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Reviews
Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (1976)
Sasquatch The Legend of Bigfoot
Docudrama (NOT a documentary) of fictitious Bigfoot expedition. Full of 70s low budget charm starting with the actors in archetypal roles including the skeptical reporter, Indian tracker, and "old coot" miner who doesn't even know how old he is anymore. The movie starts off as cheesy low budget fare but surprises along the way with the quality of the nature photography to the elaborate climactic plot. The effort was ambitious and done with enthusiasm for sure.
Some exciting and at times disturbing creature attack scenes, mixed in with gentle animal humor and lighthearted hi-jinks between the crew. A pleasant 70s pop score by composer/arranger Al Capps is a nice plus.
There is a flashback retelling of the famous 1924 Bigfoot cabin attack at Mt. St. Helens, a still from which is used in multiple web articles on the possible re-discovery of the site in recent years.
FYI, the Code Red blu-ray of this movie is a double bill with the classic Encounters with the Unknown, and a bonus is the intro shown in theaters to promote the now defunct "North American Wildlife Research" bigfoot group in Eugene Oregon. (Google "Bigfoot Trap" to see something interesting that was set up in Oregon to catch Bigfoot in 1974).
A Study in Terror (1965)
Like Hammer without the sex and gore...
I'm a fan of these iconic mysteries, and this production takes a stab at both Sherlock Holmes and Jack The Ripper but in the long run is not really successful on either front in my view, and not for lack of trying.
John Neville was an excellent Holmes, one of the best performances of the brilliant detective. And Donald Houston played Watson somewhere between the original humorous Nigel Bruce and the more solid athlete as perceived by Robert Duvall in Seven Percent Solution. He seems like a younger, stronger James Mason in Murder by Decree. At first I did not recognize Judi Dench, a lovely young blonde in a smaller role.
Dialogue as read by the actors at times felt forced, like they had to push through it in quick fashion to move things along. I do think elements of the JTR mystery as they appear here are a bit ahead of their time, but the finale felt unsatisfying and rushed.
I thought the best elements were the settings - excellent street scenes and a pub filled with rowdy characters. The prostitutes unfortunately were looking very Hollywood though in their bright expensive dresses and perfect hair like they had just come from a salon, and the film generally lacked grit. There is a lot of teasing about the oldest profession that goes nowhere, and things in general are kept fairly tame, cutting away before anything becomes too appropriately sordid.
I'm a big fan of John Scott but his music here sounded too much like a 60's spy television show (the director James Hill worked on The Saint and The Avengers).
As noted in the trivia section, it is interesting that two actors in Study In Terror (1965) would appear later in the other Holmes vs Ripper movie Murder By Decree (1979; Anthony Quayle and Frank Finley (who would reprise his Doyle created role of Inspector Lestrade). There are other similarities between the films as well- suspicion of those in places of power, and the same shots of Holmes and Watson having similarly styled conversations riding in carriages together. It made me feel that Decree was more of a remake of Study, with the 1970s infamous Royal Conspiracy Theory solidifying the Ripper plot.
Overall, A Study In Terror feels like a Hammer production with less sex and gore, and not nearly as mysterious or atmospheric as other JTR movies like versions of The Lodger and Murder By Decree. Not quite mysterious enough for a Holmes story, and not nearly dark enough for JTR, lost in the mid 60s somewhere in between.