aka The Beast and the Vixens

• Directed by Ray Nadeau
• Written by Gaynor MacLaren
• Starring
  • Jean Gibson
  • “Ushi Digard” (Uschi Digard)
  • Marius Mazmanian
  • Bob Makay

Just about everything about this movie is pitiful; the direction stinks, the actors are pathetic, the camera work is plodding, the music is laughably generic, and the monster makeup is just plain shoddy. But there’s one credit that stands out as particularly embarrassing: “Screenplay by Gaylor MacLaren.” Because the idea that this execrable excuse for a motion picture actually had a written script, the false notion that there was actually a plotted storyline constructed before people got in front of the camera and allowed themselves to be filmed, is an insult to the viewer’s intelligence. Better to say that this script was found under a rock, spontaneously generated from some fungal growth with the intriguing ability to almost mimic intelligent communication. In other words, I’m damned sure that Gaylor MacLaren, wherever he is today, isn’t trotting this steaming pile of dung out for show-n-tell when the relatives come over for eggnog.

Things start poorly, with an on-screen narrator haltingly giving us background information on the Yeti and Bigfoot. An on-screen narrator is never a good feature; the fact that he stumbles over his exposition (no second takes allowed here) is a definite bad thing; and the fact that they filmed him in a wooded glade, where shadows from foliage inadvertantly obscure his face, adroitly demonstrates for us the technical acumen which will inform the entire proceedings. After his little spiel about the Wild Man of the Woods, he solemnly informs us, “The story you are about to see could be true.” You’re welcome to experience Ed Wood flashbacks at this point; I certainly did. But Ed Wood had a much stronger sense of story, camera use, pacing… hell, there’s nothing that Ed Wood didn’t do better than the ’shroomheads responsible for this mess.

You gotta be kidding me.

And in case you’re still wondering what this movie is about, the first real scene lays it out for you: A young waif rows her boat to shore along the edge of a wooded lake, where from the bushes — Bigfoot is watching! You know that rule of bad monster movies that you should delay showing your critter for as long as possible? Ray Nadeau never heard it. Instead, he gives us a full-view show of the monster, which is basically a big guy in a padded-shouldered ape suit and a face that… Well, did you ever see that Star Trek episode where Spock, McCoy, Scotty and some expendables crash their shuttlecraft¹ and get rocks thrown at them by huge hairy humanoids? We never see the brutes’ faces, but apparently there was a mask made for that episode by the makeup crew which was rejected because it was too goofy-looking. (You can find pictures of it in some Trek guidebooks.) Bigfoot’s face looks like this makeup man had seen that production still, thought it was really cool, and tries to reproduce it on a budget of a buck and a quarter. Anyway, the girl gets out of her boat and promptly sheds her top to catch some rays, whereupon Bigfoot lumbers up, grabs her, and hauls her off.

That’s just what the world was clamoring for, right? A Sasquatch nudie-cutie?

Now, you’d think after a set-piece opening like that, we’d get to our plot, right? You forget: There is no plot. So instead we get padding, because something has to happen between now and the closing credits. So we get a morning shot of a suburban subdivision. Then a lingering shot of a certain apartment complex. Then a lingering shot of a brunette sleeping inside. Her alarm clock goes off. Slowly she turns it off, and slowly rouses herself. She slowly gets out of bed, slowly goes to the mirror, slowly lights a cigarette. Slowly kisses a framed photo of a man who never appears otherwise in the movie. Turns on the radio. We get a full ten-second shot of the radio, all by its lonesome, playing elevator music. The woman gets in the shower. (Butt shot, no boobs.) Slowly lets the water fall on her face and shoulders for many, many seconds.

Boy, wasn’t that exciting? Aren’t you glad we were treated to a solitary woman’s wake-up routine? Isn’t that just the Art of Cinema on display?

Um, don’t you normally put the towel on your hair after the shower?

Back to the woods. Bigfoot’s caught another woman (this one with a shirt on), whom he takes to his cave, drops her in, and stuffs the narrow opening with bushes and stuff to keep her from getting out. (Hint to panicked, cave-trapped people everywhere: Howsabout you escape through whatever hole in the ceiling is letting in enough light for you to see clearly?)

And then we see a man in hunting attire walking down a dirt road in the woods. Walking, walking, walking… He reaches a phone booth. (A phone booth in the middle of nowhere? It’s just this kind of needless excess that got Ma Bell broken up!) He, named French, calls someone named Pete, and obliquely tells him that “Something is up.” Then he ends the conversation. Mercifully, we are spared the footage of him walking back to wherever he came from.

Back to the brunette, who drives her car to pick up another brunette (how do you tell them apart? One’s wearing purple, the other red). They throw some luggage in the trunk and leave, with no dialogue. Boy, isn’t this just exciting as hell?

Scientists today reported the discovery of a new hominid species, homo interruptus.

And back in the woods, Bigfoot has caught yet another hapless female, whom he throws in the cave with the last one. The two of them thus get to commiserate and speculate about their captor, who apparently has not done anything but throw them in the cave. (The girl who was already there mentions that there was another girl, presumably the boatrower, who escaped earlier. Because, you know, we hate to leave these ends hanging.) We also see that Bigfoot has a small fire going in his cave, which is presumably the source of the light; on the other hand, if there isn’t some kind of flue, he’s going to be racking himself up a stack of asphyxiated females.

Back to the brunettes, who show up in the mountains at eventide to start a “wild weekend” in their old mountain cabin. (Kinda makes you wonder why we had to watch the one wake up twelve hours earlier…) Here we learn several things: 1) Neither girl can act worth a damn. 2) The one we saw earlier is Ann; her friend is Mary. Mary has an accent (owing to the fact that she’s played by Swedish bombshell Uschi [here credited as "Ushi"] Digard); that’s how you can tell her apart. 3) The “wild weekend” is apparently contingent on “the guys” showing up; they never do show up, and in fact are never referred to again. 4) Confirming what every man believes goes on when women get together, after supper these two get drunk and topless (though a bait-and-switch is pulled with a lesbian love scene), which makes you wonder why they were so careful not to show Ann’s full body in the shower. This also gives us another way to tell the women apart, as Ann is of quite moderate proportions, while Mary looks likes she’s got cannonballs for implants. Bigfoot watches them strip naked through the window, hopping up and down in excitement like the learning-impaired kid at the group home I used to work at (just had to mention girls to him and he practically started vibrating).

We then cut to the next morning, where a couple in a volkswagen convertible have snuck up into the mountains for a little nookie. Well, “little” may be misleading; they start fondling in the car, then move to a blanket on the grass, and have an interminable softcore scene. (This was apparently rated R when it first came out; in today’s climate, this cut would have to be released unrated.) This goes on and on and on, until finally Bigfoot jumps out to interrupt. (Now you know how Bigfoot is snaring all the chicks in the middle of nowhere; he knows where all the hot makeout spots are.) The man jumps up and runs off, waving his arms; the woman is snatched up and immediately passes out. Bigfoot takes her off to a more secluded locale, dumps her on the ground, and fondles her for another five minutes, then leans back against a rock, confirming what I earlier suspected; not unlike a third-grader chasing girls at recess, he hasn’t the foggiest notion what to do with one when he catches her.

Ooh, there’s just something about a man with a guitar…

Meanwhile, out for their morning constitutional, Ann and Mary run across two other hippyish couples living up in the mountains, staying in a boys’ camp that’s only used three months out of the year. Naturally, everything is clothing-optional, so they all splash around in the water a bit, then go back to the camp cabin to eat some rabbit and kill some more time in meaningless conversation. The hipsters mention a “phantom friend” who eats food they put out for it, then leaves behind old coins that they turn into jewelry and sell down at the trading post. Ann and Mary then mention the old hermit they met yesterday, which came as news to me; they showed every other damned boring thing they did, and they couldn’t squeeze in their damned boring meeting with the old hermit? Ann rather unsubtly comes on to Hank, the bearded guitar-playing hippy, to the consternation of his woman Sarah. Thus, when everyone retires (everyone sleeping with them what brung ‘em), Sarah has a jealous nightmare, pitting her and Ann against each other as nude gunfighters (dressed only in gunbelts and boots). She wakes and asks Hank, “Do you love me?” When he readily confirms it, she says, “Then love me now!” And, you guessed it, another ten minute sex scene, including the ever-popular “beard caress” technique that drives all the women wild. (Look, it’s not that I’ve got something against sex scenes, but if you’re going to spend all this time displaying sweaty flesh, could it least be attractive sweaty flesh?)

Now. We’re a full fifty minutes into the movie, and a semblance of plot decides to raise its head (then it sees its shadow and goes back in for another six weeks, as you’ll see). Because French — remember him from way way back? — and Pete show up in the morning, watching the hippies and Mary fishing and stuff at the lake. Pete has just gotten out of prison, and he’s trying to get his rightfully stolen goods: The coins that Bigfoot uses as legal tender. And since the hippies are wearing some, they must know where the whole bag is, right? So they pulls guns on them and tie them up (not until French and the other hippy guy have a knock-down-drag-out fight), and then Mary opens her big mouth and tells them that Ann is still up at the cabin. So Pete drags Mary with him to show the way to the cabin (umm, French has had these people under surveillance, do you think he might have figured out where they live by now?), while French stays behind to try rape the other hippy girl that I haven’t mentioned yet and really didn’t care enough about to remember her name.

While dragging Ann and Mary to the hermit’s cabin (which is where Ann says she saw the big bag of gold coins), Mary escapes and goes running for help, finding — a woodcutter! That’s right, some guy in yellow pants out chopping down a tree with an axe in the middle of nowhere. Pete and Ann continue to the hermit’s cabin, where Pete ties Ann to the porch rail while he goes in. The hermit, meanwhile — a little guy dressed like a caveman — comes out the back and frees Ann, then tries to beat up Pete, but Pete’s a much bigger guy, so he starts pounding the hermit into the ground. And who should come to the rescue? Bigfoot! Naturally! He grabs Pete and bearhugs him to death, leaving the scene before Mary and the woodcutter show up.

When I have one of those dreams, the setting was usually my junior high school — but perhaps I’m sharing too much…

Oh, and meanwhile, the other hippies have managed to slip out of their bonds, the one guy who isn’t Hank beats on French again, and the almost-raped girl grabs French’s fallen gun — and French suffers an ignominious (and squibless) death.

So the hermit and Bigfoot saunter off together, Mary and Ann give all the hippies hugs, they drive off, and “THE END” appears on my screen. One hour and five minutes have elapsed. That’s it.

Has a movie ever been more pointless? All of that stuff about Bigfoot kidnapping women didn’t have anything to do with anything. Mary and Ann’s presence was completely unnecessary to the “thieves looking for their gold” story. We finally get a plot started fifteen minutes before the movie ends. I could complain about the padding here, but padding, by definition, is scenes that don’t add anything to the movie, and quite frankly, none of the scenes add anything to the movie. If we removed all the padding, we’d have a blank tape. And frankly, that’s an improvement.

Perhaps my devotion to movies like the long out-of-print Night of the Creeps has blinded me to the rule to which Night of the Creeps is the exception: If a movie had a single low-key video release and hasn’t been put out again for fifteen years, there’s probably a damned good reason. I just hope this review makes it into the right hands, i.e., all those starry-eyed idealists bidding thirty bucks and more for this piece of crap on eBay.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 2
• breasts: 12
• pasty male butts: 2
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0

1. If you value your life, NEVER SET FOOT IN A SHUTTLE![back]