The 1970’s was the decade of Sasquatchsploitation. Documentaries, mockumentaries, and fictional films based on documentaries and mockumentaries (I’m looking at you, Charles B. Pierce) were cranked out by the truckload and flooded drive-ins across the country like a flood… of Bigfoot movies. What, you want a clever simile in every damn paragraph? Who am I, P.G. Wodehouse? Fuck off, we’re talking about 30-year-old Bigfoot movies here, you take what you get and you LIKE IT! YEEEEAAAAH BOOOOYYYYYYYY! ::WHACK:: OW! Goddammit! Fine, fine, fine. On to the movie.

Rives and Pahoo (I wish I were making that up) are two students from Chicago, who go to Louisiana in search of the fabled Skunk Ape. Stories of sightings and even some attacks draw them to a small town near Black Lake (I hear there’s a creature from there), where they meet Orville Bridges (played by writer Jim McCullough, Jr., because there was never a Bigfoot movie made where the people who made it weren’t also the people who were in it), whose parents were killed in a Sasquatch-related car crash (Bigfoot is hard to take the keys away from once he’s had a few), and Joe (played by Jack Elam, better known as “That Guy With The Weird Eyes”), whose buddy Willy was killed by the creature while they were out trapping. Oh, and the local sheriff doesn’t want no durned yankee fellers rilin’ up the townsfolk about no durned Bigfoot creature. Durn it. Consarned durned flagnabbin’ yankee fellers rilin’ up all the dadgumbobbered townsfolk about the stupidey stinketey motherfuckin’ goddamn (I ran out of Southernisms) Bigfoot creature anyhow (found another one!).

Typical Bigfoot movie boredom ensues, the production’s budgetary constraints and/or total lack of imagination resulting in our two, uh, heroes, I guess the word is, relating stories to each other and having stories related to them about shadowy Bigfoot-ey goings-on where you can never quite see the Bigfoot because they don’t want to give away quite yet that they didn’t even have enough money to buy a dollar-store ape mask to put on the stunt actor because they blew it all on gluing Fun Fur™ all over him – or on getting stinking drunk on bootlegged moonshine. My money’s on the ol’ stumpblaster.

The movie does have one opportunity to raise itself above typical Sasquatchsploitation mediocrity at the end, when Rives stabs Pahoo, mistaking him for the creature that’s been chasing them both through the swamps all night. The sheriff arrives, and I thought for sure that we were going to be treated to some is-it-real-or-isn’t-it paranoia and Rives getting carted off to the madhouse by a disbelieving sheriff for murdering his friend…but no. The sheriff, although he never actually sees the creature, takes Pahoo’s gushing chest wound as ROCK SOLID PROOF THAT IT EXISTS AND IMMEDIATELY FORGIVES RIVES FOR NOT BELIEVING HIM! Worst. Cop. Ever. And dumb-ass Pahoo lives to make one more irritating crack about hamburgers, French fries, and Cokes before the credits roll. You see, that’s all he eats because his dad raised chickens, so he doesn’t like chicken anymore. And that’s funny. Like my half-assed Flavor Flav impression up in the first couple of paragraphs.

I have to say I have a hard time not liking these things, if for no other reason than the lovingly lingering shots of gorgeous southern swampland. Sure, the South can pretty much fuck off for giving us things like Lynyrd Skynyrd and George W. Bush, but the countryside is lovely. Scenery footage in Bigfoot movies is like the guitar solos on a Black Label Society record – they’re half the reason you’re there in the first place. In this case, the footage solos are courtesy of Dean “Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks and Jurassic Park” Cundey.

Unfortunately, by the time we actually get to some creature action in Creature from Black Lake, we’re already well past the pretty scenery footage. In fact, we’ve pretty much spent the last 70 minutes listening to Pahoo talk about hamburgers. I never thought I’d want Dennis Fimple to shut up, but I have a hard time reconciling that this is the same guy who busted the guts of horror fans everywhere as Grandpa Firefly just a few years ago. Thank Cthulhu he went out on a high note.

The action during the climax is so poorly lit, and the Bigfoot such a roaring disappointment once it’s revealed (really, Jack Elam looks more like a monster than the actual monster), that when I was finally supposed to be frightened and excited by the movie, I was paying more attention to my daughter wearing my wife’s bra on her head. Don’t get me wrong, a baby wearing a bra on her head is pretty goddamn entertaining, but when there are people being attacked by a raging Bigfoot just six inches to the left, it should not be your center of attention.

All in all, it was worth the four dollars I paid for it at the local pawn shop, but only just, and more for reasons of collection bragging than actual entertainment value. If you’re a Sasquatchsploitation (I bet I’m one of a choice few whose word processor dictionary recognizes that word as real and correct) completist, check it out. If you’re a Dennis Fimple completist, you may have to forgive him for this and check it out. If you’re neither of the above, put a bra on a baby’s head and laugh ‘til you can’t laugh no more.

The Moral of the Story:
Down where the sasquatch hide,
In the misty mountainside,
He's got shiny diamonds that he's got to protect,
Look into the sasquatch eye,
Did you know that sass could fly?
Sasquatch is my daddy and he's going to protect, me!
Half man, half machine
On the cover of a magazine,
Bigfoot is my father and he's got to protect, me!

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