The Mysterious Monsters (1976)

Touches You

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

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

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

There can no longer be any controversy. This film gives definitive proof that such things as Sunn Classic pictures actually existed in the '70's, and they were very cheaply made. They actually did employ inexperienced actors to reenact eyewitness testimony of Bigfoot, Yeti, and Nessie close encounters. They actually did use old Super 8 film with inconsistent sound levels. They actually did have the chutzpah to have some tall guy wander around in a cheap Halloween gorilla suit. They actually did advance the testimony of people like a few frightened boy scouts who were telling campfire ghost stories as irrefutable accounts.Peter Graves's ultra-serious "Dragnet" type of stoic narration is priceless; his mission to keep a straight face and tone in light of this amateurish production was more difficult than any he had on the Mission: Impossible series. The "scientific experts" he interviews look like they got their academic degrees from a box of Cracker Jack.Check your belief/skepticism at the door; opinions on the existence of the creatures have nothing at all to do with experiencing this film. This one is just for fun, to laugh at the shoddy production techniques. The film takes itself way too seriously, with various lines of "testimony" that are fun to imitate, and sequences, such as the guy "psychromitizing" a box to discover its contents (um, why not just open it?), which make you laugh so hard you miss half of it. It gets a grade 7 on its laugh value alone.

I recorded this movie off of TBS years ago & have just about worn out the tape from watching it over & over again. It covers just about everything you want to know about Bigfoot up until 1975. I would love to see Peter Graves do an updated version with all of the new info that has come out in the past 30 years. The Patterson Film is always the best part of any Bigfoot documentary. Even in 2005 there is nobody that has been able to prove that the film is a fake. I really don't see how anybody can think that it is a man in a monkey suit on that film. There is no way on God's green earth that somebody could have done that good of a job making a suit like that in 1967. Also, hoaxes are really hard to keep up for long periods of time because somebody usually gets loose lipped. Patterson died in '72 & swore on his death bed that the film was real. Bob Gimlin has said that he hasn't made a dime off of the film so if it was a fake, you would think that he would blow the whistle & then collect a ton of money going on the talk show circuit. Then there would be the guy who "played" Bigfoot. Bob Heironimus has said that he was the guy in the suit & was paid $1,000 to do it but never received his money so he started telling people around Yakima, Washington that he was Bigfoot. Until either Bob Gimlin says it was a fake or someone finds the "suit", I will always believe that that film is real.

This movie, which appears to take it self very seriously as a scientific documentary, argues its points so poorly and with such 70's flair (see Peter Graves) that it succeeds grandly as a mockumentary of itself and what passed for "science" 30 years ago. It's a laugh riot. Other than the big budget reenactments (which are entertaining in themselves), you'll wonder whether this film was written, directed, and edited for a 7th grade science project. Watch this film with other well-educated 30 somethings and be transported back to the days when you were scared @#$!less by Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and killer bees. Hey, aren't those killer bees supposed to have overrun America by now? (Disclaimer: killer bees may not appear in this film.)

The movie, "The Mysterious Monsters", is a fantastic movie! It tells the story of the phenomenon known as BIGFOOT. From the beginning of the phenomenon to the current day (As of 1975) history, this documentary movie covers all of the bases! It uses eyewitness evidence, video evidence, film evidence, footprint evidence, as well as alot of other investigative techniques, to establish that our planet is in fact home to these elusive creatures. It asks the question, "If fingerprint evidence can be used to hang someone,why can't footprint evidence be used to prove the existence of someone?" And the evidence does in fact prove that these creatures are real. This is a very interesting movie, and if and when the day comes that Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, who is also discussed in this movie, are proven beyond ANY doubt, this movie will make the headlines for being way ahead of it's time! It is a crime that this movie isn't available on video or DVD. It deserves to be! Check it out.