Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot

Plot synopsis:
The film begins in the forest with shots of local wildlife, agitated and on alert, but the source is not seen on screen. The camera then switches to a first person view, hinting at an unseen presence and the scene culminates with the view of a large human-like creature's reflection at water's edge while a haunting wail echos through the forest. Opening credits are next, followed by a review of recent Bigfoot stories via newspaper clippings and narration. Next up is the well-known Patterson–Gimlin film, shot by Roger Patterson on October 20, 1967, in Bluff Creek, CA which shows an ape-like creature walking along a dry creek bed. The narrator goes on to explain that by running statistical data through modern computers, a site in British Columbia has been determined as the most likely spot for a population of Sasquatch to live undisturbed. An expedition is mounted, hoping to verify the creature's existence and secure funding for future research into the phenomenon.
The seven man team is composed of Native American guide Techka Blackhawk, seasoned wilderness explorer Josh Bigsby, wise-cracking reporter Bob Vernon, anthropologist Dr. Paul Markham, cook Barney Snipe, animal handler Hank Parshall and team leader Chuck Evans who also narrates the film. The team is on horseback and brings tracking dogs to aid in the hunt.
As the film progresses, tales of Sasquatch encounters by earlier explorers are interwoven with the current expedition's adventure and told as campfire stories. These scenes are recreated by uncredited cast members and include the Ape Canyon incident in which miners are attacked while sleeping in their cabin and an encounter by early pioneer explorers Bauman and Jessup. Initially the expedition takes on the feel of a nature trek, but as we reach a scene where the team is traversing a hillside it takes on a more ominous feel. As rocks begin tumbling down towards them from above, Techka stops the caravan in time to avoid injuries but the cause of the rockslide is unknown. From this point on the film becomes more focused on its intended subject, the search for Bigfoot. After this incident the team feels they're being watched by 'someone or something' and everyone takes turns guarding the camp at night. One evening a bear attacks while they sleep and everyone is shaken up but none are seriously injured. On a subsequent evening the camp is once again attacked, but this time the lookout was able to scare off the attacker(s) with gunshots. The following day they find large footprints in the areas surrounding the camp and employ the tracking dogs. While some team members take plaster molds of the tracks, Hank and his dogs follow a scent to the base of a sheer rock wall but cannot continue due to the difficult terrain.
As the expedition nears their intended destination, they discover tall trees snapped in half well above human reach. Techka tells them it is a sign the Sasquatch use to mark their territory and upon entering the valley, the team finds more footprints and sets up camp. They install a tripwire system around the perimeter and post lookouts. The team notes that the forest is eerily quiet that evening and well after dark, the inevitable happens. Multiple sensors begin to light up, the camp is attacked and we hear the same haunting wail as earlier. As the lookouts scramble for a clear shot with their tranquilizer guns, large boulders and branches are thrown in from multiple directions. Paul Markham is injured by one of the rocks and one of the shadowy creatures actually invades the camp and destroys most of the surveillance equipment. The attackers are eventually scared off and when daylight comes the team gets a good look at the devastation. There are many footprints around the camp but no signs of a dead or wounded Sasquatch. By now summer is almost over and winter storms are looming so the team packs up and begins their long trek back to civilization. In the final scene the camera pans out to a wide shot of the team departing, showcasing a picturesque view of the valley and its surrounding mountains. During the closing credits we see a large human-like silhouette, the same one seen in promotional movie posters, looking down at the camera from a hilltop as it slowly turns and walks away.

Tags: flashback

Review:
I watched it again and thought it was a masterpiece (as bigfoot movies go that is).
It is by far and away the best bigfoot movie ever made and should be enjoyed by anyone who has interest in this centuries old mystery.
In style, the movie is similar to Legend of Boggy Creek: low budget, creepy atmosphere, and the monsters are never directly shown.
But there are stunning views of the Pacific Northwest wilderness and the mountain lion attack is well done considering the lack of special effects.In truth, there are very few chills and thrills even with strange, compelling music that unfailingly announces the imminent appearance of the Hairy One..
"Sasquatch" is phenomenal, if only for its breathtaking Pacific Northwest scenery, and the amazing job the director, Ed Ragozzino, did with capturing wildlife footage.Best of all, though, is that this movie, while hokey in parts, really is suspenseful, earnest and credulous -- just like any movie about the paranormal ought to be.Sadly, this thing isn't available on VHS, but I was able to get a TV dub from an airing on a Los Angeles TV station (Some of the ads -- lawyers offering to help people beat their DWIs, for instance -- are a gas, as well.).
The actual campiness of the actors fits the times ( 1970's ) - no "professional" crap - just dudes out looking for Bigfoot - period!
The only other Bigfoot movie that I saw that was scarier, at times, was The Creature From Black Lake.
It plays up on the scary idea of hairy giants running rampant in the woods yet it looks for all the world like a old national geographic documentary.And despite noticing lots of obvious flaws through my considerably older eyes, I still had great fun watching it again.Find a copy, make some popcorn, and turn off the lights.........
I saw this film back in Fairmont West Virginia in 1979 as a ten year old who had a typical little kid's fascination with Bigfoot.
This film follows a fictional expedition into the woods to find this legendary creature and put a homing device on its neck so they can track its habitat (there is actually a law on the books providing a heavy fine and a jail term to anyone who kills a Sasquatch believe it or not!).
The film opens with beautiful shots of the woods, the best you will ever see outside those wonderful National Geographic specials) THEN!
This is the Holy Grail of Bigfoot films, the best I have ever seen next to Sunn Classic's The Mysterious Monsters.
The best parts of the film is where they go over actual historical sighting of Bigfoot.
The final scene in the film where they set up the trip wires and the Sasquatch attack is very well done even while the Bigfoot costumes look more like Chewbacca from Star Wars.
This is the best bigfoot movie ever made.
This is the best bigfoot movie ever made.
This is the best bigfoot movie ever made.
I remember within the first half hour of the movie I seen: These people on horse back with other horses packed ventured into the mountains in search of "Bigfoot." On their trek into the mountains they were attacked by a cougar, which was shot.
Interesting docudrama of an expedition deep into the virgin wilderness of British Columbia beyond, what the local Indians call, the Peckatoe River into the fabled and mysterious Valley of the Bigfoot.
I don't really know for sure if the movie is based on real events but what is undoubtedly the highlight of the docudrama "Sasquatch the legend of Bigfoot"has to be the showing of what is probably the most graphic and convincing piece of evidence of Bigfoots or Sasquatchs existence.
The October 20, 1967 Roger Patterson 16mm home-movie of a Bigfoot walking along the heavily wooded Bluff Creek Valley in Northern California that has never been dis-proved to be anything other then what's it's said to be: an authentic flesh and blood Sasquatch.Since Paterson's death in 1972 a man named Bob Heironimus has come forwarded saying that it was him in a gorilla suit, that Patterson supposedly paid for, not a so-called Sasquatch that's really in that famous movie, to the delight of the many skeptics who for years have been unable to disprove that the film is a fake.
Heironimus did put on a gorilla suit in his attempt to show how he faked the distinct and very difficult if not impossible walk,that even the best Hollywood stunt-men couldn't duplicate, that the Sasquacth had in the film but it doesn't faintly correspond to the Patterson movie.
There's no explanation from him, as well as the vast army of anti-Bigfoot skeptics, at all in how he could have made a number of footprints that had to have been made by someone weighing at least 800 pounds which were discovered at the sight just after the Patterson movie was filmed?The movie "Sasquatch: legend of Bigfoot" has a group of people involved in finding and if possible capturing a Bgfoot, or Sasquatch, lead by Chuck Evens and his Indian guide Techka Blackhawk.
The expedition suffers a number of near-fatal attacks by mountain lions or pumas and grizzly bears, as well as running into a number of annoying and dangerous mosquito infestations, along the way to reach what is called by the native Indians the Meadow of the Three Valleys, Bigfoot Country.
The Bigfoots attack on the camp was so effective that the expeditionary team that had marksmen assigned to it didn't even have a chance to bring down even one of them with either a tranquilizer gun or rifle with live ammunition.Were told at the end of the movie that there will be other expeditionary teams sent into the uncharted wilderness beyond the Peckatoe River in the years to come to capture and bring back, dead or alive, a Bigfoot.
Now with almost 30 years having gone by since the movie was made, in 1977, there's still no news of a Bigfoot being either captured alive or shot and killed by any of the latter groups of Bigfoot hunters who traveled into the wilds of British Columbia in order to find one.Interesting movie that has recently been re-released on DVD with a number of new and updated features, that includes the two Bigfoot-like movies "Snowbeast" and "The Snow Creature".
The film will more then ever keep the controversy alive of the existence of a gigantic man-like, 10 foot tall 1,000 pound, humanoid or gorilla being on the loose in the dense and uncharted forests in the great American and Canadian North-West..
Again, for a lower budget attempt, the music was highly effective, and contained "actual recordings" of a Bigfoot howl....recordings which were also used in the movie itself.
After all, this movie was purported to be made by actual Bigfoot investigators and enthusiasts (at least that's what they said when I bought all their goodies!) designed to raise money for future expeditions.
If you're a bigfoot enthusiast, do yourself a favor and locate this video online somewhere, as there are so few quality theatrical treatments of Sasquatch (the aforementioned Boggy Creek, the spooky Creature from Black Lake, and Those Mysterious Monsters being the better ones)..
I saw this film at my local movie house when I was a little kid.
Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1977) is now on DVD !.
The print isn't great but the film always looks like it was shot on a Fisher Price camera.
Just look for this collection: Sasquatch Horror Collection Triple Feature.Also with Snowbeast (1977) and The Snow Creature (1954).A great collection!
A must have for Bigfoot geeks.I give this a 10 only because it's one of the best cheesy, AWFUL movies ever made on Bigfoot!Enjoy!.
I saw this as an 8 yr old back in 1978 as part of a double feature with the Harrison Ford/Carl Weather's WWII flick "Force 10 from Navarone."  I would discover later on that "Force 10" was considered by many critics to be one of the worst movies of 1978, but after watching it in tandem with "Sasquatch" I thought it was so much better than "Sasquatch." The thing is I was really excited about seeing "Sasquatch."  It was the MAIN reason why my siblings and cousins went to the movies that day.
And when they find some bent over trees, they quickly point out that these are the borders of "bigfoot territory."The thing I remember the most about this movie was that it was boring.
The vast majority of this movie is like a poorly funded National Geographic special- lots of pretty shots of the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.
These scenes are so phoney looking that even the most gullible child will be rolling his eyes at them.The ONLY good thing about this movie are the retellings of the legends of bigfoot.
The famous attack on a miners' cabin in Ape Canyon by several bigfoots is also recreated.
Reading about it as a kid, been fascinated as a kid, the legendary creature known as the Sasquatch aka "Bigfoot" has been on my mind for the longest of times.
I lived near a lot of deep woods so right after the movie finished...off I'd go into the wilderness to try and find a Bigfoot.....
After I ordered this movie online I watched it in the exact house I grew up in (my parents house) in the exact room and the television is in the exact part of the room as it was back then (different t.v. though)and I had the experience of real time travel...
I like the fact that you can still see the grains in the film even though it is on DVD....that was the best part to me...seeing it exactly as you saw it as a child.
I now own both movies and plan on showing my children in years to come so they can develop a love for the wilderness and it's mysteries like I did.
"Sasquatch, the Legend of Bigoot" (1978) is a quasi-documentary about a fake Bigfoot expedition deep in the wilderness of British Columbia, although it was filmed entirely in Oregon (Deshutes National Forest and Willamette National Forest).
I've heard it referred to as 'the Holy Grail of Bigfoot films' and I can see why since most of the notables of the Bigfoot mythos are detailed, including the Roger Patterson footage and the 1924 Ape Canyon, WA, incident where a handful of miners were harassed most of the night by Bigfeet throwing rocks at their cabin and pounding on the walls.
It is a great pseudo documentary of the Bigfoot mystery.
A group of researchers, along with an old mountain man, an Indian and a reporter trek deep into the wilderness of Great Britain beyond the Peckatoe river in search of a legend.
Though fiction, the movie has several real factual accounts of bigfoot encounters.
This Monkey Kung fu was so special because it was about the mythical creature the Sasquatch, Bigfoot or Yeti.
Since i started with the Kung Fu i was searching more and more information about the Sasquatch and the i came to this movie.It is great mystical and tells the truth in my opinion, a very good quality movie.Sincerely YoursDouwe geluk.
Sasquatch The Legend of Bigfoot.
Sasquatch The Legend of Bigfoot.
Docudrama (NOT a documentary) of fictitious Bigfoot expedition.
Helens, a still from which is used in multiple web articles on the possible re-discovery of the site in recent years.FYI, the Code Red blu-ray of this movie is a double bill with the classic Encounters with the Unknown, and a bonus is the intro shown in theaters to promote the now defunct "North American Wildlife Research" bigfoot group in Eugene Oregon.
it is way ahead of its time and it held my interest even in 2008.the couger attack is well taken considering the lack of special effects and the time the movie was madethe amount of bigfoot shown if just right ...
There is a bigfoot attack which is completely stupid; supposedly our friend Sasquatch is throwing rocks down on the campers from above while they fire their rifles back at him.
Unfortunately, in total those four things might have composed about 20 minutes, whereas the movie as a whole is slightly over an hour and a half.It's the fictional story (done in a documentary style) of an expedition to a remote area of northern British Columbia, to the suspected home range of the sasquatch.
A computer had targeted this area based on sightings and - in one of the more amusing scenes in the movie - the computer also used "eyewitness sightings" to draw a picture of a sasquatch that looked exactly like the "creature" of the Patterson video!
Interspersed among the long stretches of boredom are some nice wildlife shots (although one suspects that canned footage was used, or perhaps even captive animals performing as wild animals) and there are some spectacular scenery shots, except that the scenery isn't of northern British Columbia, it's from national parks in Oregon.I did appreciate that we were never given a real picture of the sasquatch, so we didn't have to deal with the bad makeup that would have been part of this.
This is the greatest Bigfoot film ever made.
Some of the acting is horrible and the stunts are tacky, but what the hell, this one is great if you want focus on the north American Bigfoot creature and not the Yeti.
I was a child when this movie came out, it scared me half to death but at the same time I loved it.
The Best Movie About Big Foot I Have Ever Seen.
I liked it enough that I thought it was worth adding to my video collection.Hopefully, one of these days, someone will be able to make a movie about the beast that was as good as this one, but until then, I'll have my memories..
My favorite part of the movie is when the bigfoot first invades their camp.
You do not have to have be a bigfoot enthusiast to enjoy this film.
Following in the oversized footsteps of The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), this faux documentary charts the progress of a team of men who set out to find irrefutable proof of the sasquatch, the ape-man creature of Indian legend.Leader of the expedition is Chuck Evans (George Lauris), whose amazing computer technology has not only identified the area most likely to be home to the Sasquatch - Northern British Columbia - but has also drawn a wonderfully detailed image of the 10 foot tall, hairy creature, just in case they don't recognise it when they see it.
Together with anthropologist Paul Markham (William Emmons), Idaho rancher Hank Parshall (Steve Boergadine), mountain man Josh Bigsby (Ken Kenzle), Indian scout Techka Blackhawk (Joel Morello), sceptic reporter Bob Vernon (Lou Salerni) and comedy relief cook Barney Snipe (Jim Bradford), Chuck heads out on horseback for a three hundred mile trek to Bigfoot country.With the majority of the running time dedicated to the team's arduous journey through the stunning BC landscape, rather than any actual encounter with the creature, and with the earnest narration that accompanies the action, Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot feels more like a National Geographic wildlife documentary than a horror movie.
Fortunately, a couple of dramatised accounts of early attacks by sasquatch on prospectors and trappers help to break up the tedium (the vicious creatures prowling around a cabin at night is the film's highlight), while the team's final encounter with the howling sasquatch is just about worth the wait: atmospheric and effectively scary, despite the unconvincing bigfoot costumes..
Sasquatch the Legend of Bigfoot (1977) ** (out of 4) Fairly entertaining film has an expedition going out in search of the legendary Bigfoot.
There's really not any action until the end of the film, which certainly hurts the film but the interesting thing is that the entire movie is told with narration in a documentary style.
The best thing about the film is its beautiful locations, which includes plenty of footage of the wildlife..
It was actually the first film I ever saw at a cinema, and I was put off going for years to come.
;) It has a bit of everything...great wildlife shots, good story-telling mixing fact and fiction, personalities of all kinds, a creepy "monster", catchy music, a few heart-stopping scenes...
From what I gather,this was based on an actual expedition that the producer of the film,Ron Olsen,and bigfoot legends Peter Byrne,Grover Krantz and a few other noted bigfoot researchers went on sometime in the late 60's or early 70's.
I think if one were to fund another expedition like this one,with the participants spending months in the wilderness of Northwest America,they could possibly find some evidence one way or another on whether or not the sasquatch still are roaming the wild..
SASQUATCH is one of many Bigfoot exploitation movies that were made to cash-in on a mini-trend in the 1970s.
This one, like many of the others, features a group of hunters who decide to go and capture - or preferably shoot - themselves a real-life Sasquatch, thus proving its existence once and for all.
This really is not a film but rather an exercise in seeing just how long the viewer can sit there watching a group of men travel by foot, horse, pack horse, etc...
And there are people calling this the greatest Bigfoot movie ever made?
Fiction film (it lists as based on a story though it does have a "documented by" credit) about a group of scientists going into the wilds of Canada to try and find a Bigfoot.(They want to capture one and then attach a tracking device).
While this movie doesn't score points for either restraint or subtlety, "Sasquatch, the Legend of Bigfoot" nonetheless in its own blithely low-rent "National Enquiror"-esquire way sizes up as lots of enjoyably trashy pseudo-doc fun..
The plot was something like these commune folk going through some internal strife (racism?) and at the same time being stalked by these bigfoot creatures.