June 27: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space!

In June 1994, George Romero came to Florida’s Valencia College to film a movie he’d wanted to make for some time—or at least part of it.

Working with students at the school, he shot a few minutes of Jacaranda Joe, a movie that was called The Footage in the 1970s. Pre-found footage mania, Romero wondered if a documentary could scare audiences. This would be at some point between The Crazies and Martin, so 1973-1978, during the time that Romero was working on O.J. Simpson: Juice On the Loose and three episodes of the TV series The Winners on Pittsburgh sports heroes Willie Stargell, Bruno Sammartino and Franco Harris.

Keep that sports hero part in your head for a bit.

In all three scripts that were written — major credit due to the University of Pittsburgh Horror Studies website for so many references — a show called Outdoorsman USA brings on major stars and athletes on authentic hunting and fishing trips that are captured raw and shared with the TV audience. There were two different versions —  the “Franco Version” has the beneficiary of Franco’s Italian Army and the man who made the Immaculate Reception playing star quarterback Johnny Wilson, who is trying to leave the NFL behind while the other version has Johnny Shaw, “a star NFL quarterback who is just beginning a career as a country and western recording artist,” who has to be Terry Bradshaw — of who the hero would be, but the action is similar. Somehow, someone kidnaps a baby sasquatch, and the family starts to chase the humans, kind of like Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues, but many years before.

Jacaranda Joe was written by Romero knowing that he would be filming for just ten days with young filmmakers. Valencia had a great class, obviously, as Robert Wise did the same class the year before. In this version, there is a skunk ape in the woods that is found by the crew of Remington, a TV talk show very much like the Geraldo and Sally Jessy Raphael-type shows — Sally Jessy is even mentioned — of the day.

This played on April 10, 2022, thanks to the University of Pittsburgh. Because all things online are captured, it’s in the Internet Archive. There’s not much more than a few scenes, but as you can imagine, it’s exciting to see a new George Romero film. It was also the first movie that the director made entirely outside of Pittsburgh, but not the last.