Eimerman (Jimmy), Janus Raudkivi (Bigfoot), Randolph Rebane (Little Bigfoot)
Plot: A trapper stumbles into town with a story about how his partner was killed by Bigfoot. Sawmill owner Harvey Olsen decides he wants Bigfoot captured at all costs and offers $10,000 to trappers if they can. But local game ranger Dave Garrett learns that the Bigfoot used to live in peace until upset by a geological expedition and sets out to protect the creature from Olsen’s intended exploitation.
1970s low-budget cinema managed to get considerable mileage out of the Bigfoot legend with the likes of Bigfoot (1971), The Curse of Bigfoot (1972), The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), Shriek of the Mutilated (1974), Manbeast! Myth or Monster? (1975), The Mysterious Monsters (1975), Creature from Black Lake (1976), In Search of Bigfoot (1976), Sasquatch (1976), Snowbeast (1977), Screams of a Winter Night (1979) and Night of the Demon (1980). Some of the films made quite a packet at the box-office, although it wasn’t until Harry and the Hendersons (1987) that any of the A-budget producers saw fit to take up the theme. All the films played the Bigfoot story out with sensationalistic verve, with some of them even trying to convince audiences they weren’t works of fiction but documentaries. And in all cases the quality of the films was cheap and dull.
From the opening moments with some dreadfully insipid scenes of a team of huskies romping through the woods, The Capture of Bigfoot sets in with the feel of a trip to the dentist – as something to be endured, as opposed to enjoyed. The whole exercise is tediously dull – from the flat, banal visual style, to the wholly uninvolving dramatics, to the lifeless songs that fill the soundtrack, to the vague attempts at comic relief. The dull script is yet another simplistic morality tale – all about the innocent Bigfoot being exploited by corrupt businesspeople who get their comeuppance in the end. There is an intriguingly novel turn when the plot tries to tie in Sasquatch to Indian legend and magic, but this gets no development. The most convincing part of the film is the Bigfeet themselves, which the makeup team have given surprisingly convincing facial features – although the full size Bigfeet do not convince as being anything more than people in fur suits.
Director Bill Rebane has a reputation for making some genuinely awful films. All of his other works fall within the sf and horror genre. His other films are:– Monster-a-Go-Go (1965), Invasion from Inner Earth (1974), the legendary The Giant Spider Invasion (1975), Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake (1975), The Alpha Incident (1978), The Game (1982), The Demons of Ludlow (1983) and Blood Harvest (1987).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1993
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