"Bigfoot : The Lost Coast Tapes" (2012) d/ Corey Grant

Tonight, we return to Bigfoot country for another recent genre effort featuring everybody's favorite elusive and mysterious wood booger (more or less...). That it's also another found fooage flick a la Blair Witch Project (1999) and sixteen million consequent clones of the shoestring budget variety shouldn't sway you from checking it out, at least once, as I'm here to tell you that it was pretty entertaining despite the obviously meager foundation, and I'm confident that you might just just come away with similar feelings to mine about it, after all, even if screening it may not sway you one way or the other on such a famed and folkloric creature's existence in the end.


"This must be where your mother tried to claw her way in last night..."
We meet Sean (Drew Rausch), who besides being a sort of poor man's Tom Cruise, is an independent filmmaker looking to bounce back from a prior nervous breakdown with a reality show pitch involving an internet-famous cryptozoologist named Drybeck (Frank Ashmore) who boasts of possessing undeniable physical evidence of Bigfoot's existence: a dead body. Sean has assembled a patchwork film crew consisting of Darryl (Rich McDonald), his trusty cameraman, Robyn (Ashley Wood), his producer/spiritualist/former squeeze, and Keven (Noah Weisburg), the impromptu sound man forced into action when his first choice, Curtis turns him down,  repeatedly reminding him that black people don't camp or fare well out in the woods, especially when looking for Bigfoot. Homie don't play dat Gigantopithecus sheee-iiit.


"There's a fuckload of nitrites in this sample. I think Bigfoot has a urinary tract infection."
After collecting his seventy-five thousand dollar fee from Sean (significantly less than Hillary's 225,000 speaking fee, y'know), Drybeck blindfolds the crew, confiscates their cellies, and drives them off to a remote cabin in the middle of the woods where things quickly take a turn for the familiar: the 'Squatch hunter dramatically weaves a few campfire tales and abruptly splits on the film crew with the only ride out after something takes out the electrified fence around the perimeter, scratches up the exterior of the joint, and even pisses on it (!) that evening. Do our heroes unanimously decide to recoup their losses and hike back to their vehicle immediately? Of fucking course not. Keep those cameras rolling, no matter what. Sean goes cinematic dictator with dollar signs in his eyes, Robin burns candles in the forest and goes New Age, Keven plays the neurotic Jew card and abandons his co-workers, and Darryl keeps a-filming, as his share of the profits increases by the minute. Do you smell a twist ending in the works? Because I sure do...


Keven (Noah Weisburg) immediately regrets agreeing to an adult bris.
If you're looking for an impressive 'Squatch suit on display here, you're fucking sunk, matey. Instead, director Corey Grant gives you a much more authentic feeling cryptid experience, peppered with "blink and you'll miss it" glimpses of large hairy shadows darting across the background, camouflaged eye shine, oversized footprints in the mud, sinister growls in the dark...more substantial than anything these "professional" crypto-goobers have been able to turn up in the last forty or so years researching in the field, when you think about it. Like I said earlier, pretty entertaining for budget-restrained genre fare, enough so to merit a pair of Wops on the scale. If this all sounds like your cuppa, give it a look for yourselves.


"...all the strawberry tartlets....are...gone."