Call it Mansion of the Doomed. Or The Terror of Dr. Chaney. You may also refer to it as Eyes, Eyes of Dr. Chaney, House of Blood or Massacre Mansion. But whatever name you choose to refer to this Charles Band-produced, Michael Pataki-directed movie, you will probably enjoy it. Seriously, it’s packed with sleaze, eyeball-removal, and plenty of your genre favorites.
Dr. Leonard Chaney (Richard Basehart) isn’t your typical megalomaniac; he is a man hollowed out by a singular, obsessive guilt. After causing a car accident that blinded his daughter Nancy (Trish Stewart), he transforms his basement into a makeshift surgical theater and starts cutting up eyeballs so that he can get his girl to see again, starting with her fiancé, Lance Henriksen and moving on to Marilyn Joi, who played Cleopatra Schwartz in The Kentucky Fried Movie.
Gloria Grahame — as Chaney’s wife — and Vic Tayback — playing a cop — are both in this, meaning that this is a Blood and Lace reunion. Pop the cork on that sparkling cider! Celebrate!
Frank Ray Perilli wrote this. He worked with Pataki on the softcore film Cinderella, plus he wrote the movies Dracula’s Dog, Laserblast, End of the World and Alligator.
Come for the stars, stick around for the Stan Winston effects and enjoy the craziness of Basehart as he goes from loving father to kidnapper of children to a man who has an entire group of eyeless victims just meandering around his basement.
This movie is pure scum. It’s even a category 3 video nasty, which means I had to watch it at midnight when I really needed to go to sleep. You can do the same and watch it for free on Tubi.
The Florida-based director William Grefe has brought many swamp-tinged bits of exploitation goodness — or badness — to the screen, including Alligator Alley, The Wild Rebels, The Hooked Generation and many more. As one of the first films to capitalize on the shark craze in the wake of Spielberg’s success, this film’s sympathetic view of sharks as victims is a pretty unique take on the genre.
Marine salvager Sonny Stein (Richard Jaeckel, who pretty much had a one-man war against nature with him battling bats in Chosen Survivors, bears in Grizzly and, well, any and all beasts with a chip on their shoulder in Day of the Animals) is given a medallion that allows him to communicate with sharks. He becomes increasingly disconnected from humanity — easy to do, since everyone in this movie is scum — and uses his sharks to take out those who oppose his beliefs.
One of those people is an incredibly chubby club owner who is using high-frequency sound to train his sharks and kind of pimping out his wife, Karen (Jennifer Bishop, Bigfoot), to get Sonny on their side. Have you ever seen a movie where strippers have been trained to swim with sharks? Who would want to see that? This movie provides the what, if not the why.
Another is a shady shark researcher, Whitney, who murders a shark and her pups for “science.” You will stare, unbelievingly, at the screen as Jaeckel overemotes, clutching a dead baby shark in his mitts. Oh yeah — Harold “Oddjob” Sakata is also in this, playing a character named Pete who ends up on the wrong side of a shark’s teeth while trying to poach Sonny’s friends.
The stunt footage is pretty amazing and even gets a mention before the movie even begins, boasting that no mechanical sharks were used. Other than the weird premise and a few good scenes, you can nap through most of this and not feel bad, though you might wake up when Sonny tells his shark buddy Sammy that he can’t help it if he was born a man.
Before he made The Beast Within and Howling II, Philipe Mora made this movie about Dan Morgan, who roamed the New South Wales bush under a revolving door of aliases, including Billy the Native, Warrigal and Down-the-River Jack.
Dan Morgan didn’t just walk through the New South Wales bush; he haunted it. Operating under a revolving door of aliases like Billy the Native, Warrigal and Down-the-River Jack, he was less a man with a grudge and more a one-man insurgency against the Crown.
By August 1863, the authorities had reached their breaking point after Morgan plugged police magistrate Henry Baylis during a high-stakes shootout. As his rap sheet grew longer and his methods bloodier, the government placed a bounty on his head that eventually ballooned to £1,000, which was a fortune at the time. By March 1865, he was officially declared an outlaw under the Felons Apprehension Act, making him “fair game” for any citizen with a rifle.
His reign of terror ended abruptly a month later at Peechelba Station in Victoria. While Morgan was busy holding up the homestead, a stockman crept through the shadows and shot him in the back.
History has painted Morgan as a Mad Dog, a bloodthirsty, erratic lunatic who probably didn’t need much of a reason to pull the trigger. But here’s the thing that makes for a great movie: despite being a total headcase, he was a wizard in the woods. His bushcraft skills and horsemanship were legendary and he had a network of sympathizers who kept him hidden from the law for two years. He was a folk hero to some and a monster to others, which is exactly why he fits right in here.
Based on the book Morgan: The Bold Bushranger by Margaret Frances Carnegie, the film drips with authenticity. Carnegie actually assisted Mora in scouting the real-life locations where Morgan’s crimes took place, lending the movie a haunting, topographical realism.
The narrative kicks off with Dan Morgan (played with unhinged intensity by Dennis Hopper) witnessing a horrific massacre of Chinese immigrants on the goldfields. This trauma, followed by a brutal prison sentence where he is victimized and broken, serves as the catalyst for his transformation. He doesn’t just decide to rob people; he decides to declare war on a world that offered him no mercy.
If the onscreen performance feels volatile, it’s because the offscreen reality was just as chaotic. Dennis Hopper was at the height of his lost years, fueled by substances and a total commitment to the role.
At teh end of the shoot, Mora claims that Hopper lived up to being, well, Dennis Hopper: “Rode off in costume, poured a bottle of O.P. rum into the real Morgan’s grave in front of my mother Mirka Mora, drank one himself, got arrested and deported the next day, with a blood-alcohol reading that said he should have been clinically dead, according to the judge studying his alcohol tests.”
April 8: Zoo Lover’s Day — You know what that means. Animal attack films!
Mai (Sombat Metanee) was once on the side of the law but is now a mercenary and the leader of a gang that uses rampaging elephants to get their way. But when his pregnant wife Shu (Aranya Namwong) is taken by an even more evil criminal (keep in mind they have stolen her back and forth throughout this movie), he must work with corrupt cop Ching Ming (Yodchai Meksuwan) to rescue her.
This is kind of a Western. While most Westerns give you horse chases, this movie gives you elephants flipping cars like they’re made of cardboard and stomping goons into the dirt. In the most did I really just see that moment of the film, one unlucky stuntman gets slapped across the face with — and there’s no polite way to put this — elephant cock. It’s the kind of practical effect you just don’t get in Hollywood.
I usually associate huts exploding with the Filipino action boom of the 80s, but Thailand was light-years ahead in the blowing up grass-roofed real estate department, if this movie is to be believed.
The version floating around on Tubi is dubbed by a single voice actor who sounds like he’s reading a grocery list while recovering from a mild sedative. He provides the voices for the hero, the villain and possibly the elephants. He was likely dubbing five other features that afternoon and had a bus to catch, so we have to cut him some slack.
Also known as Rumbling the Elephant and Kill for the Truth, this has proved what I have always believed. Elephants make everything better. Whether they are being used as tactical assault vehicles, just hanging out in the background of a shootout or just standing still while a man runs face-first into their veiny pricks, they bring a dignity to the screen that the human actors just can’t match.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film Eastand The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.
April 5: Easter Sunday — Watch something religious.
Faith should be strong enough to withstand doubt, perhaps even strengthened by it. There is a theological belief I’ve heard many times in Christian sermons–”The Bible said it. That settles it”. This definitive statement leaves no room for mistranslations or potential bias as the Scriptures were compiled by human men. While they might be divinely inspired, there should be room for questioning.
Biblical scholar Hugh J. Schonfield took his doubts public in 1965 with his book The Passover Plot. After researching non-biblical historical documents, as well as the Gospels, Schonfield reached the conclusion that Jesus was not the Messiah and instead had determined that he should self-manifest himself as the Son of God in order to be elevated to the status of king during a time when Rome occupied Israel.
Jesus had the lineage as a Son of David (his bloodline could be traced back to the former king of Israel, and it had been prophesied that the Messiah would come from his descendants). Israel was experiencing a time of great persecution by Rome. The people were looking for someone who would conquer the Romans and restore sovereignty to the nation. Why couldn’t it be Him?
According to Schonfield, Jesus shrewdly planned the details of His crucifixion. Knowing that His body would need to be removed from the cross prior to the Sabbath, He only needed to survive a few hours. He also conspired to have a medication given to Him while on the cross to slow his heart rate enough to appear dead to the Romans. Unfortunately, the plan backfired when Jesus’ side was pierced with a spear by a Roman soldier (as was common practice during a crucifixion to ensure the person had indeed perished). Jesus died from that wound and would not be able to assert His place as king while on Earth.
Ten years prior, Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis wrote his own controversial novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. While not basing his story on historical documents, Kazantzakis instead hypothesises Christ’s final temptation–coming down off of the cross and living life as a mortal man. Jesus experiences a normal life, but one that would be ultimately meaningless. He rejects this final temptation and fulfills God’s plan of salvation for humanity.
As one might expect, both of these novels and the films on which they are based became magnets for controversy. The Last Temptation of Christ might be more famous due to being relatively more recent as well as the presence of Martin Scorsese as director. But the cinematic version of The Passover Plot experienced its own boycotts and outrage. Singer Pat Boone went as far as purchasing airtime on syndicated television stations to convince people not to watch The Passover Plot. Did he watch the film before calling for a boycott? The answer to that question is not clear.
I cannot imagine that he actually watched the film and was terribly offended by what transpired. Unfortunately, The Passover Plot is a pretty bland retelling the last days of Christ. Nothing new is really offered despite the promise of blasphemy. We have seen it all before. John baptized Christ in the River Jordan. The Pharisees and Sadducees disturbed by the cult of personality that formed around Christ. Pontius Pilate (here played by a surprisingly subdued Donald Pleasence) complaining about his inability to not offend the Jewish citizens he governs. The brutality of the crucifixion. In fact, if you blink, you might miss the whole conspiracy angle. It is not made clear until the very end, and even then, it is a light vague.
Honestly, the entire production is brought down by Jesus himself, played by Zalman King, an actor I typically find void of charisma. If nothing else, Jesus has to be charismatic in order to attract followers (although there is also a surprising lack of followers shown here–it is typically just Jesus and his disciples. In the Gospels, Jesus is always surrounded by an ever growing crowd of people clamoring for at least a glimpse if not a full out miracle). If you have ever watched Blue Sunshine, you know that King has an intense stare that comprises around 90 percent of his acting chops. Not much else. Maybe he was holding back, saving all of his, how shall I say, vitality for Red Shoe Diaries.
I’m happy to report that The Passover Plot did not rattle my faith. It did not challenge it either though. And that lukewarm result might be the worst outcome. By being neither hot nor cold, the film quickly becomes forgettable. I haven’t watched The Last Temptation of Christ in maybe 20 or 25 years, but scenes from that film are indelibly etched into my mind. My faith was strengthened by the knowing that Jesus could have let that cup pass by him and led an ordinary life. There is nothing in The Passover Plot (at least the cinematic version) that gives me anything with which to grapple, which might be the ultimate unforgivable sin.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film Eastand The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.
April 2: Get Me Another — A sequel or a movie way too similar to another film.
When I first started my exploitation cinematic journey in 2020, I must confess that I just considered the word exploitation to be synonymous with the word sleazy. Now, oftentimes the two go hand in hand. As is the case in this film, The House by the Lake (AKA Death Weekend). But what I learned by watching way too many exploitation films over the last six years is that the term exploitation has many facets with many questions to ask. Who or what is being exploited exactly? The characters, or more specifically, the female characters? The actors themselves? The audience? The genre? As it turns out, the answer to all of these questions can be yes, and they can all be yes at the same tie.
By 1976, the Canadian government had launched their program offering tax credits to investors who produced films in Canada. After producing only three feature films in the country in 1974, Canada hoped to incentivize producers to use Canadian resources in hopes of helping create a national identity through cinema. European countries had long ago established a system that produced films reflecting the values and history of their nation. Why shouldn’t Canada? Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us, these tax shelter years attracted producers who wanted to make low budget films that maximized their profits, and filmmakers who were happy to have a chance to work without the pressure of necessarily delivering the highest quality result.
This subset of films produced in Canada during the late-1970s and early-1980s became affectionately known as Canuxsploitation. The House by the Lake does not simply dip its toe into one sub-genre of exploitation though. It also wants to cash in on the success and/or notoriety of films popularized by Sam Peckinpah’s controversial Straw Dogs and Wes Craven’s infamous The Last House on the Left. Films in which our protagonists are terrorized by a small group of menacing figures who have no moral compass guiding them.
Producers Ivan Reitman (of Ghostbusters fame) and Andrè Link (who would go on to produce the Canuxsploitation horror classics My Bloody Valentineand Happy Birthday to Me) hired home grown William Fruet to direct this tale of a couple whose weekend getaway is instantly marred by a group of men who did not appreciate being shown up by a woman driver. Fruet found instant acclaim with his debut feature, Wedding in White, which won Best Motion Picture at the Canadian Film Awards in 1972. Based on Fruet’s stage play and starring Carol Kane and Donald Pleasence, Wedding in White focuses on the aftermath of a rape that results in a pregnancy.
As it often does in exploitation films, rape (or multiple rapes) plays a role in The House by the Lake. Fashion model Diane (Brenda Vaccaro) is invited to a lakehouse by dentist Harry (Chuck Shamata), which, according to the locals of the area, is Harry’s favorite pastime. And we soon learn why. Harry has a two way mirror set up in the bedroom so he can photograph his lady friends in various stages of undress. Very naughty Harry.
After being outwitted on the road by Diane in the opening scene, the guys in the sportscar, led by Lep (Don Stroud), are hellbent on getting revenge. And basically disposing of anyone in their way. The House by the Lake quickly turns into a home invasion thriller, not necessarily offering anything new to the format, but able to keep this viewer engaged to the very end.
It helps when you hire high quality actors for these roles. At this point in her career, Brenda Vaccaro was a three time Tony Award nominee, an Emmy winner, and had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Once is Not Enough, as well as having a memorable role in Midnight Cowboy. She brings the same skillset to her role as Diane here. She’s not slumming it in some cheap exploitation picture. She’s giving it all she’s got. And Don Stroud is definitely no low rent David Hess. He can play unhinged as well as anybody. If you have any doubt, just watch The Divine Enforcer.
William Fruet would go on to have a very successful career, mainly as the director of several episodes of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series. But he also delivered some very unique and singular horror films of the 1980s, including Funeral Home, Trapped (speaking of unhinged, this one stars Henry Silva in a performance that is over-the-top even by his standards), Spasms(one of the all time great horror posters), Killer Party (perfect for this time of year), and his final feature film, Blue Monkey (which has nothing to do with monkeys, blue or otherwise).
While The House by the Lake might not reach the heights of other cash-in films like Late Night Trains, I Spit on Your Grave, or House at the Edge of the Park, it is a very watchable entry in the sub-genre that might stick around in my mind longer than I initially anticipate.
Because this film acts as a massive clip show, it required a small army of producers to clear the rights and wrangle the reels. Here is the expanded roster of the players behind the curtain and the madness they put on screen. The credits for Beyond Belief read like a “Who’s Who” of independent hustle:
Alan Baker: Wearing two hats as both producer and director, Baker had the unenviable task of editing these disparate paranormal threads into a cohesive (and creepy) 90-minute experience.
Hal Lipman: Known almost exclusively for NFL documentaries, Lipman is the true wildcard here. Seeing his name next to automatic writing and alien abductions is the cinematic equivalent of a linebacker doing a tarot reading.
Malcolm Pierce Rosenberg and David S. Wiggins: One and done producers.
Charles E. Sellier Jr.: Before the internet told you what to watch, Sellier was out there four-walling. For the uninitiated: he’d rent out the whole theater, keep 100% of the ticket sales and bypass the studio middleman. According to his IMDb bio, he had a 52% success rate in the domestic market. Compare that to the big Hollywood studios, which were lucky to break even on one out of every seven movies. That’s because Sellier didn’t guess; he tested. He marketed movies like they were bars of soap, pre-testing everything to make sure the audience was already hooked before the first frame even rolled. Even Orson Welles told the guy, “Young man, you are light-years ahead of the rest of the industry.” And he didn’t just stop at theaters. He took his “what does the audience actually want?” data to NBC and made The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. In 1981, Variety listed the top independent champs, and Sellier’s name was all over it with movies like In Search of Noah’s Ark, The Boogens and Hangar 18. Let me pile on some more facts: Sellier wasn’t just a producer; he was a best-selling author. He spent 22 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list with The Lincoln Conspiracy. Whether he was investigating the Bible or hunting for Bigfoot, the guy knew how to tell stories people needed to see through his Sunn Classics company.
You can tell this isn’t a Sunn movie because it’s hosted by Richard Mathews, not Brad Crandall. But you do get to learn about telepathy, hypnotic regression and past lives (that would be the Death Is Not the End footage), psychokinesis, ghosts (always ghosts), UFOs and alien abductions, automatic writing, and so much more.
The film kicks off with the legendary Cleve Backster, a polygraph expert who claimed that plants and even yogurt have feelings. You get to see distressed yogurt reacting to remote stimuli under an EEG. From there, it jumps to Sister M. Justa Smith, a nun and biologist, proving that faith healers can actually repair damaged enzymes in a lab setting.
One of the most wince-inducing segments features Jack Schwarz, a man who claimed total control over his involuntary systems. He pushes a 5-inch sailmaker’s needle through his bicep on camera, pulls it out, and then, through sheer non-attachment, stops the bleeding instantly.
Then, a group of researchers in Toronto creates a ghost. They invented a fictional 17th-century aristocrat named Philip, gave him a fake backstory, and held a seance. To their shock, the fictional Philip started rapping on tables and sliding furniture across the room. Is this any stranger than the story of Matthew Manning, a British teenager whose home was plagued by teleporting objects and automatic writing? You’ll be amazed to see the walls of his room covered in hundreds of signatures from spirits, including one from a man named Robert Webb, who supposedly lived in the house in 1733.
This wouldn’t be a 70s weirdness documentary without aliens. Get ready for the harrowing testimony of Charles Hickson, the Mississippi shipyard worker who claims he was kidnapped by creatures with lobster-claw hands in 1973. This is bolstered by interviews with nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman and astronaut James McDivitt, who recounts his own unidentified sighting during the Gemini 4 mission.
Beyond Belief is a time capsule of an era where science and the supernatural were having a very public, very weird first date. They broke up soon after.
Lager SSadis Kastrat Kommandantur isn’t the kind of movie you put on for your mom, unless your mom is Eva Braun.
Blame director Sergio Garrone, whose career went from Westerns like If You Want to Live… Shoot! and Django the Bastard to the Kinski giallo/mad scientist/krimi movies The Hand That Feeds theDead and Lover of the Monster, and a very late in the game — 1981! — giallo starring Corinne Clery and George Lazenby, L’ultimo harem.
But most people will remember him for his two Nazi movies. He made this at the same time as SS Lager 5: L’inferno delle donne AKA SS Camp: Women’s Hell, and they share many of the same shots. Same idea, I guess, as the war is almost over, but this camp wants to perfect the master race before time runs out.
How rough does it get? Even the ads for this movie started the UK video nasty era.
Helmut (Mircha Carven) is, I guess, our hero. He’d rather read than pal around with his fellow SS officers and soon falls for Mirelle (Paola Corazzi, who really ends up in the most horrific of Italian exploitation and remains gorgeous no matter what) while everyone else works on mating women with the officers to try and fix Col. Von Kleiben’s (Giorgio Cerioni) decimated balls, I kid you not. Yes, we see a flashback where a Jewish woman once bit them clean off. How do you fix a problem like Von Kleiben’s balls?
Matilde Dall’Aglio, who was one of the people watching the snuff movie in Emanuelle In America, is in this, along with Agnes Kalpagos (not her first or last Nazi movie), Mara Carisi (who is in the somewhat classier Salon Kitty), Inga Alexandrova, Giovanna Mainardi and Patrizia Melega, who goes for it as the sapphic doctor in charge of most of this.
Do you like long surgery scenes? How about shocking people in electric chairs until they piss themselves? Want an unhappy ending? This has all of that and more, a movie that is like Salo but has no redeeming social commentary, just people doing a woman in prison movie with fascist uniforms. Unlike WIP films, this has women boiled alive and also frozen, so if you’re seeking that, good news. This will deliver.
The 88 Films release of this film has a new 4K remaster from the original negative. It looks great, and watching blood-boiling and electric-chair-pissing in ultra-high definition is an experience that will make even a seasoned grindhouse veteran blink. Extras include audio commentary by Italian cinema experts Eugenio Ercolani and Nanni Cobretti; interviews with Sergio Garrone, Pierpaolo De Sanctis, Eugenio Alabiso and Maurizio Centini; there’s also the Italian opening and closing titles; a trailer; a reversible sleeve with censored and uncensored art and a book with articles by Tim Murray and Rachael Nesbit. You can get this from MVD in UHD and Blu-ray formats.
Instead of getting a child who loved playing football or one who was devoted to scholarship, they got a chubby kid who wanted to be a stuntman and who was obsessed with the Loch Ness Monster.
I wish my dad were around so I could apologize every day.
Director Richard Martin also directed King Monster, Jaws of Death, UFO Journals, UFO Syndrome and The Lost City of Atlantis. His IMDb bio states that “Richard Martin has been an active member of the entertainment industry for over thirty-five years as a motion picture and television executive. Serving as Chief Executive Officer for Transworld Films and Cinema Arts, he was responsible for the development and production of over a dozen major theatrical releases. Richard helped pioneer the revolutionary movement of “Four Walling,” a system of combining film production, marketing, distribution and theater leasing.
Someone alert Sunn Classics. Kroger Babb, too.
Like most of his paranormal films, this is narrated by Arthur Franz, who appeared in Invaders from Mars, Monster on the Campus, The Atomic Submarineand more. This goes from the stuff you expected, like you know, the Loch Ness Monster, before the focus goes all over the place, and we learn about fish fossils and lizards. We also see a jet boat crash and see Boleskine, the home of Crowley, which was once owned by Jimmy Page.
Will we also watch a priest try to exorcise Loch Ness? Yes, we will. There’s also a shark, so every exploitation topic in 1976 is covered. I’m surprised this doesn’t have inserts.
Directed by Ed Ragozzino and written by Ed Hawkins and Ronald D. Olson, this is a pseudo-documentary, which, according to Wikipedia, is a movie that uses “documentary camera techniques but with fabricated sets, actors, or situations, and it may use digital effects to alter the filmed scene or even create a wholly synthetic scene.”
The North American Wildlife Research may not exist, but Chuck (George Lauris) from there is the narrator. He tells us all about the actual historical evidence of Bigfoot, including the Patterson–Gimlin film. His group is using computers to find the most likely place — in northern British Columbia — to see an undisturbed Bigfoot. If they can find it, they’ll get the money they need to do more research.
The group that goes to find the Sasquatch has Chuck, along with Native American guide Techka Blackhawk (Joel Morello), explorer Josh Bigsby (Ken Kienzle), reporter Bob Vernon (Lou Salerni), anthropologist Dr. Paul Markham (William Emmons), animal handler Hank Parshall (Steve Boergadine) and even a cook, Barney Snipe (Jim Bradford).
Following the feel of so many Bigfoot movies that came before and would come after, the group’s adventures are interspersed with other Bigfoot stories and tales are told around a campfire. Of course, we never see Bigfoot — well, stay tuned — but we do see rocks thrown and shadowy invasions into the camp, which, Aliens-style, are outfitted with motion trackers that, by the end, everyone thinks have been smashed by multiple Sasquatches. Once the crew leaves, there he or she is. There’s Bigfoot, in the shadows, all fuzzy. Congratulations, the movie is over.
The film was produced by Ronald Olson, a genuine Bigfoot researcher who founded the Eugene, Oregon-based North American Wildlife Research Company. Olson’s background gave the film a layer of authenticity that resonated with fans of the unexplained. I laughed as I wrote that, by the way. His father also owned American National Enterprises, a company well-versed in producing nature documentaries.
When this film played in theaters, there was merch! You could order a postcard featuring a picture of Bigfoot from the famous Patterson-Gimlin film, as well as a 7-inch record of the film’s soundtrack. It had the songs “High In The Mountains,” “Bigfoot Theme,” “Cougar Attack,” “The Pack Train,” and “Barney’s Theme.”
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