The Curse of Bigfoot

…seriously. You need to see this movie. I mean…come on! Look at the poster!

I sit here literally at a loss for words.  Last night I watched a movie so tremendously, horrifically, hilariously bad that they don’t make an -ly word strong enough to describe the mind-melting horrible awesomeness of it.  The moving I’m talking about is called Curse of Bigfoot, and it is a tour de force of B-movie horror at its finest.

A bit of background about how I came across this little gem.  My dad lent me a horror collection called Pure Terror, which contains fifty “classic” horror movies.  Such masterpieces as The Manster (panned as one of the worst movies ever made–I’ve yet to see it) and Track of the Moonbeast (which was victimized in a great episode of MST3K) are represented in the collection’s line up.   It sat on my TV stand for about three days before I finally decided to give it a look.  I saw Curse of Bigfoot on the back cover and my crappy movie sense started tingling.  Somehow, I knew that movie would be a rare treat and boy howdy I was not disappointed.

Curse of Bigfoot is…well, it’s sort of hard to say what it’s about because the thing is a mishmash. That’s because really it is an amalgamation of two movies.  Curse began life as Teenagers Battle the Thing in 1958.  Near as I can tell, Teenagers Battle the Thing never saw the light of day until 1978 (or maybe 1972…or 1974; I’ve seen three different release years) when the director  slapped on an extra thirty odd minutes of footage and called it Curse of Bigfoot.

Witness the glorious stupidity of…Bigfoot? Whatever the hell that thing is supposed to be, at any rate.

As you might guess, this Frankenstein of a movie involves teenagers.  But more on that in a second.  This is literally the only monster movie I’ve seen that reveals the titular beastie in the first ten minutes. And holy God is it hilarious!  It’s a guy in a gorilla suit with a paper mache mask made to vaguely resemble The Wolfman.  You can even see the eye holes.  I’m not kidding you one bit.  I have pictures!

The thirty odd minutes of footage added twenty years after the original (boy that’s weird to say) are a bunch of inarticulate nonsense that have little to do with the actual movie.  There’s a scene where a monster that looks suspiciously like the titular Bigfoot stalks a woman.  Mind you, the scene was done in broad daylight but it’s clear from the dialog that it was supposed to take place at night.  This scene though is a clip from a movie being shown in a high school, a class devoted entirely to mythological monsters apparently.  There’s talk about their guest speaker, who is coming to speak to them about Bigfoot, before another long clip that looks like an instructional film about the lumber industry cut with clips of a guy in a bad Bigfoot costume stalking a couple of loggers.  Finally, the speaker appears and tells the story of his encounter with Bigfoot.  In one of the greatest lines of the movie, the guest speaker describes how one of the young ladies with him on this expedition is now nothing more than a catatonic vegetable.

That’s right.  This movie doesn’t get to the ACTUAL movie until half an hour in, but boy is the wait worth it.  We’re treated to the worst acting and special effects this side of Troll 2.  The guest speaker is a former science teacher who, when he and his group encountered Bigfoot, was a part of an archeological dig (for some reason) that consisted of himself, an archeologist, and a gaggle of teenagers.

…this is just endlessly hilarious.

The group eventually (I’m fast-forwarding a bit because there is a LOT of scene padding) discovers a mysterious crypt that contains a mummy encased in clay.  Being the wonderful archeologists they were, the group decides to gank the mummy from its resting place and stuff it into a shed, where it is revealed that the clay enclosed a horrify(ingly bad looking) monster!

The monster goes on what has to be the lamest rampage in B-movie history–I think it killed maybe one person and then at the thrilling climax of the film it just sort of stands there and lets the teenagers douse it with gasoline.

…sorry if I spoiled it for you.  As if you can spoil a movie as rotten as this.  Anyway, Curse of Bigfoot has to be seen to be believed.  It hits you like a freight train of awesome-badness.  If you’re like me and you like really, really lame movies you’ll want to do yourself a favor and give this one a look.  You’ll be glad you did.

How about you? Have you ever seen a movie so bad it was nearly a religious experience?  What’s the best/worst movie you’ve ever seen?