When it comes to monsters in American pop culture, few are as popular or beloved as Bigfoot. Sagas about human beings encountering this hairy wilderness beast have populated campfires for decades. Meanwhile, there’s an entire thriving culture based around trying to spot the creature or creative souvenirs based on Bigfoot. Everyone can’t get enough of Bigfoot, except for in one area. When it comes to motion pictures, Bigfoot has shockingly few superb movies to his name.
Bigfoot is certainly popular in terms of cinematic representation. However, Bigfoot hasn’t spawned as many iconic movies as Frankenstein’s Monster or the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The sasquatch is just as elusive in the halls of all-time great cinema as he is passing by people’s cameras in the woods.
Thanks to the enduring popularity of Bigfoot, the character has shown up in a handful of acclaimed movies, largely concentrated towards family audiences. The cryptid memorably appeared in A Goofy Movie, for instance, while the titular Harry of Harry and the Hendersons was Bigfoot himself. The Oscar-nominated Laika title Missing Link also centered on a variation on Bigfoot, while recent indie titles The Man Who Killed Hitler and then The Bigfoot and Sasquatch Sunset garnered positive reviews while exploiting the Bigfoot mythos. Bobcat Goldthwait’s 2013 found footage feature Willow Creek, which concerns a couple searching for Bigfoot evidence, also scored positive reviews.
This collection of features is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s nothing compared to the revered pantheon of motion pictures centered on other famous movie monsters or cryptids. The dearth of acclaimed Bigfoot movies might simply be because many acclaimed filmmakers (who could bring a Bigfoot masterpiece to life) don’t want to go near a character so ubiquitous in culture. How could Yorgos Lanthimos or James Wan, for instance, hope to leave an impact with their Bigfoot movie when people can already see the character for free in commercials for beef jerky or hotel booking sites?
Being a public domain character that audiences immediately know, Bigfoot is already a go-to figure in advertising, video games, and even sports mascots, among other fields of entertainment. That provides a lot of noise for any Bigfoot-centric movie, good or bad, to break through. That’s likely turned away filmmakers with more ambitions than cranking out cheap R-rated horror schlock from tackling Bigfoot on film. Unfortunately for this creature, Bigfoot’s presence on film was also likely hampered by the most important element in show business: timing.
Bigfoot initially gained momentum as an American folklore icon in the late 50s and throughout the 60s. As the 70s began, Hollywood began exploring the figure’s popularity with movies like Bigfoot and The Legend of Boggy Creek. However, any hopes that returning to the Bigfoot horror well could deliver an all-time great Bigfoot movie were dashed once the scary cinema landscape forever changed in 1975. This is when Jaws became a box office juggernaut and established a new mold for all horror movies.
Audiences wanted to see people threatened by animals, but not cryptids like Bigfoot that may or may not exist. Studios were convinced that ferocious versions of animals you could see in a zoo or your backyard were the key to box office success. Thus, Bigfoot was largely forgotten in mainstream cinema until 1987’s family-friendly Harry and the Hendersons. This shift in timing for what kind of creatures audiences wanted to see on the silver screen deprived the world of countless opportunities to see a proper quality Bigfoot movie.
Still, that doesn’t mean that the story is done when it comes to Bigfoot in cinema. Sasquatch Sunset’s audacious comedic vision for the Bigfoot mythos vividly suggested that this cryptid could still inspire cinema that generates very profound reactions (positive, negative, or disgust) from viewers. As long as people are out there trying to sneak a glimpse of this creature in his natural habitat, there’s bound to be movies that explore this fascination with Bigfoot. Eventually, other great movies will be added to the Bigfoot cinema canon and ensure that A Goofy Movie and Harry and the Hendersons are no longer so lonely.
A Goofy Movie is now streaming on Disney+.
