Bigfoot (2012)
Directed by Bruce Davison
Viewed on Amazon Prime
Our Bigfoot theme is coming to an end and I’ve seen some bad Bigfoot movies and some…other bad Bigfoot movies, and I wanted to end with something a little special. I really wanted to get back to basics, so I thought what better way to do that than to go with a movie that’s simply titled Bigfoot, promising a classic Bigfoot story. Certainly, this movie won’t have explosions, excessive CGI, and a cameo by Alice Cooper! Oh, it has all those things? Well, thank god I watched it then, I was afraid this was going to be boring!
What I Was Told
Snark aside, Bigfoot (2012) was not really what I was expecting it to be given the plot summary I read. The plot summary involved a concert promoter and hippie who try to stop/protect Bigfoot after he attacks an 80s themed throwback concert. That does happen, but it is such a small part of the events of Bigfoot (2012), and I’m stunned that the person who wrote that summary didn’t even try to capitalize on the absurdity of what happens.
What I Got
Let me lay a few things out for you, the concert promoter and hippie used to be bandmates but had a falling out following the concert promoter having sex with the hippie’s mom, the planned concert stage was still being built 2 DAYS BEFORE THE CONCERT, and I don’t mean they were finishing it, I mean they were tearing down trees, on federally protected land, to then use this clearing as a stadium. The promoter and hippie, men who look to be in their 50s, get into several fistfights and action sequences that are just absurd, both in the content of what is happening and the context of where it is happening. Explosions happen. Bigfoot eats people. The national guard is called in. But the CLIMAX OF THE MOVIE involves these 2 old men punching each other. It is gloriously absurd.
Money Wisely Budgeted
A lot of crazy stuff happens here, but what I found the most interesting was the production side of the movie. I knew this was going to be a cheaply made movie, but I was stunned at just how cheap some parts were. One of the other main characters is a cop who never wears a uniform (because a uniform would cost money) and though they try to explain this away it never really makes sense. The town jail/police station/sheriff’s office is just a room with the only official decor in it being a large portrait of Barack Obama. I assumed at the beginning that this meant the production had no money, but then a giant CGI Bigfoot monster shows up for large chunks of the movie, and that isn’t cheap, neither is getting Alice Cooper to cameo, or getting a large number of people dressed in National Guard uniforms to show up on set. Hell, maybe those were real people in the National Guard and maybe those were their actual uniforms? Point is, there was a budget, and it was spent on all the right things. CGI monsters, explosions, green screen shots, and Alice Cooper are what you need to sell this movie and we got that and more.
The Beauty of Acting In Low Budget Films
Now for a question no one has ever asked about Bigfoot (2012), how’s the acting? Well, they managed to get a few people who know how to act. Danny Bonaduce is here and chewing so much scenery that I’m pretty sure he’s the reason most of the sets look so barren. Everyone else is pretty okay, they’re all just doing their best to read this weird dialogue with straight faces, but Bonaduce steals almost every scene he’s in by mastering the art of acting like the biggest jackass on Earth and riding around on a motorcycle while wearing a leather jacket. Barry Williams, of Brady Bunch fame, plays opposite of Danny as the hippie Simon Quint and even though Williams can’t quite keep up with Bonaduce’s commitment to assholery, he has plenty of weird scenes where acts as some kind of hippie cult leader to an odd group of young women.
Wonderfully Absurd
I mentioned it a bit before but these characters are completely absurd, in the best ways. Bonaduce plays Harley Anderson, a hotshot radio host who for some reason is super evil and has influence on the negligent/comically evil mayor, but at the same time Williams’, as Simon Quint, is playing this ridiculous hippie who wants to save Bigfoot no matter what, even after Bigfoot starts killing his friends! And these aren’t accidental deaths, Bigfoot, who is about 20-30 feet tall, is just picking people up and eating them. But Quint just loves Bigfoot so much and ignores all this murder. It is so bizarre.
Bigfoot (2012) Is Exactly What They Wanted It To Be
So these things, absurd characters, excessive CGI, ludicrous escalation of the plot, a grand finale that boils down to a middle-aged fistfight, could be good things or bad things depending on how they’re handled. Looking at the whole thing I can’t accept that the filmmakers were not in on the joke of how absurd this movie is. Bigfoot (2012) is so absurd and tongue in cheek that trying to treat it like a “real movie” would be missing the point entirely. Like a lot of things produced by the Asylum (this film was co-produced by them), they knew exactly what they were making and if you watch it in the right setting, which is at a party with some friends over plentiful food and drink, you’ll have fun with it.
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