One of the better entries in the Bigfootsploitation cycle — granted, that feat is not at all difficult — Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot takes the docudrama approach in following seven men on an Oregonian expedition to the Peckatoe River to hunt for the fabled monster.
Lead researcher Chuck Evans (George Lauris, director of Buffalo Rider) narrates the film and introduces his fellow travelers, including:
• shirtless Native American Techka Blackhawk (Joel Morello, clearly wearing a wig);
• a skeptical, big-city journalist (Lou Salerni), of whom Chuck tells us, “His negative attitude disturbs me”;
• Barney Snipe (Jim Bradford, From Nashville with Music), the curly-headed cook who looks like a truck-stop Ronald McDonald and executes a fine pratfall (“He’s a little clumsy. But his coffee isn’t bad.”);
• and an old coot (Ken Kenzle) and “his faithful mule, Ted.” The former, Chuck relays, is the only one who knows the way to Peckatoe … despite a scene mere moments before that shows Chuck and an anthropologist reviewing a wall-sized map with a point clearly marked as Peckatoe River.
As the gents mount horses and gallop through the forest, one-and-done director Ed Ragozzino throws in nature footage — Wolf vs. badger! Bear vs. raccoon! Bear vs. bear! — and, I presume, literally throws a mountain lion from an overpass to land on the horses below. (That shot is pretty funny; I watched it five times.) More famous are the Bigfoot-sighting stories the men tell one another at the campfire and on the trail, which Ragozzino cuts away to recreate; the most memorable finds a log cabin of miners under fire by rocks hurled by a family of Sasquatch.
After being a near feature-length tease, the film climaxes with a tree trunk-tossin’ finale that gives way to a tender Bigfoot ballad playing over the end credits. What an odd, chunky stew this Sasquatch is: a Sunn Classics fauxmentary mated with Disney nature shorts. For that reason, I can’t help but recommend it. —Rod Lott