Saturday, May 24, 2008

The Horror!? 74: The Legend of Bigfoot (1976)

This bills itself as a documentary about the Bigfoot "expert" Ivan Marx, containing real life footage of the big B. Actually it is a lot of (surprisingly sharp) animal stock footage, permanent and from minute to minute more paranoid and absurd sounding crackpot raving and a little footage (unsurprisingly out of focus) of people in Bigfoot suits. I don't know if Marx has a place in the history of cryptozoology, and if he has, what it might be, but since I know that not everyone interested in the possibility of the survival of previously unknown species is an idiot, I have the hope he is seen as a fraud at worst and a crackpot at best.
The film itself drifts between moments of utter boredom (the bizarrely edited animal footage) and hilarity (Ivan Marx and the Indian rituals, see Ivan invent his "theory" about the Bigfoot as a migratory animal - based on, um, nothing).
In case you want to take it a little more seriously, you could read it as the case study of a man who quickly glides from something resembling sanity into full grown delusions. But honestly? I think this interpretation would make it sound much more interesting than it deserves.

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