196: Bigfoot Kong

So bigfoot. So cool. Hi, this is Lance Henderson, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. Listen if you dare. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.

It is intended for mature audiences, and parental discretion is advised. It's showtime, folks. Enjoy the show. Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown.

I'm Brian. I'm Ben. I'm Greg. I'm Ben. A Bo.

Bo. I'm Dave, I think. We're confused as usual. What was thrown it off is we have an extra, you know, Ben in the mix here, which you've sort of met briefly with his Star Wars memories an episode or two back. But, yes, we would like to welcome Ben to the show.

Now, Ben, you are, I mentioned this previously, but you have your own show. Would you like to go into that now? We're starting to join forces. We're crossing over. Yeah.

I wouldn't say it's my show. You are on a show. Except for now. There's nobody here to dispute you. It is your show.

Oh, well. Because the minute I say it's my show, suddenly I have to do all of the work on it. I prefer to be the weak link. Paul's going to yell at you with what you're saying. Exactly, yeah.

I'm from a little podcast right down the street called Tower of Technobabble, which is. Literally right down the street from me. Literally right down the street, yeah. And basically, long story short, there's two other guys on there, Paul and Dave. And Paul wanted to start a blog.

Dave wanted to start a podcast. I just wanted to have, you know, friends. So we all kind of just joined it all. Been working at that for years. Exactly.

And the basic, I guess the premise of it is, I realize that I have a lot of geeky friends, and it seems like every single one is more of an authority in a certain geek area than everyone else. I have a friend of mine who's way into Buffy, so if I ever have a Buffy question, I go to him. I have another friend who's way into Transformers. If I have a question about Transformers, I go to him. I'm kind of a Doctor Who geek.

So we just kind of envisioned this little area where we could call on geek authorities to come in and comment on stuff hasn't really happened yet. But that's how you said a lot of stuff but yeah no authority has been thrown around yeah yeah well yeah i i thought and it's it's weird because i've known you forever for for many many a year now but It's sad that you were like season two, and I'm like, wait, you guys have a podcast? I can throw a rock and hit the tower, and you, why didn't you tell me? I didn't even know that we had a Facebook page until you told me. I was like, I was saying something.

What a pleasant surprise. I was saying something about our Facebook page, and you were like, yeah, maybe we should get one of those. I was like, you've got one of those. What the hell is wrong with you? Yeah.

You don't even know what you've got on your show. See, I thought that went to Google at theinternet.com. I didn't know it was technically. The world of Google that exists in the cyberspace. I don't get into this stuff.

I'm technically the working man's Ira Glass. I leave that other stuff to other people. Oh, wow. But, you know, I have been listening to Movie Meltdown. I've been kind of going back through the.

Back catalog, and I kept thinking, why does it sound so familiar? And then it occurred to me, this podcast is exactly what it was like to work with you, Brian, and you, Greg, at Suncoast Video 15 years ago. It's sort of like the conversation stays the same. It's just that the movie titles change, and... In fact, if you guys wanted to make this just like working at Suncoast, you should stop every five minutes to say, can I help you find something?

And then get back to whatever. Sometimes you could get away with a nod. That was my favorite. It said that in the pamphlet. They can't argue.

It says right there. You can sort of acknowledge them as they come in. Or you have to walk by the one guy that's been at the quasi-adult films for too long. Just to let him know you're there. I believe that was known as sexy rangeray.

Rangeray. Or the anime section. Yeah, you've got to watch the anime section. That's where the troublemakers hang out. I mean, that really was a big sort of building block for this show.

I mean, I think there's a lot of stuff that I can trace back to when I was a little kid all the way up to, I think, a good portion of the mechanics of how we are on this show, whether that's good or bad is arguable. But I think a lot of it came from that because, I mean, four of us sitting here right now were in different stores at the same time We all had these same basic conversations, and the rest of all had the same conversations in a different setting. I mean, we all went through this same thing, and now we're just finding a way to channel it and shove a microphone in front of it. For the kids listening, you should probably explain what exactly Suncoast Video was. Yeah, it's been a while.

I don't like to give them any plugs. I know they're out of business, but I still feel like they should pay me if I'm mentioning them. So it's a store. There were VHS tapes there. Go ask your grandma what that was.

Anyway. And a LaserDisc section. Yeah, but we all watched Laser. We were pretty snobby because we watched Laser. I mean, it was the only real way to watch widescreen.

Well, we were idiots because we were paying like, you know, $ 75 a pop for LaserDisc. This was $ 79. 99. I got to have it. But the best were the people that would come in and go, why they got a record of this movie?

Because it's so good, you need the soundtrack. That's the answer you'd give them. Why do you need a record? Go take it home and put it on their record player. Why do you need a record of Logan's record?

I can't tell you how many people. I've got to be honest with you, though. I really grew to hate movies because of my sunko experience. Because to my mind, movies were these small boxes that you had to organize and alphabetize and rearrange over and over and over. You just didn't like it because you didn't know your letters.

I was so thankful when Netflix was invented because no more will I have to pick up something and put. It somewhere else. My question is, why didn't you invent? You were right there. You had the idea of, I don't want to put these boxes away.

Just find a way. He even called it Netflix. That's the funny thing. I remember that day you said that, and I was like, what the hell's a Netflix? Stupid, stupid.

I know, I know. All right, so, well, again, we've gotten sidetracked. It is time for another session of the Caffeinated Movie Geek. Cappuccino my butt. I still drink coffee.

The last fucking thing you need is another cup of coffee. It's time for Decaffeinated Movie Geek. We are coming to you live via digital recording from Nancy's Bagel Grounds, where we will get together, drink coffee, and reenact scenes from our Suncoast days. I'm going on break! Ben, you don't know what the coffee is, but you want to tell us anyway?

I believe it's Jamocha Slim. Isn't that guy in your show? It's a Skatey Girl coffee tonight. It's actually Oregon Breakfast. So, let's keep that straight.

Oregon Trail, it's been a while. It's not Oregon Trail. You don't have dysentery. You lost cattle crossing the river with that coffee. I'm sure they were hauling coffee in the Oregon Trail.

It's got to keep them alive for Cookie to make. It for them. So. Before we get into our movie, I specifically, you know, we geared this with Bigfoot in mind. So, I mean, my memories of Bigfoot really kind of start with Six Million Dollar Man and, you know, the big chest plate that I had that Bigfoot.

Why I don't have that now, as much crap as I still have from my childhood, what the hell happened to my Six Million Dollar Man Bigfoot? I don't know, but somebody in my family is in trouble if I find out something new. This is so typical of people who claim that they've actually seen Bigfoot or have Bigfoot. I swear, I had it in the freezer. I don't know where it went.

Oh, yeah. Anyway, so that was kind of my first. I'm sure you had a Bigfoot action figure. Sure, bro. Around that time, I saw Bigfoot and Wild Boy.

Again, go ask your grandmother what that is, because I can barely remember. So, yeah, those were sort of my early Bigfoot memories. And I probably, you know, I have been sort of fascinated with the footage. The sad part is I know one of you knows the name of the guy who shot that. That's Roger Patterson.

You're both dorks. That's my point. My point is we have two people here who are way more into Bigfoot as an idea, not so much just the movie part, but in the quote-unquote real world. I know that I'm one of them. Who's the other?

Dave is also a self-proclaimed, do you have a title for it? Bigfoot-ness. Do they have a title? Are you an enthusiast? A footsie?

Observer. That's a different thing. Because I observe the Bigfoot culture as well, which is a really scary thing. I've become so jaded that I'm actually more a fan of the crazy personalities Look for Bigfoot rather than Bigfoot itself. It's like a Jerry Springer in a very.

It's crazy beyond what I ever thought it would be. And I used to think when people would say, oh, well, you know, people who are into Bigfoot are crazy. And I thought, well, that's because they were into Bigfoot. And then I find out, no, they were crazy before Bigfoot. They all exhibit all kinds of other issues and then gravitate towards the subject.

And that's the scary part. I'm an equal opportunist. I treat all cryptids the same. With the same dismissiveness. I think Bigfoot exists.

But I think it exists completely independently of almost all human interaction. I don't blame him. I don't think You can never find Bigfoot. I think Bigfoot is in the smile of a child. It's in a flower blooming.

Take a picture of a smiling child. It's all blurry. It's like, oh. Bigfoot is an ideal, if nothing else. We did.

I mean, when we did our Boggy Creek, we accidentally fell into this really, like, sort of deep version of what Bigfoot kind of represented. So what do you guys think of the Boggy Creek film as a film? That was... Probably my primary introduction. I saw it when it came out.

Yeah. I remember seeing the, they saturated every market with commercials. This was a four-wall presentation where the producers would come in and just rent out theaters. Yeah. And just hit the radio, hit the TV with ads, and fill them up.

And it'd be for maybe two weeks max. And I saw all those commercials on WDRB when I was a kid, and they were scaring the hell out of me. Oh, yeah. But I was, once again, attraction repulsion. I had to see it.

I made my mom take me over to Alpha One to see it. And I was fascinated with it. Like I said, it's a really odd, funky, bad movie. But at the same time, it provides this service that is almost necessary for the Bigfoot thing to take place. It's like the Bigfoot world.

It's a docudrama. In the world before the internet, there are Bigfoot researchers, legitimate quote-unquote bunny ears, researchers of a certain age who will point to that film as their gateway drug into getting into this. Now, people that are younger, they'll point to something like Harry and the Hendersons. Admittedly, that's going to be me because I have just vivid memory. That was my very first sleepover at a friend's house.

Even though it was right across the street, it was this huge deal to me because it was the very first time I was actually not at home. Even though I was only like six at the time, I still vividly remember it was Garbage Pail Kids, the movie, followed by Harry and the Hendersons, followed by Radio Flower. Those are the three. That's an odd choice at the end. Yes, there's kids in it, but not really a kids movie as you watch it.

It's just a troubling movie. In about 10 or 15 years, the Bigfoot researchers of the future, they're going to cite the Animal Planet show. I know. Probably. That show, I can't watch it.

It's not made for me, but little kids love that show. It's a huge hit, and it's a huge hit Because it's the same damn thing every week. People like that. Well, the kids like the repetition, you know? But that's also why I picked that as like the first movie in the series.

And granted, it's been a couple years since we've even gotten to it. So this is kind of the triumphant return of Bigfoot this week. Oh, this is the movie Meltdown, this and Legends series. It's got a series name. We'll get to that later.

Because on our podcast, we have a similar feature. We call it Hot for Creature. You wanted to say. Hot for something there. Hot creature.

So far we've only done one. We've only done something on the public monster. And we've just been lazy. We haven't got to part two. I thought you were going to stop it at the Pope.

We've just done one on the Pope. He's a strange creeper. Creeper? Depends on who you ask. That's the new phrase these kids are using nowadays.

Creeper. I've been described as that. But anyway. The, yeah, I remember starting, I specifically started with that movie because it's also like what started the movie craze. Like that, from that point on.

Are you talking about Boggy Creek? Boggy Creek, you were saturated with these, you know, cheap made, you know, straight to the drive-in and later straight to VHS and now straight to Netflix. I mean, it's like, it's an ongoing trend. thing and it that's the thing i i got out of the loop after you know six million dollar man probably and just sort of every once in a while i'll go oh that's interesting and then was looking at the video store one day and was just like look at all these bigfoot movies and i was just sort of fascinated at the number of them and that everybody sort of has a different look and everybody takes a different you know spin on the story so i was just like it would be kind of cool to look at you know the bulk of it to do a running series and actually kind of go through and and figure out what the hell the appeal is, and why we need to keep making all these Bigfoot movies.

Probably because it's cheap to rent a monkey suit and get a camera. That's one of the many aspects of it. He's a really accessible monster. You can see Bigfoot anywhere you like. And therefore, you can plug him into any plot, and people respond.

Star Wars. You know, it's also. I know Bigfoot is. An international superstar. It applies in many different countries under different names, but especially it's that continuation of manifest destiny that we can't physically have anymore other than the moon or something like that.

That loss of wilderness, loss of that Americans no longer have that next frontier. And so we have to cling to that. It's got to be out there somewhere. in our tangible physical space for us to still believe that wilderness is there as well. I think that's what keeps driving that myth for a lot of people. When I was a kid, I really liked the idea that there could be something out there that science says, no, we've found everything.

I love the. Idea that there could be something that big that they just hadn't found yet. I don't know. So is there anything else we need to get in regular Bigfoot information before we get to the ridiculous movies? Well, you see, that's just it.

The regular Bigfoot information feeds right into the ridiculous. Yeah, Bigfoot has become, once again, it's cyclical, but we're in the middle of this Bigfoot boom again. Yeah. And mostly driven by the Internet, which makes you wonder what these people did before the Internet existed. Because there are so many sites...

There are so many chat rooms. There are so many boards. And they're so full of mostly crazy people. And that's just it. The stuff that is actually happening now, that people are actually saying is happening, is so much more interesting than any movie.

Like, you know the whole Justin Smajic thing. I've talked to Justin. Have you really? Yeah. Justin's on Facebook.

We've talked. I don't believe a word Justin says. Really? But I don't care because I still like the guy. And I'm like, if it turns out to be complete BS.

That is what everyone says. If it turns out to be complete BS, I'll slap him on the back and say, good one, man. Tell the kids listening at home a brief rundown of what Justin's made us do. It's a story that's almost two years old where he's a hunter. He's a young guy.

He's in his 20s. He's up in California, northern California. Hunting and fishing is what the guy does. And he's, you know, a lot of people want to call him a redneck. I think he's a little sharper than that.

But he's a hunter, trophy hunter, taxidermist, hunt bear, you name it, he's done it all. Supposedly the story got out on a taxidermy board almost two years ago. Some guy started asking questions about what would happen if he shot a Bigfoot. And people are, like, joking around and everything. And he finally starts talking about how, well, he may have actually done this.

And a lot of people want to go all the way back there. You see how legit it is? He was so quiet about it. I think he was just testing the waters. But the story is that he and a friend were out hunting.

This is an area in northern California called Gold Lake. They were bear hunting. They had bear tags and legitimate license to hunt bear. And he claims that they came around a bend, driving this truck, and they saw this big, hairy, bipedal thing waving its arms. Yeah.

You know, like, hey, hold off, back up. And so Justin jumps out. The bridge is out. And this is where it gets complicated because Justin even admits, he said, at first I thought somebody might have been making a movie. And maybe this is a guy in a suit.

But he shot it anyway. And that's where a lot of the logic starts to fly out the window. And he says his friend was trying to stop him. Don't do it, don't do it. But he says he shot the adult.

Got a clear chest shot. And they said it screamed and went running off down a bluff. But then he said they go looking for it and then suddenly there are two little ones. And they're walking around. They're like three, four feet tall.

And they're like looking for the parent as well. Chattering away. And uh he gets more and more agitated and more and more feeling more threatened by these especially one so uh once again despite his buddy's protests he blows it away and it supposedly rolls down a hill at his feet He's a good level-headed character. And he picks it up and it dies in his arms. And supposedly his clothes and his boots are covered in Bigfoot blood.

Keep in mind, kids, this is not a movie plot. No, this is supposedly reality. This is supposedly something that has actually happened. And it gradually got out slowly through the boards and people investigating and all this. It was either you think this is bullshit or you buy it.

And the thing with the Bigfoot community is they generally want to buy. It right away. And.... It just grew and grew. And I was fascinated with it because it intersects with this other big thing that's going on right now, which is the DNA studies.

Melba Ketchum. Melba. It's been going on forever. Forever. And I suspect we'll have them.

But it's going to come out any day. Any day. But this story intersects with that, where she's a woman, a veterinarian, actually, from Texas, with questionable credentials, as far as I'm concerned. I think everyone involved in the Bigfoot story. She's been given all this material for DNA testing, and she farms it out to labs, and it's all legit as far as that goes, supposedly.

But the Sierra Kills material got into her hands, and they've been talking ever since about how it checks out. I don't know how it checks out, since you have no faith. That's been one of those articles of faith that you have to have. Based on the $ 6 million man. But the thing is, this goes back to the material.

Now, here's this trophy hunter. who has tons of photos posted on his Facebook page of all the animals he shot, yet that day he was so choked up he didn't take a picture of Bigfoot. Baby Bigfoot died. Understandably so. He's got Baby Bigfoot. Understand.

It's an emotional moment. Forget your camera. He's got Baby Bigfoot there. He says it maybe weighed 40 pounds. I'm like, well, put it in the back of the truck, dude.

Yeah, really? This is million-dollar Baby Bigfoot, man. This is like right there. You're finished. You're retired.

Clint Eastwood. He didn't take it. He says he hid it under a bush. Yet he's 100 and knows about Tony Adams. An important part to the story is that apparently by this point his friend grabbed his gun, pointed it at.

Him, and said, You will not shoot anything else. We are leaving it. The driver, whoever it is. You are not going to ruin this night. I don't care.

Take the dead baby, or cut off a finger. We need proof, damn it. But no, they didn't take anything, and then supposedly went back, depending on which version of the story, went back within two weeks to two months with a lot of fairly big-name people in the Bigfoot community. Jeff Meldrum, who's one of the only fairly legitimate guys, was there. I don't think he buys any of this, but Some of the guys from Finding Bigfoot, Bobo was there and some of those guys.

Justin produced a sample that he says he found digging through snow. And everybody says it's either Bigfoot or it's coyote. And supposedly these samples are in the hands of Melvin Ketchum. So I saw all that and I saw this intersection going on. I was like, oh, this is big.

No matter how it turns out, it's big. Yet it's still just sitting there. But the latest big deal a couple weeks ago is Justin took a polygraph. And Justin passed. 98%.

But you know what? Polygraphs are easy to pass if you're a good liar. Yeah. If you believe the lie, then it's not a lie. And then you should clench your asshole really good when you're answering.

Yeah. And so people are going all nuts about Justin passed the polygraph. I'm like, so what? I could pass a polygraph. I could tell you about my bionic iris asshole.

Put a tack in your shoe. We'll save that for a different body. Are you going to add in a sound effect right when you say that? That's right. But that's what happens when the aliens try to angrily probe me.

I'm fighting back with my. And, of course, the only way you can. And I can tell that tale in these... I can pass. And, of course, this piece of meat that Justin found, he dug up, and he says it was the Bigfoot.

He sent it off. That's what has become known as the Bigfoot steak. That I ordered recently at the Outback. Yes. And it was quite tasty, man.

Well, that was the Yowie Steaksy. I saw that. But again, this isn't a movie. This is quote-unquote real life. And that's why even though I publicly deny the existence of B-Foot.

Bigfoot. B-Foot. I publicly deny it. But I believe in the privacy of my own home. B-Foot's totally real.

B-Foot. But it's just.... Every time I swear it off, I'll go back and I'll look at BigfootEvans.com and I'll be. Like, oh, I've got to read this. And he'll put up anything because, you know, it just drives traffic.

And he'll throw in some of the most hilarious pieces. But there's a Facebook page, which I've been marginally a part of at times. Did Facebook find Bigfoot? Oh, no. Those guys crack me up.

They confirm on everything. No, there's one, it's actually called the Coalition for Reasons, you know, Reason, Science, and Sanity in Bigfoot Research. And it's a constant battle. It's a constant war. Have you looked at Team Taser?

Team Taser, yeah. Fairly clever at times. You know, they started out kind of in love with themselves, but I think they don't really buy this major stuff either, for the most part, so they've kind of been making fun of it, but. Yeah, there's a whole world of Internet Bigfooting that is much more entertaining than any Bigfoot movie you will ever watch. Oh, it has to be.

It's constant drama. It's constant war. It's amazing to witness it. I became deeply enmeshed in it and then had to pull out because it's too scary. That's what we can take from this is that Bigfoot is out there, and we found him, and he's on the Internet.

He's hanging out on Facebook like everybody else. I was going to say, for the viewers not familiar, I would recommend... Not Another Bigfoot Movie, I think is the name of it. Yeah. Because that's a really good peek into.

The mentality. Exactly. Just the mentality of taking a photo and it's like, look, I see a whole family, 15 of them. It's like, it's shadows. It's worse than ghost photos.

There is a guy featured in that movie who is the reason why I publicly... Do not believe in Bigfoot. It's a researcher named Tom Biscardi. I can't even say his name. It makes me so mad.

But basically, he's the guy back in 2008 who went on to CNN and claimed that he had the Bigfoot body in the freezer. And there was guys from AP that were like, is this a joke? And he was looking at them and serious as cancer, you know, saying bigfoot. You know, this is as real as you are standing there. And, of course, it was a suit.

And he says, I was hooked. Yeah, it was a couple of guys in Georgia with a rubber suit full of, like, roadkill. I believe this guy was in on it. Oh, he was. He was.

He used, like, $ 60, 000 of some other guy's money to buy it from these guys. But the reason why I now. public say I don't believe in Bigfoot is because when that was happening, I was forwarding. The press releases to everybody I knew. I was so excited. It's like, this is actually happening because one of the guys who found it was actually a police officer.

So I was thinking, why would a cop risk his job to create a hoax on a national scale. This has to be real. This has to be real. And then when it wasn't, I was so mad. That's it.

Publicly, I'm done with Bigfoot. We broke up. Basically, I got the photo of me and Bigfoot. I cut him out of it. I burned all of his letters.

It was a bad breakup. And there's an event like that roughly twice a year now, when there's some big, huge, ridiculous hoax goes on. And that's part of the charm of the whole thing, too, is that it's been rife with that since the beginning. But in that movie, that Not Another Bigfoot movie, you've got the two kind of down on their luck guys, and they're all excited because there's this big-name researcher coming, and he comes, and they're dazzled, and then he basically stands them up. and you just see the disappointment on their faces. Oh, he treats them horribly.

Because they're very childlike. I mean, it's hard to, you know, you can't hate them. It's just you're almost sort of taken aback by, like, these guys are just so into it. Well, the reason they're so into it in that movie is you realize they have nothing else. In their life.

Which is what's kind of sad, yeah. And there are guys, you know, times 10 like that on the internet. That's why I started this podcast. Actually, Brian, this is a good point. I mean, it's like you've got Trekkies.

You've got your Bigfoot. I have nothing else. To each person, their own obsession. This is my Bigfoot. Yeah.

This is your Bigfoot, man. But I think when they had the convention and they're sitting around and they're giving each other awards for the best supporter. It's like little printed paper ones and it's like they're in some. They're big moments. Yeah, it's in like the back room at some restaurant or something.

I mean, I just, you don't want to say pity because you're like, yeah, I do that stuff too. You know, not the same way, but we're all desperate in some different way. And they just needed an excuse to be friends more than anything. Yeah. An excuse to appreciate each other, spend time with each other, have something to look forward to, whatever.

Again, that all applies to every week. What is their excuse? Is this movie on Netflix? Yeah. It was.

It was. It's a good movie. Go look for it. And the short, they've got the original short that they filmed before that, which is even, you know, it's just as good. I mean, there's a ton of Bigfoot documentaries out there, but the two best ones, I think, are the ones that just examine the people.

And that's one. And there's another one called Sasquatch Odyssey that was done years and years ago. And it's about the old guard guys. The four horsemen. The horsemen.

It's all about those guys and how they all started out working together, and then they all eventually, you know, hating each other's guts. That's just it. It follows them to the end of their lives, and they're still screaming at each other at conventions. It's fascinating. The Bigfoot world is a Jerry Springer show in microcosm.

It really is. It has very little to do with Bigfoot. It has a lot to do with personalities. It's drama. I'm going to prove this before you do.

My Bigfoot toenail is real, and your steak is not. And I think the first time I remember just really noticing– the um you know peculiarity of it because i'd you know grown up like reading the lauren coleman books and stuff like that and was just really into cryptozoology it was when i started reading stuff by eric. Beck here and i was like oh god this dude is friggin insane because you know it's i remember just you know he essentially had apologies written to where it's like oh mothman that was me in an auto body experience i'm sorry folks i'm sorry if i scared you back then oh my god. He stalked and terrorized people. He was an amazing guy.

Yeah, and he believed that Bigfoot was like a shape-shifting alien from another dimension. And he would just show you frame by frame of the Patterson photo. He was like, no, you see all these weird faces morphing. In and out of the musketeer. Yeah, there's more than one Bigfoot in that Bigfoot.

Yeah, exactly. It was a bunch of Bigfoots in that Bigfoot. And there's a huge school of thought that follows that. Do you know Robert W. Morgan?

I first heard him say this theory. One of the reasons why everyone says that the Patterson film, I'm sure everyone who is listening to this has seen it, it is the one famous photo or movie clip where the Bigfoot is walking slowly and it's spreading its. Two arms out. And it looks back. People will often say that that movie is obviously fake because every other story about Bigfoot is it's there and it is gone.

Why is this Bigfoot strolling so calmly. And Robert W. Morgan says that if you look off to the side, you can see a baby Bigfoot. So this is a mama Bigfoot who is essentially doing what a bird will do to keep a predator out of its nest. It'll pretend to have like a broken wing, you know, to sort of drive it away.

Robert W. Morgan's theory was that the mama Bigfoot was leading the two guys taking the film off, and then the daddy Bigfoot was going to come and beat them all since. That's the thing. The Patterson footage, it's not good enough that it's footage of Bigfoot. There has to be a story that's very strange and goes along with it.

And there's another guy, M.K. Davis, who, it's like a Rorschach blot. He looks at it, and he now claims there was a massacre that day. And the more he studied the film, the more he realized that There's a bullet hole opening up on Patty's leg. And there's pools of blood.

And you're like, what the hell is he saying? And then he starts accusing the four horsemen of being guys who slaughtered Bigfoot. It's insane. So he becomes a pariah in a society that's already completely nuts. And he's saying, oh, it's a massacre.

Again, not a movie. This is real life. It's all real. But I remember reading about that, and I was like, this is more analytical than when people pick apart the JFK. Oh, it's like there's a shooter from here.

He did good work in that he actually stabilized the footage to where you see it walking very. Yeah, I remember seeing frames around. There was good physical work done, but then he started seeing things, like bloody handprints on logs and stuff. It's just not there. and he still he he retired and he came back recently and he's still got some hilarious have. You seen the latest film that he's put out basically it's it's it shows the forced scene it was taken by a trail camera and off frame you see a bottle getting thrown in uh to the clearing he claims.

That it was a bigfoot who yeah through it and then you actually. Hear bigfoot talking yeah and it sounds like samurai chatter it's like. And it's not like a guy could stand over there and throw the bottle and make samurai noises with him he's got another great one where it's like just it's completely jet black and something is scooting a cooler around. It's bigfoot it's a ghost i mean anything. Scooting a cooler And it's this amazing stuff he keeps coming up with.

That's something I always found interesting, too, was whenever. You are a particular paranormal researcher and you go out and you've got the video camera and you've got the thermal... you always tend to find evidence of exactly what you're looking for. You never hear about a ghost hunter getting a Bigfoot photo or a Bigfoot hunter getting a shadow person. It's like, you know. Nature provides.

Yes. Damn it, I've got all these leprechauns all over me, and I'm just trying to find a Bigfoot. Right. And you never hear about guys out doing a documentary on grizzly bears getting a shot of Bigfoot. Yeah.

But see, as soon as you mentioned hearing, I hadn't even heard what the sounds he was saying they were like, but everybody describes the Bigfoot sounds as being almost the same, just sort of that weird chatter and that. And that's why I've always been more into all the other cryptids, because you get the ones like the Kelly creatures that happened in Kentucky. It's like, that stuff is just so much more unique to me, because it happens one time and it's just so friggin' bizarre. Yeah. Yes, the public monster has a beautiful speaking voice.

It's a bit like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. It's very elegant. Clipped. I'm going to throw you off this bridge. I can only assume that's how it would go.

There's a train coming, too. We'll be very painful at the tree. For you. For you. I wanted to be caught on film.

That's part of the plan. I was almost Dr. Evil. For you. Oh, Lord.

All right, we've spiraled off into Bane, so we should probably take a break here and come back with the actual movie, which is probably nothing like any of these things we've just described. No, it's not. Unfortunately, yeah. So we'll take a break. We'll probably run one of those crazy Tower of Technobabble promos.

And then we'll be back. Oh, crap. I was supposed to bring one? All right. Maybe we won't.

We're living in a Bigfoot world. Buddy, can you see? We're living in a Bigfoot world. He stands for you and me. As everyone knows, rainbows usually have a treasure at the end.

Let's follow this one and see if we can find the pot of gold. Father, I suppose you've come to claim me treasure. Well, we'd like to see the gold first. Nathan, there's better than gold in here, me lad. No, no, just look here now.

Candy, refreshing soft drinks, popcorn, ice cream. Well, that's some treasure, but anyone can buy luscious treats like these at the snack bar. Yeah, don't tell me. Do you suppose you could get me. A job as a snack bar attendant?

The legend of Boggy Creek tells it like it happened. Through the eyes of the big technoscope cameras, you will see wildlife living with nature, a treat you will. Not soon forget. This is the setting for the new motion picture, Legend of Boggy Creek, filmed entirely on location around Falk, Arkansas. It is the true story of the Falk Monster.

This motion picture is being acclaimed by the motion picture industry as a strong contender for that industry's top award, the Academy. The Legend of Boggy Creek, color by Technicolor, is a P & L film production presentation. Dave, I do not get superheroes. Oh my god, I don't get you. What don't you get?

Towerbot here. Well, the meatbags were going to say that if you're a geek and like podcasts, then you could try Tower of Technobabble at www.toweroftechnobabble.com. Then this started. Well, it's up to you. I'm gonna get my taser and put a stop to this.

Towerbot out. Okay, monkeys. It's knock time. Show starts in two minutes. Tweaked Audio, your source for high-performance, noise-reducing earbuds.

Available in three styles and seven colors, durable and designed to sound great for both music and those challenges. podcasts, like the one you're listening to now. Tweaked Audio earbuds come with a one-year warranty, and now there's a special deal for Movie Meltdown listeners. Just go to tweakedaudio.com, and when you check out, enter the discount code MELTDOWN. Then you'll get 33% off and free shipping. Tweaked Audio.

Sounds better. Hello, this is Peter Mayhew, listening to Movie Mountain Down. We hope you're enjoying your visit here this evening. Now, on with the show. It's time for Tales from the Cryptids.

The Bigfoot Five. People have been seeing them for years. The last thing we need is more paranoia. Gotta get these people out of here. I'm going to stuff him and bounce him.

I think the only reason you want to kill Bigfoot is just to piss me off. The Partridge family's Danny Bonaduce and the Brady Bunch's Barry Williams in an all-new movie event. Bigfoot premieres this Saturday at 9, only on SyFy. Oh. My.

God. And they feared the hatchet-throwing Sasquatch. And I'm afraid of the hatchet-throwing sasquatch that lives next door. And we're back. And we're back.

Welcome back to Movie Bouts on Stouffer Theater. And this marks our triumphant return to the, I told you it had one, Tales from the Cryptids series. I like that. I see. And this would be the subsection of the Bigfoot files.

You ought to mouth man there for coming up with that one. I don't know how many more cryptid puns we. Can come up with. Yeah. This week's Silver Theater feature is Bigfoot, creatively titled.

The year is 2012. Director Bruce Davison. They plot, and I like when they so don't care about the plot that they don't even bother to put it into plot-like terms. They just go ahead and use meta descriptions. According to IMDb, it says, The 1970s pop culture icons Danny Bottaducci and Barry Williams face off in the hunt for the legendary mountain creature.

I liked it. Icon, obviously. Icons. It doesn't have quotes, but I just put them around. So, spoiler alert, God forbid we ruin this movie for you, so go find Sippy and go watch your own.

Have you guys talked about that, the Sippy thing? The Sippy thing? Yeah, I think we bitched about it years ago, so it continues to annoy us. So with that, should we, from here on, refer to ourselves as the Bigfoot Alliance? Yes.

I like it. I'm a member of the Bigfoot Alliance. Oh, of the many, many ridiculous things that come up in this movie. Bigfoot Alliance. We're B.A.

Where would you like to begin with Bigfoot? I'd like to start someplace. I know we've got some Bigfoot connoisseurs here. Best part was the ending of it. As far as I'm concerned.

No. This isn't a Bigfoot movie as far as I'm concerned. The best fucking Bigfoot? That's what you said, right? Yeah.

That's the best fucking Bigfoot movie I've ever seen. As a Bigfoot fan, I guess I could have been insulted if I cared. Because it isn't really... They didn't make a Bigfoot movie. They made a King Kong movie.

Yes, they did. That's exactly what I've got written down right here. It's King Kong. No, we all agree. I love that.

Well, my thing is pretty early on we get the little circle of life thing going on there as we watch all the animals. That annoyed me. Who did not see that coming? As soon as Bigfoot, quote unquote, makes his appearance, I'm just like, all right, cartoons. Who doesn't like Bigfoot cartoons?

I would like to do like McGillig gorilla and just like put him over the– I think that would be, or something like that, just like cookie-cutter paste some cartoon over the Bigfoot in this. It would make it much more watchable. I'm going to respect whoever made that decision, though, because at some point in time when they were coming up with this, it's like, all right, what's this thing going to look like? I feel like they just looked at the test footage, and they're like, all right, that looks like shit. So instead of hiding it, just giving people a quick little flash throughout the whole movie, just before the credits even go, we're going to show you the thing in broad daylight.

Really? You're either going to say, I'm going to stick with this, or I'm just going to say, fuck it and change the channel. Because this is what you get. I do appreciate that, yeah. This is the whole kind of sci-fi philosophy with these schlock pictures they've been making.

I mean, Sharktopus and all these other pictures. It's like, we're going to show you the monster right up front. It looks stupid. Except for Sharktopus, which looked awful. Oh, yeah.

So you know you're going to watch junk, so either stick with it or don't. I think that's you're on sci-fi already. I'm not really a horror movie fan i don't subscribe to fame gory or anything like that so get the fuck out did that work did did this movie work in horror terminology. I don't know about horror comedy it worked really well. See the weird thing and this is going to be very pathetic for me to admit this but As I was watching the first portion of it, I was like, okay, this isn't structured like a Bigfoot movie.

This is structured like an animal attack movie. Because if you look at the true. That's one of my favorite sub-genres of horror is animal attack films. So much so that it's like... I've seen most all the bad ones, including all...

I think it was 17 animal attack films that were made in 1977. That was when the genre peaked. After Jaws. Yeah, after Jaws. Well, that's what kicked it off.

It's quite a cluster of angry ants. I don't know, like the top three in that one, it was Day of the Animals, Kingdom of the Spiders, and Empire of the Ants. All three of those were 77. But it follows that same template of Jaws. Like if you.

I've already lost you on this. I was just thinking, it's like Noah's Ark of Death. Well, that's always like Day of the Animals. Day of the Animals is when William Gerber was like, fuck it, everything. Cougars, birds, spiders, snakes, bears, all of them.

But, no, actually, this starts off following the plot of Jaws, because you've got the initial death, and then you meet the characters, and then not only that, but there's the big event coming up that the town is completely dependent on. The mayor is a dick that just doesn't give a shit. By the way, speaking of the mayor, Howard Hessman? Howard Hessman was in this. Yes, among many other people.

When did Howard Hessman go from top of the class to bottom of the barrel? Head of the class. I was waiting for Dwar Hall and Tannis to show up. Right about the time sci-fi got involved. It's a paycheck.

Sorry to interrupt you. It does. It just follows the animal attack. It follows it for a point and then it doesn't seem to follow anything. After that, it's just like.

The movie just sort of rambled around. You know, I think my favorite Bigfoot movie is Boggy Creek, and I was really surprised that there, right out of the box, in bright sunlight, here is the monster. I mean, I almost felt like. Well, okay, I've seen it, I might as well stop. There's just no point going on.

And it's not like watching John Carpenter's The Thing, where you've got something that Rob Bottin made up, and it's like, We're fucking proud of this. This is awesome. It's just more like, eh, there you go. This one, their idea of good CGI is individual hairs on his head. They were so specific about making sure he had individual hair.

It's literally like render quality crap. That's good enough. We don't have to take it any further. The only thing from sci-fi I've seen was the... Battlestar Galactica, the reimagining.

How does the CG in this movie compare to other sci-fi projects? It's right about there. Minus Battlestar. Battlestar is its own thing. I think BSG is produced by other people and then shown on sci-fi.

This is asylum for them. I actually noticed that they used the Battlestar Galactica font in the credits. Nice. They're all on the same server. I feel like with all the sci-fi films, though, the first couple that they tried to do, I don't remember, it was pre-Sharktopus and all that stuff.

But they did some in the late 90s, early 2000s, to where the CG looked better then than it does now. At this point, it's purposeful. Yeah, they're going out of their way. Well, they learn that they can get by with just making junk. And they know people expect that and almost come looking for it.

But I feel like at this point the joke's wearing old. It's not even good junk. Is it supposed to be a joke? I couldn't. I think it's supposed to be.

I think it's a legitimate attempt to make it. I couldn't really crack a. Smile at anything I saw. Can they actually make money? from this? From a project like this?

Advertising. Advertising, yeah. The commercials that are run. Enough people will tune in just for the ridiculousness of it that they can make their money through advertising. It's kind of.

A morbid curiosity thing. They're selling to, I hope not to offend anybody with this, but to pro wrestling fans as well now too. That's true. They've changed their market. It's all kind of, they brought them in with marathons of pro wrestling and hey, we're going to have, we're going to show, and that's what this is.

This is Andre the Giant or King Kong Bundy or whatever you want to put on there. It's crap. When it became Giant Animal versus Giant Animal, it really was just wrestling. This is one that's kind of different. I have to say, in terms of a Bigfoot enthusiast, it was not made for.

A Bigfoot genre at all. It honestly had the wrong name because it didn't even look like What people say a Bigfoot looks like. It did not look human at all. Bigfoot does not have claws. And obviously Bigfoot is not 40 feet tall.

Bigfoot max is 30, 38. Never 40. Which is the other thing too. And it's like, how is that cheaper? Than putting a dude in a suit.

Seriously. I guarantee you that CG cost more money than a dude in a suit. In the credits, there was actual credit for a suit fabricator. And I'm like, wait. Oh, that was the Danny Bonnet.

Is the guy standing at the concert? Yeah, the guy at the concert. I was like, where was there a suit in the movie? Oh, by the way, the worst CGI I've ever seen was actually at that concert where the Bigfoot picks up the guy in the gorilla suit and he's looking at it. It looks like a photo cutout.

It looks like the CGI is holding a photo cutout. I mean, I've seen whatever the one that had Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. I forget at this point. Sure. But there is a shot where, I swear, it's just still stuff that they've cut out of.

It looks like they cut out of a magazine, and they're just like. It's like South Park. Yeah, they're South Parking it into the screen at them. It's almost like they're using CG, but the acting is like blue screen acting. At best.

One moment that really stuck out to me is when the deputy, sheriff's deputy, the older one, gets... hit by the car that kicks into it. And the car looks like a... I've seen the animated Hot Wheels show. It's that bad. And it kicks it, and that's fine.

And it pins him up against the car and bounces off of him. And everything is CG around him. And almost the background is even CG. It's just the two of them standing in front of a tree. And then the car is clearly just bad.

And then they cut to the man... And the cars pinned him against the tree, but it didn't bounce away like it had before. So they were that lazy with something that was that cheap not to push it against him. It doesn't even match. Speaking of lazy, we can spoil the ending, right?

I swear to God, Lincoln's face got shot twice. It did. You guys see that? Well, it was so good the first time. Yeah.

He fell three times. Yeah. When you get a really good explosion in any movie, you've got to make sure and show it two or three times. King Kong having the monkey climb up on a landmark to hassle it by jets. The whole climax there, yeah.

I think Lincoln got blasted twice. I heard the same lines come out of Cheryl and Fen's mouth. Twice, in two different occasions. But the best line of the movie was like, there's a giant monster climbing Mount Rushmore. And the sniper was like, I can't get a clear shot.

I wrote that down. I was just like, you're in a fucking helicopter. He's on Mount Rushmore. Well, he was probably feeling weird because, you know, Lincoln's thinking. Oh, God.

Not again. Not again. A darned-haired, 40-foot-tall monster. That is a funny moment now. Yeah.

At the time, I was still shocked. Corporal Booth, take your shot. I can't get a clip shot. I think the preposterous part when they're running out of the cave, Bonaduce and... Greg.

Just call him Greg, yeah. Oh, the hired gun, the big game hunter. Scared when he's supposed to be furious. Oh, yeah. And.

The quint of the movie. They're running down the hill and the military just turns and just starts firing into the guy. And they're saying, hold your fire, hold your fire. And they're still just blasting away. They weren't capable of hearing them climb up behind them, but they're hair trigger enough to just shoot and lay into this guy.

Yeah. I was in tears I was laughing so hard. At that point I was glad because our again sorry ass version of a Quint I mean he's supposed to be this big game hunter and has killed all these but like The few minutes before, accidentally shoots a random girl, gets scared, and runs away. That's it. I quit.

And runs out of the cave. Like, good. You get shot. My favorite part about that guy was whenever Danny Bonaduce calls him to hire him, the hunter said. Yeah, man.

Because I was on your radio show, I got all of my big endorsement deals that made me a millionaire. Like you do. He got that just from disappearing on a local classic rock station. In South Carolina. I like the rock stations following.

Because early on, I think the first moment I lost it on that. was when he just gets back on and he's just like, hey, the concert's still on. You have these three people outside of a trailer like, yay! Those three people love that guy. And you know, just like Danny Bottaducci, whenever I do my podcast, I wear a thick, heavy leather motorcycle jacket. I'm hardcore.

I like the... Because clearly they weren't prepared for the weather they were going to shoot this movie in. Because they even had to. That's a funny problem to have. It's on a crappy low budget.

Or this weather. Because it keeps going back and forth to shots of there being snow on the ground, to it not being snow on the ground, to a little bit, to piles of snow. And the rain melted all the snow. And there's some scenes where I even noticed they CG'd in breath on people when it didn't belong. Like, okay, is it cold or not?

He's riding on a motorcycle with no sleeves. I mean. That's going to solve all the continuity problems right there. Everything. Talk about the weather.

Now, I think the only reason you want to kill Bigfoot is just to piss me off. You mean kind of the way you killed our record deal to piss me off? You know, as for Bigfoot. I don't care anything about your tree-hugging hippie friends. And when Bigfoot comes around, I'm going to either bag him and cage him or stuff him.

And mount him. That animal belongs in a reserve away from people like you who want to turn him into a freak show. Your breath stinks. You stole my tranquilizer darts. I can't even play the guitar.

Yeah, well, I got three of them in my basement. And your mama knows what I can play. What did everyone think of the double act of Greg Brady and Danny Bonducci? There was so much silly dialogue. It all turned on who screwed whose mom.

I did have a question. Apparently they both slept with each other's mothers. I think that's what I got. I could never figure out if that was just them jabbing or if that was the cape. That wasn't clear.

It sounded like it was pretty real. It was during the climatic battle on top of Lincoln's head. One of them says, Yeah, I. Yeah, you had to bring up the mother again right at the end. Yeah, that's the thing.

I bought it with, like, when it was the bar, I guess. I mean, as bad as the dialogue is anyway, but I'm just like, all right, whatever, they worked it in. But, like, an hour later, they're still making that joke. And I'm like, okay, we got it. You've covered it ten times now.

You can stop making the mom jokes. That got old real fast. I'm thinking Danny was improv-ing and throwing in some magic lines. I think there was a lot of that. You know that Danny.

That whole kind of quint scene with... What's his name? Willard. Bruce Davis. Bruce Davis.

Where they're in the office, and he's trying to tell that story about the guys. Up on the ridge. I wrote that down, how awkward it was. He was making it up. He's like, somebody's off-screen with this.

And he's the director. And he's like, well, we never saw it. And then there was Bigfoot. So the movie's full of that kind of stuff. So you had said that Tiffany and Debbie Gibson did a.

They were each individually in one and then they had a super cross where they were versing each other. It was like Super Croc versus Anaconda. Yeah. Super reptile. I can look it up but I don't care.

Is this going to be a thing? It's been. I mean that was years ago. So that's sort of their thing is to dig up has-been actors. No offense to any of the cast.

So we can look forward to Trapper and BJ from TV's MASH looking for the Loch Ness Monster. Probably. That would be awesome. I can see that happening. But at the same time, I just can't get in.

And again, going back, now I feel like I'm a snob. It's like, I respect the Animal Attack movies of the 70s, but not this new wave of Animal Attack movies. But back then, it's like, you got actual creatures on set, and they tried to sell the idea as much as they could. This one's like, they aren't trying to sell it. It's just, it's a I think there's a difference.

And, you know, we watch, again, arguably, a lot of crap on this show. But at the same time, I think if you watch a lot of it, if you're really a movie geek, you become kind of a connoisseur. And it's like there's a difference between we just watched Star Crash and this. And I'm like, Star Crash, there is so much love in that movie. That guy was killing himself to make a great movie.

This is a paycheck for everybody in there. They could care less about it. They show up for work. They know nobody's going to like it in the end. StarCraft, that guy was hoping this was the biggest thing since Star Wars.

It's like the difference between Bobby Creek. This one, they know it's crap. They don't care, and they just show up for it. Man, I died a little when I saw the girl from Northern Exposure. Show up.

Twin Peaks. Twin Peaks, yeah. No, it was Shelly. Oh, Shelly, yes. Sue came on as Sue Ellen, and it took me so long to go, who is that?

She was the blonde wearing black who was very Williams. She was very excited about it. She was supposed to be a college student still, and she was easily 40. Easily, yeah. Well, I thought you were just talking about Cheryl.

Well, Cheryl and I was one of the saddest things. Yeah. Because there's, like, one of the sexiest women in the history of television. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, God.

And they didn't even want to show a full shot of her, did they? And it's hard. Like, it really is difficult to watch people that you really, really like. loved in some way. Like Bigfoot! Not like Bigfoot.

Believe me, I have very different feelings for Sherilyn Finn than I did for Bigfoot. Let me ask you this. When you see Sherilyn Finn on camera in this film, do you picture her now with a prosthetic leg? Because I do. I can't not think of her with one.

This puts it in perspective because I knew, and this is one more reason I knew she would not be on this episode, nobody, like arguably... Misty thinks Sherilyn Finn, in her Twin Peaks heyday, is hotter than I do. And I think she's about the hottest damn woman there was at that point in time. And I sent her the trailer, and the only thing she sent back was, what the hell has happened to the hotness that was Sherilyn Finn? And I was like, alright, that was my thought.

She has to be a mom now, right? She's wearing mom jeans the whole time. It's official. It's... So, I mean, it's...

And she's not terrible. She's doing the best she can with this horrible dialogue and just showing up for work, basically, like all of them are, but. There's just. Not really much you can do. You just don't care.

Yeah. Ben, did you take copious notes on the movie? I'm sitting here looking through it. There's a lot there. We all did.

Well, you see. We're doing professionals here. Well, the guys at the Tower podcast, they. Came to me and they were like, look, don't do what you usually do. Don't half-ass this.

This is a big deal. Yeah, because we're so professional. So it's good here. Well, no, because... Because I didn't know how you guys operated.

So I was just jotting down notes. Yeah, I've got my notes. This is official, Dan. Because so much in it was just amazing to me. Like, in the beginning when the Forest Ranger. was trying to prove to Danny Bottaducci that there may be a problem.

We were treated to a scene of carnage and heads getting bit off and bodies flowing everywhere. So what is the big proof that he shows us? It's a footprint. What about all the bodies in the burning truck? Well, not only that, but the whole thing is like, you don't mention this to anybody.

It's like, a dozen people saw it. There's headless bodies and a dozen people saw it. You don't mention this to anybody. How is that not the major news? On that note, I have a question for, I guess, the more knowledgeable on the Bigfoot topic.

Is Bigfoot a carnivore? Is he known to eat people? I suppose. People know. It depends on who you ask.

There's this big movement of carnivores. true believers out there that are like, Bigfoot is the. Guardian of the forest, and he's a peaceful, gentle giant. He eats granolas. And then you've got. Guys like Michael Merchant, who's like, Bigfoot is an animal, and if you have ever been out in the forest, everything is trying.

To eat everything else, and he's just like that, too. Yeah, there are a lot of reports that Bigfoot actually preys on deer, and they seem credible. Or anything else he can get his hands on. Deer would be the most logical because they have no natural predator other than humans anymore. Because we killed off their natural predators.

So that's why we have to have kills throughout the year. all the Midwest, especially because there's nothing other than a few coyotes that might be able. To take one down. There's coyotes and maybe a few cats moving back into the scene, but mostly the population's out of control. And they have plenty of food as well. And there are some Bigfoot believers that will point to the very large number of people who go missing in the national parks, and they'll take a huge leap of faith and say, maybe it was Bigfoot that got them, you know, and Well, I also like.

Instead of that bear. I like this Bigfoot because he doesn't even seem to eat them. He just wants to bite their heads off. Doesn't he spit it out half the time? He's an extremely angry Bigfoot.

Yeah. And there's no, like... It's like eating a muffin. Nobody wants to eat the bottom of the muffin. Oh, God.

That's the most. Yeah, I wrote it down. I couldn't believe it. What, muffins? I love muffins.

Like, after the Bigfoot ruins the big rock show for the. for the 20 people. We need to get back to that. The whole town was banking. There was this press conference and they're hassling the mayor and one of the reporters actually has the effing nerve to say, is it true that you had evidence of this creature and yet you did nothing and let the concert go on? That was my first laugh out loud moment because.

Do you guys realize how many people call the police and say, I saw something? It's like, okay, say the Kentucky Derby gets canceled because someone calls and says, I saw the Pope lick monster. And so the mayor's like, somebody might die. We have to protect our people. We've got to call it off.

Martial law. Take care of our own here. And they blow the bridges and shut down the city. But again, that goes back to the whole thing on Jaws. It's like, did you close the beaches?

It's just looping back to that early on. It becomes, again, it goes from that animal attack genre to... the overall King Kong thing. It's just they're borrowing for so many movies. In a logical film, there would have been a lead-up. There would have been a big lead-up to the big concert, and that would have probably been the carnage.

That's what I was thinking. They get it over with in the first 20 minutes. It's like, okay. I was like, I thought this was going to be the finale 20 minutes in. This movie was nothing but climaxes, man.

That's true, actually. We'll fade out to the cop car sitting in front of the station, and now we'll fade into people getting killed over the hill. One step. One thing this movie made me just remind me is, like, I respect movies like Jaws because there's not one person in that movie who's just like, let it live in peace. It's like, no, everyone's like, kill this fucking thing.

Like, this is... Killing yesterday. I really laughed when, what's his name, Greg Brady, you know, when he went to the reporters and was saying, like, You know, it's the fault of the evil capitalists who put on this concert. And that's why our brothers and our fathers and our sisters are all dead. It's because of the greedy concert promoters who put this on.

And yet he played at the freaking concert hall. In fact, he was the opening act for Bigfoot. Technically, it was his music that pissed off the Bigfoot in the first place. Okay, while we're on the concert, we really need to go into that, because that became the funniest thing to me, is just how out of whack all of this was. Well, first of all, it's like the whole situation is he's angry, Greg is angry because they're going to bulldoze 50 acres of forest for this music concert that, you know, like 25 people.

I was going to say, how is it that the town doesn't have any other venue for the music concert other than, well, we've got to build or bulldoze a section of forest. It's like Woodstock, man. There's going to be so many people there. I mean, there's got to be a farm field somewhere in that town. Why?

Do TV environmentalists always look young and really, really hot, and environmentalists in real life always look kind of, you know, grungy? That's the wonders of TV. Don't you know that taking showers kills Mother Earth? Come on. It's wastewater.

It's wastewater. His references for this big 80s concert, he keeps talking about Sting, and I'm like, okay, Sting getting back together with the police. that's Wembley Stadium. That's a stadium venue. I'm sorry. No one had to cut down any trees.

And you know, Danny keeps talking about the spirit of the 80s the way people talk about the spirit. Of the 60s. I don't remember a lot of idealism in the 80s. I think they probably wanted to do 70s. Because why would you have Danny Bonaduce and Greg Brady in there for an 80s retro thing?

And somebody said, You know what? Kids aren't going to get this at all. Like kids will get 80s? Or maybe. I think they will.

The only musician that they could get was Alice Cooper, so they had to move the time frame. Technically, he was 70s, too. His better stuff is 70s. But I think he even points that out. So you're saying the kids know George Harrison better than the Beatles or something?

Well, what I'm saying is... What I'm saying is the mindset. Is that what I'm to infer? What I'm saying is I think 80s right now are more accessible as an ideal. It's more kitschy.

Well, yes. Well, it's kitschy and they still play it on the radio. Yeah. And it's kind of a retro feel right now, especially because people, I think, 10 years older than I am, they all have kids that are teenagers now. They might pull out their old parents' albums and make fun of them.

They might, you know. And so. Got a lot of tapes of Alf circulating around. Right. So I think, I don't know, I think the 80s are a little bit more iconical now than the 70s.

I also think at least one, if not several, deals fell through. Because if you go back and look at the press release stuff, it's got Billy Idol. All over it. Really? That's 80s.

I mean, you can't pretend like, I mean, he was a little bit 70s, but nobody knows him from the 70s. He's 80s through and through. So it's like. If they had Alice Cooper and Billy Idol signed on, hey, it's an 80s festival, and then Billy Idol. It's pretty bad when Billy Idol turns you down.

You know, my favorite line out of it, speaking of Alice Cooper, was... Danny Bonaduce was trying to talk Alice into going on. He's like, come on, man. You and I go way back. And Alice says, I just met you like two minutes ago, and I hate you.

And I was just like, he summed up the movie for me. I know. I was like, Alice, once again, you speak for all of us. We were all thinking that. School is out.

He's like, wow. Ellis is a prophet. That was a weird thing to say. When he also drops the line, it's, I only did this to promote my golf album. My golf book.

He is. I knew about this when I was in eighth grade. He is like a scratch golf. Oh, he's fantastic. He comes here because he likes to go to Valhalla.

Yeah. Yeah. For him to drop that reference. I think he might even, I didn't look it up. He might even have a golf book coming out.

Oh, I'm sure he did. That's probably why. Look at this audience. They're excited. They're excited.

They're stoned. They're not even gonna know who I am. Oh, they're going to love you. You're Alice Cooper. This is going to be awesome.

Yeah, dude. That's also why I think this got made. I'm assuming that's the pitch. Of this movie is, hey remember that blackmail stuff i got on alice cooper he's agreed to do a sci-fi movie they're like well what's the plot. I don't know what do you want to make the plot bring me on and kill me in 15 i.

Think yeah i think it's like they had people there and they're just like well what do we do i mean you know he was just waiting to be inserted in a movie they just made a deal with him because he doesn't need to be in this really it's again i think the deal fell through with all these other musicians, and he just sort of got inserted in this movie. I love how the stage wasn't even big enough. To house his band. That's what I'm saying. This makes no sense.

Barry Williams filled out the stage by himself. I was like, number one, you're not going to have any of these people. Duran Duran's not playing in that town. None of this makes sense. But then, okay, Danny Bonucci's full of shit.

We all know that. And within the story, he is too. He's lying. So, okay, that's fine. But... even as it's supposed to go, they're planning, according to Howard Hessman, to have 5,000 people there.

So this stage the size of this table is set up, and that little happy birthday banner that they roll out that they bought at the card store. Yeah, fast signs made that. But they needed 50 acres for that. But they needed 50 acres. I was like, guys, really?

You're watching it, and you see how badly the DP is trying to just keep Those 25 people filling the frame. He was not fooling anybody. They didn't look to the left or right. They passed those giant sunglasses around to two or three girls. That's what I don't understand.

I'm like, couldn't you sneak a camera into Lollapalooza and get some actual footage of a lot of people? Who has an outdoor concert when the snow is on the ground to begin with? It wasn't supposed to be on the ground. Well, that's the other thing is they showed all this stock footage of fighting forest fires. Yeah.

And none of it had... First of all, the topography they were in. Probably not even the state they were in. How did the fire even start? There was snow on the ground.

How did snow... Oh, it. Was when he tossed a bulldozer, wasn't it? Something caught on fire. But did it catch on fire?

Well, okay. I didn't understand Bigfoot's motivation. He went on the rampage because winter came early? Is that right? Yeah.

The seasons were like that never happens. Hibernation um feeding pattern i don't know they're just throwing out random shit but like if you watch that scene where sherilyn's supposedly explaining it like again she seems like she's just sort of making stuff up because because bruce like questions her on something she goes yeah yeah like you know like feeding patterns and like she seems like she's making it. Up but again it's like they could have taken it it's like they couldn't decide whether they wanted to do a tongue-in-cheek or serious and it just. It That's my problem with all those movies. They could do these with a little wit.

But they just choose not to. It's like you could shoot it a certain way and light it a certain way and make the actors dumber than they are, and I might laugh. Because I've decided if I ever get a little budget, I'm going to make squirrels. The tagline is, they want your nuts. And just very briefly, they're cutting down the wood, and someone explains, oh yeah, when squirrels, when their natural habitat gets... when it dwindles down, they turn to human flesh.

It's a scientific fact. Just throw that out there. It's like, voila, there you go. That's all the exposition you need. That's all you need.

That's all you need. And then the movie just goes. It's like this one tries to, like, sell you Bigfoot. And, you know, it's like I can accept that it's not what a traditional Bigfoot is. It's not even what a traditional horror movie is.

The thing that kept it from being enjoyable, really, is Danny Bonaduce is just so unlikable. Yeah. And they could have made him even more unlikable. It might have been funny. He's just playing himself.

He really is. He's at his job. That really is his job. It's just Danny on a normal Tuesday. Exactly.

I wasn't thinking about what I was seeing on screen. I was just picturing imaginary conversations at the catering table that Bonaduce and Alice Cooper might have had. Drinking their coffee. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous that us two... icons of the 70s are having to make this crap movie. And then Alaskan was like, well...

You not so much. And they're just kind of passively aggressively just like, you fucking hate being here. And like, you know, their egos. There's something stupid. Like, I just imagine stuff like that going on off camera.

Because I'm just checking out. By the way. Because you wonder, what was the attitude. When making this thing? It wasn't good.

Like, after the, you know, the yellow cut, everyone just went their separate way. Like, fuck. Mumbling. Anchorly mumbling. Yeah.

I kind of figured that maybe all of them happened to be just friends of Bruce Davison. Just outside. Once. Yeah. Now that I've found out that he. directed it i mean that.

Makes sense i almost feel like somebody else started making the movie and maybe he just raised his hand i'll finish. Maybe i almost think they took uh college students on editing and said here edit it because it's i i mean i could i i have no talent and no training i could have edited it better. I know i can so the film was full of crossfades right it's like crossfades denote in the language of editing the passage of time It's like, there's nothing like that going on here. It's like, that's just crossfade from an explosion to the police car. It actually could have been a lot of fun on set, and they just didn't realize.

How it was going to come out. What I didn't understand was, out of all the people that were killed, out of all the heroes, the firefighters, the cops, Alice Cooper even, the only ones who got statues in the end were Danny and. Where's the Alice Cooper statue? And that's what I don't get to jump ahead to the end there. I'm like, wait, so they get statues as heroes for fighting on top of a national monument when it explodes?

They were the ones that caused people to die in the first place. i was like what exactly were they up there doing that warranted a statue they were fighting. In this movie for it to be ironic. No it's just it just doesn't make sense how about a statue for the guy that fired. The shot yeah yeah exactly yeah fuck. She called in the National Guard.

She should get the statue. My question for the statues, mostly, is why do they look like the Munsters? Is it just me? Shrek kind of looks like Herman, and Danny looks like Grandpa. Did you notice Lincoln had a facelift in the background?

They're not going to let that be messed up. They'll rebuild. They can rebuild that. The overall plot, it reminded me it was last year when Fast Five came out. The Onion did a video where like their fake daily morning program had on a seven-year-old.

Yes and they script writer and he like falls asleep and takes his shoes. Off like so tell us tell us danny what about what came he's like in the movie like these. Cars are like and then it goes over the train and. It's got vindies he's big muscly man it's just like this little kid is telling this whole story and that was the whole time i was watching this is like it reminds me of that like some little seven-year-old was like And then the thing comes out and eats the rock people. That video was fucking hilarious.

And then the helicopter attacks. And the people in the. Interview are like, oh, it looks like someone's sleepy head. He takes his shoes off. He just takes a nap on the couch in the middle of the interview.

Like I said, just thrown out there. You never see things actually. put out in that state very often. And this was. It's like the exquisite corpse game or something. It's like the screenwriter, somebody would write a few sentences and just pass it over and somebody would continue and pass it.

It's not even like ripping off the Animal Attack movies as much as it's following the formula of sci-fi movies at this point. Because the more I started looking at it, I was like, because again, I kind of liked... Sharktopus, for what it was, it's equally as dumb, but it's actually a little more enjoyable. Roger Corman. I'll give him credit.

Whatever they did had a little more sense of humor to it, and I think it was a little more tongue-in-cheek. But looking at it, it's the exact same thing in that Tiffany movie is the exact same. Every time, specifically Sharktopus, though, there's a creature, and then they call in the big game hunter. They do that in both of those movies before this. And it's always a guy who's not... legitimate tough guy at all.

He doesn't even play a good tough guy. So I don't know why they keep hiring the wrong guy for that role. And then they bring it in and it follows this exact pattern every time to the point that I'm just like, do you really have to watch the new ones? They're all kind of interchangeable. So it's gotten to the point where the joke is just played out at this point.

Yeah, it kind of is. I hate, I mean, it's almost pointless to pick certain things apart, especially plot-wise. But when they've You have an army of rednecks that are on Danny Bonaduce's side, plus Barry Williams and the ultralight, and the National Guard and the police department are all chasing it. And they have the big fight where the ultralight goes down. They're all shooting it, and they've completely surrounded it.

And then it's like it almost jumps, and he's somehow escaped. And you've got news helicopters and... Army helicopters and following a 50-foot tall being that shakes the ground when it walks, but they can't catch it. They can't even find it. Oh, we lost it.

What do you mean we lost it? This is the same guy who can't get a clear shot. It looked too human. I couldn't. I know you can make it so that, you know, I don't know.

It just wasn't even halfway. It's like they lost a page of the script. Wait, there was a script? Right, I don't know. I think the people who made this movie were the people who, in school, didn't like to proofread their papers before turning it in.

Wait, I made this? This was just a movie made entirely by those people. And they just kind of carried that into editing. I got to say, though, there was one part in it I really, really, I don't know, I was really amused. I guess that's the best word.

The whole safe Bigfoot political movement. And the reason I was laughing at it is because, you know, the Greg Brady and all those little acolytes, you know, were saying that, you know, it, you need to get rid of your four-wheelers and turn off your electricity and basically go back to pioneer days and then the Bigfoot won't come and get you. He was basically using the Bigfoot to push his environmental agenda. And I was laughing at that because there are Bigfoot believers out there who believe that that is the exact same scenario to explain why the U.S. government denies the existence of Bigfoot. Basically, the theory goes that the U.S. government sees Bigfoot as an eight-foot spotted owl.

And they remember all the insanity that happened in the 80s or the 90s, whenever it was, just over the spotted owl and all the environmental protests and the Logging problems. So the theory is, like, if Bigfoot is ever proven to be true, it would bring logging to a standstill. You would cordon off areas as big as freaking states to use as Bigfoot reserves, you know. So because of that, the theory is that the U.S. government will never admit that it exists. And if anyone ever finds one, they send in the men in black to get the bodies and hide.

It, you know. There are stories out there about that. Yeah. Guys in black trucks pull up and scrape up the body. Is that why you had your, you know, put.

That fence up and hung up those signs? But yeah, I mean, part of that is, you know, based on kind of semi-logical history, you know. Yeah. But, They maintain that it's just easier to. Keep it a myth.

Let's keep it a myth, and then we won't have to address it. That could be close to reality. Kids, seriously, if you have never heard of the spotted owl controversy, look it up, and then just multiply that by like a thousand. What was the fish, the little fish, too? There was the red darter or something, the snail darter.

They shut down all kinds of stuff over there. I'm sure if they ever re-spot the ivory-billed woodpecker, it'll be the same thing. Same thing with salamanders. They do that all the time. Which is honestly, I've never understood why extreme leftists do not get behind the idea of Bigfoot for that exact reason.

If they could, it would push their environmental agenda to perfection. To perfection. Oh yeah. Yeah. Instead it's more of the right wing, you know, crazy guys.

Cause they want to have their guns so they can shoot big. Right. They identify with big. Yes. It's a fight to be free.

Bigfoot exists. They do. We can get rid of electricity and gas burning cars, man. You know, and then on the other side of that, that the, the most popular, you know, four wheel drive, uh, redneck smashing vehicle of all time was named bigfoot i think we're on to something here true it's almost it's almost ironic in name yeah. Bigfoot is a greenpeace.

Warrior hey even bigfoot is a victim sorry that's just And my favorite part of the flyers is like, save Bigfoot, but it's got Greg Brady's face on it. Like, are we claiming he's Bigfoot? Who put this marketing campaign together? I don't know. And I'm spent.

It's like the only thing I can say for it, and you were asking if it works as a horror movie. No, at best it works as a comedy, but not the way it's supposed to. The way that it works is much like you said, on the level of a seven-year-old child. Because there's still a point where every time he kicks somebody into a tree, I fucking laugh. And I don't...

At one point, I'm like, why? Why am I still laughing every time he swats somebody into a wall? You're waiting for it to happen. There's a guy, there's Bigfoot, he's going to hurt him. Dave or Greg, one of you all have to show... your kids the movie and see if they find it entertaining.

If they find it entertaining, the movie succeeded. If they are bored with it, you know, I don't know. I, the only reason I watched it was for the show. I stopped it several times. I was so, I was grading papers during.

Oh, you missed out all the nuances. I had to like go and like, Oh, I'm going to go check a few things on the computer and Oh, I'm going to go. I was making dinner and at one point it was, it was hard. My final question, the one thing I didn't get. It is very well established that every time Bigfoot comes up on someone, he picks them.

Up and bites their head off. Why in the very end did he suddenly feel like, I'm going to save these two douches who. Are hanging off of Lincoln's brow? And they even set that up like it was going to make sense, because then he had the girl there, and I'm like, okay, now they're totally going to King Kong. Beauty sues the savage beast, and he's going to like her, and he's going to keep...

No, he totally kills her, so I'm like, Well, if he didn't like her, if she was kind of cute, why does he want these two douchebags? I think it was because it was the two enemies, lifelong enemies. One was helping the other. And so that was Bigfoot. Yes.

That's what that was. We can all be at peace. I'm going to help him. It's like Roy Batty on the building at the end of Blade Runner. Exactly.

Exactly right. Any life is hard. I got a lot of Blade Runner out of it. No, actually, maybe. See, that's the nuances of this movie.

Maybe it's more like Mary Poppins. She shows up, and then once everyone's lives are better, then she leaves. Now, she causes a lot of chaos for the people who don't live in that one house. Right. But still, once that family gets back together, the deed is done.

She leaves. Same thing with Bigfoot. It's like, once they've patched their friendship, the deed is done. He can go back to the woods. You took film classes, didn't you?

The wind changed it. The agent of chaos. Well, it is puzzling that Bruce Davison is in this, considering he's an Oscar nominee, an Emmy Award winner... For both, I think, writing and... Or for acting and directing.

So it's... Yeah, it's weird that he has anything to do with this, but. Who was he nominated for an Oscar for? A longtime companion. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And there's... It's like, tell me before I just assume Willard. But... And again, you know, for geeks out there, he's Senator Kelly from the X-Men movies.

Yeah. But I don't know. The weird thing is he's only directed, like, two other things... One was kind of like a kid's movie, but again, you said maybe they were all friends of him. The kid's movie is about Christmas, and it stars Sherilyn Finn.

So really, I'm starting to see maybe this was just sort of, we all kind of know each other. Hey, you want to step in and direct this thing since that guy fell out? It might have come together like that. He fell off of Lincoln's face. Or off the wagon, one of the two.

But the other weird tie-in on the. After the big success of Harry and the Hendersons, they made a TV series, The Dad, played by Bruce Davison. So, when you can't get John Lithgow... Yeah, he's the John Lithgow for TV. I think he directed some of those.

Yeah, that was his first directing. Bruce Davison is the Big K. Cole version of John Lithgow? Yes, yes he is. And I'm sure he puts that on the top of his resume.

Well, do we have anything else on the Bigfoot fund here? Don't watch it. We can try, but. It's a little late for that. Don't watch it.

It's a little bit late for us. I did find this. In looking for stuff on one of these sites, there was a quote, and I'll credit Walt Cliff here. Walt, if you're out there listening, I like this quote. He says...

I spoke with Bigfoot's agent. He said that Bigfoot was forced to do this movie due to contract obligations. However, he is mortified that he will be sharing the screen with Greg Brady and Danny Partridge. I just thought that was kind of funny. I was like, thank you, Walt.

That kind of sums it all up for us. I think the tagline for this movie should just be, way to fucking go. Isn't that every sci-fi movie? Asylum. Way to fucking go.

Yeah. Had this premiered in theaters, I just could have pictured that. I've heard stories where allegedly like Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelly and some of the others, like when they premiered Night of the Lepus, they were just a classic, you know, cowering in their seats and a couple, I think, even left before the film was over. I can imagine the same would have happened had this been shown in a theater versus just. Straight on television.

Was there a premiere for this thing? On SyFy. I was going to say, I can just imagine a red carpet event for sure. I think there were similar stories from when they premiered The Giant Claw. No one had seen The Giant Bird before the movie premiered.

This was making the rounds in the Bigfoot world. Oh, cool, they're going to do a Bigfoot movie with Alice Cooper. And then they saw the trailer. And even in the Bigfoot world, they're like, oh, man, this sucks. Yeah.

I'm crazy that people can recognize a terrible movie. There were people with no sense of perspective. There was a lot of hope, and then the actual trailer came out, and it was universally praised. The hell you say. Not this fine movie.

Sci-fi, the channel, you know, with all the wrestling and the different name spelling, it's gotten so far away from the concept of sci-fi. Could there actually legally be a new cable channel that could call itself the science fiction channel and still go? We'll just call itself Sci-Fi SCI-FI again. Yeah, even that and still get away with it. I think so.

They gave up the rights to it, I bet. That could be part of their plan. Maybe they're going to spin off the good stuff into some other realm because it's just junk now. Like coming up with Spike. Well, they'll find a way to make you pay more for it.

It's like Boomerang and Cartoon Network. Or like, what's the Nick at Night one? The TV Land channel. TV Land. I don't know if they want to pay extra for this.

Is there a Spanish language sci-fi channel? Actually. Chupacabra? Well, I was going to say, actually, now that I think about that, I probably would have found this entertaining had it been in Spanish and I had no fucking clue what people were saying. Sure.

Wait, that leads to the question, is there a Spanish-speaking Danny Badaduchi somewhere? I'm sure they have their equivalent of our Danny Badaduchi. If there's anyone out there listening in Mexico or some Spanish-speaking country out there, let us know if... There's some equivalent to Danny Badaducci or Greg Brady. And then recommend the film to us as well.

And then let us know, yeah, what movie we need to watch. Yeah, but it's got to be better than Bigfoot. Like I said to Brian, though, I think it was right when I was done watching it, I said I was glad they took a Tuesday and a half a Wednesday to make this. Yep. And they did a fine job with it.

It probably took as long to edit as it did for me to watch it. Mm-hmm. It took as long to make that title screen. They made it in Windows Movie Maker. Just drop the clips and call it done.

Isn't that how you do it? Come on. All right. I think that should wrap up Bigfoot. So with any luck, as the evil plans go, I'm assuming we'll be back with more Bigfoot movies.

We won't let this one break us. We're going to come back and find better Bigfoot movies and continue this series. You can only go up. Yeah, pretty much. Very true.

At least, you know, we had a movie that had Alice Cooper die for us. I guess that says something. Because he died inside. There's that whole sub-genre of. We didn't really see him die.

Maybe he was magically saved and he'll come back in the sequel. If you believe in Alice Cooper... Clap your hands. They should have just made him shoot the final scene and Alice Cooper. Was the one that took him.

Alice had a cardboard stick. Yeah. Alice really is the best part of this movie. Let's face it. He's the reason it probably got made, and he was the best part of it for the two and a half minutes he was on screen.

Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week. Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. A hundred numbers on my wall Some of the names I sometimes call I drop the coin And watch it.

Fall Trying to get connected to you I thought that I was all alone My. Softest pillow turned his heart to stone This is. The longest night on my. Own Lying here thinking of you. Sometimes I shake my head and I laugh to myself.

I'd like to start again with somebody else. Well, I'm like a crooked toy forgotten on the shelf. Baby, I could have been someone. I could have been something. It would have been nothing to die for you.

Baby, you're gonna need me. You better believe me. It would have been easy. To die for you. A million memories flood my brain Drown my sorrow, kill my pain Where's my firstborn?

Here we're again Just another night to. Get through. All my neighbors scream for quiet at my door Shattered glass. And torn up photos on the floor Well, I couldn't stand to see your pictures anymore. Baby, I could have been someone.

I could have been something. It would have been nothing to die for you. Baby, you'll burn me down. You better believe me it would have been easy to die. For you these cuts are.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A billion teardrops falling from my eyes But it's just a joke now and I'm laughing at your lies You made me hardest rock, now. I realize I could have been.

Someone I could have been something It would have been nothing To die for you Oh, you're. Gonna need me You better believe me It would have been so easy To die. For you Yeah, I could have been someone I could have been something It would've been easy to die for you. Oh, you're gonna need me. You better believe me.

It would've been easy to die for you. Was this movie atmospheric at all? No. No. It was atmospheric.

It was atmospheric. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with the opening music performed by The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!