BIGFOOT WEEK: Curse of Bigfoot (1975)

This movie lies to you from the very moment it begins. First off, it’s barely a movie, clicking in around 59 minutes. And when you get to the real heart of the movie, it’s not even about Bigfoot! It’s really about a mummy coming back from the dead.

A high school biology class — filled with stoners — spends much of the opening of the movie discussing cryptozoological creatures like the griffin. What school is this? Who approved this lesson plan? Nonetheless, this class is interrupted by a good friend of their teacher, who frighteningly warns that he took his class to search for Bigfoot 15 years ago, a field trip where parents bemoaned signing the permission slips, as nearly everyone involved ended up in mental institution.

That’s when we cut to footage of a completely different movie — a student film made in 1958 called Teenagers Battle the Thing — where that class travels to Native American burial ground where a mummy attacks the kids.

This is a movie that redefines the phrase bad movie. It has it all — B roll travelogue footage, amateurish acting from two different decades, day for night footage that’s explained away by the moon being so bright and a climax that explains that the only way to stop Bigfoot is to set him on fire. Even better, the print I watched was completely blobbed out and orange. This is not a movie that demands a blu ray or 4K transfer. It belongs beaten up and hard to watch.

You can check this out for free at the Internet Archive.