Waste not, want not. I place some stock in old sayings. With the way things are going, prices are sure to rise and so saving a penny or two may be wise. So I turned back to my boxed set of “The Beast” for my horror fix. As I’ve explained before, I bought this DVD set before streaming was a thing, and I was feeling nostalgic for Zontar: the Thing from Venus. Being a fan of bad movies, it was worth every cent. The set is actually (mostly) themed around Bigfoot. I’ve talked about a few of these movies before, and trying to be frugal, I’ve determined to watch the whole set, no matter the cost. Besides, there’s an aesthetic to bad movies. The Capture of Bigfoot, no doubt, is a bad movie. Knowing this before I slipped the disc in, I have no business acting outraged at the poor acting, directing, writing, or any cinematic sins. Except one: a horror movie can’t be boring. And Capture is b-o-r-i-n-g. If you like movies about people slogging through knee-deep snow, this may be for you.
What really amazes me is the talent the compilers of such collections have at locating truly obscure bad films. Now, I have a soft spot for 1970s horror. Nostalgia carried me through, floating on those seventies’ vibes. The clothing, especially. And more particularly, the winter coats. Although set and filmed in Wisconsin, the winter coats the kids wear in this movie are just like those everybody was wearing in Pennsylvania at the time. And yes, I trudged through knee-deep snow my fair share of times. That part just opened the flood gates of memory. So, the story goes like this…
An evil businessman (I lost track of how many people he killed, or tried to), wants to capture Bigfoot (shown early, in winter white) to put the town on the map. Paying stooges to go get the beast, he finally builds an elaborate trap that succeeds. The local game warden, with his girlfriend/wife and her little brother, decide the creature isn’t evil. Using Batman-style tying skills, bad guy’s henchmen assure that most of his enemies escape to trudge through the snow some more. A mysterious Indian character tells the game warden that the creature must be set free, which it is. The evil businessman dies in a fire inside his wicked mine where he’s keeping the beast. In the end, two families—the warden and the Bigfoot—pay mutual respect. I do wonder about the mentality of someone making a movie like this. But then, some forty years later, here I am writing about it. Win-win.