Shooting Bigfoot (2013)

Just what I expected

Just perfect...

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

As I started watching this, I thought I had the jyst... oh yeah, snobby Brit filmmaker goes down to Texas to make fun of the bigfoot rednecks and yuck yuck it up!And that does happen in the first few parts... 'I'm going to put this can of tuna on this haybale...' 'but how will you know bigfoot takes it??''OH, I KNOW! Only bigfoot would ever take that!'Then we meet Rick. We can see the relationship is off to a bad start right away when they film Rick falling over dead sticks twice, clearly embarrassing him, and then ask him if maybe it's because he's wearing cowboy boots in the bush. Rick's tone grows increasingly manic, furious, and bordering on lunatic: "Don't get me wrong... I LIKE you during the day... but at night.... WHEN YOU KEEP SHINING THAT EFFFING LIGHT IN MY EYES....I GET REALLY P****D OFF!!!!" Why the Brit filmmaker does not exit stage left thank you very much Col. Kurtz I'll catch you on someone else's movie.... seems to have more to do with stubbornness and stupidly than reason. Especially when they meet the strangely 'medicated' young man living by himself in the woods with his throwing knives, who practices constantly, and then his dog shows up with a giant gash in it's throat and he isn't sure what happened but it's OK.... And the bigfoot hunter who claimed the cessna circling overhead was a UFO camoflaged to look like a cessna, and monitoring their interactions with bigfoot. Why the filmmaker is still around after this, and Rick starts dropping his fully loaded hunting rifle, then drops it ON PURPOSE just to put the Brit in his place... I have no idea. I really don't. He really deserved to get attacked by a guy in a gorilla suit at the end. He had it comin!

This show has the most impressive array of idiots running around the forest in search of The legendary Bigfoot than you can imagine. Instead of a sophisticated team of scientist and professional trackers, you have men like the creepy, trigger-happy Rick blasting away into the night like a lunatic while terrified filmographer Morgan Matthews looked on. And though they possibly caught the face of a Bigfoot on camera, it looked surprisingly more human than some of the Bigfoot hunters in this show. Another BF investigator was involved in a BF scandal and unconvincing declared he had no idea it was a hoax. Maybe the director's intention was to make a documentary about the worst Bigfoot hunters in existence, or that what I'd like to think. Don't get me wrong, I do believe in the possibilities of a Bigfoot, Skunk Ape, Squatch or whatever and watching a hunt can be entertaining, but when I have to suffer through a show this bad, I'd rather have Bigfoot chuck stones at my head.

I don't believe in the existence of Bigfoot so I had some reservations about this film. I had seen a documentary on the subject previously, namely The Legend of Bigfoot (1976). That one was very sincere but it was also very silly indeed. As it turned out, Shooting Bigfoot was really more about the kind of people who made films like that than it was about Bigfoot itself. It was a very funny film indeed and hugely entertaining overall.In it, director Morgan Matthews follows three separate groups of Bigfoot hunters on individual treks. The results are edited together. Firstly there is Tom Biscardi, a man who has spent decades making documentaries about the subject. He is quite a highly strung fellow and somewhat self-important. Many of the funniest moments revolve around him and he has some very amusing dialogue throughout. Secondly there is Dallas and Wayne who are a couple of elderly hillbillies. They are much more sympathetic characters than Biscardi and it's hard not to feel a little sorry for them in their dead-end obsession. They drive out into the woods to play cassettes and make animal noises in an attempt to lure in the beast. The walls of their home are full of photographs of evidence but truthfully they are photographs of nothing. Their obsession is given a little context in that a work injury left Dallas unable to continue in his job leaving him trying to find meaning for is life in the hunt for Bigfoot; it's quite sad, although he does seem a undeniably little mentally unstable especially when he claims he has an affinity with Bigfoot because he has animal DNA as a result of a sheep bone being implanted in his head in order to seal a wound. Lastly, there is Rick Dyer who is a self-styled 'Bigfoot Tracker'. He really seems to be a somewhat dangerous man and appears to engage in games with Matthews to try and freak him out in the middle of the night. The fact that he spends most of his time carrying a loaded rifle doesn't exactly help matters. To make the situation worse they encounter a young homeless man in the woods who may or may not be secretly in cahoots with Dyer. But even if not, this guy gives off the impression of someone to keep well away from. One night he pitches up at the camp site with his dog horribly gashed at the neck. His ambivalence on the matter made you wonder if he was the one who actually did it. Anyway, this strand of the film is the only part that actually ends with any conclusion. Surprisingly, it's a pretty scary one. Although it does push the documentary onto the 'is-it-a-mockumentary?' side of the fence.