Search for the Beast (1997)

I’m a big fan of Bigfoot movies, so I picked up a four-disc set of Bigfoot movies.  The first three of the movies on the set were the typical low budget drive-in nonsense from the seventies.  But Search for the Beast, which I watched last, turned out to be something entirely different.  Which in this case isn’t a good thing.

The movie opens up a couple of kids getting naked and killed by the savage Bigfoot that invades their campsite.  The next five minutes play like a faux documentary about the Bigfoot complete with a voiceover from our “host” Dr. Stone.  But then it abruptly changes back into a normal movie with a narrative and characters.  Well more like what the one time director, R.G. Arledge, thought was a normal movie.  The main character of Dr. Stone, who we have already met, is hired by the grieving father of the first victim of the savage Bigfoot attack to bring back evidence of the creature’s existence.  In reality he is being hired to take the well armed mercenaries up into the mountains to kill Bigfoot.  Along with Stone and the mercenaries is Stone’s new grad assistant Wendy.  Women get naked, the mercenaries get killed, Stone saves Wendy, and the Bigfoot gets some from a scary looking redneck girl.  Nope not kidding this movie has a sex scene for old’ Sasquatch.   

Some of you out there like to watch bad movies and may be tempted to track this one down based on my synopsis.  Please for the love of god don’t do that!  This is an awful movie with a stupid story that makes no sense at all what so ever.  I have a whole pile of notes explaining why the plot is dumb, but I’m not going to even address the issues.  Instead I’m going to give you two examples as to the incompetence behind the making of the movie and that should be enough to warn you off.

1.Bigfoot is nothing more than some averaged sized guy walking around in a gorilla costume with the worst Halloween mask on that I’ve ever seen.  It is clearly just a rubber mask and looks terrible. 

2.There is a scene where the good Dr. Stone and Wendy are using a video camera to record Bigfoot running around in a field.  First it is the same damn footage used everything Bigfoot is scene running around.  Second not only does location and lighting in the scene with Dr. Stone and Wendy not come close to matching the other footage, but they are staring at and pointing the camera at the face of a stone wall three or four feet away!  Yes you heard me right. 

Again there are so many more bad things I can say about this movie like they went camping without any gear, or perhaps the random musical number to stretch the meager (thank god) runtime to sixty-eight minutes.  Honestly this is a terrible movie that isn’t fun in anyway at all.  Even an odd acting appearance by legendary exploitation producer David F. Friedman isn’t worth having to sit thru this turkey.  Avoid at all costs.

0 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer