SunnyHello Nice effects though.

GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

soulexpress This film began life in 1958 as a student-made short. It was pretty much what you would expect from such a venture: a clichéd script rife with plot holes, acting as bad as a military training film, ultra- cheap special effects, half-assed photography…. You get the idea. Now fast-forward 17 years, when the original film was tacked on to footage from an equally bad Bigfoot docudrama and sold to TV as a 90-minute feature. The "new" film starts with a narrative about the earliest rumblings of man dating back two million or so years. Not only is it badly written, but the forced earnestness of the youthful-sounding narrator makes the scene hilarious.Next, we cut to a 1975-era high school classroom in which the teacher is (for whatever reason) doing a unit on mythical creatures. This leads to a monologue on Bigfoot with scenes of logging. Why? Because Bigfoot was seen at logging camps in the Pacific Northwest, you silly Billy! But wait, there's more: if you enjoy drawn-out scenes of touque- topped Canadians walking through the woods, boy, are you in for a treat! And for fans of MST3K, there's even a rock- climbing segment. Once the teacher finishes babbling about the Yeti, he brings in a guest speaker to tell of an experience he had some fifteen years ago. That's when the original film kicks in.The 1958 monster is not actually Bigfoot. It's a ridiculous-looking mummy (with fangs, and a fried egg instead of an eye) that some high school students bring back to life when they dig up a Native American burial ground. (Oops!) The mummy goes on a killing spree because…. Well, that's what mummies do, right? The kids call the local sheriff, who is surprisingly quick to believe their story, and go on a manhunt for the creature. They lure it out into the open with meat scraps (don't ask), then toss gasoline on the mummy and set it on fire. It goes up like a charcoal briquette. The end.The film has two female characters who never really do anything. They're just kind of...there. Why? Perhaps they were dating the producer and director, who knows? Also, the "scientific" explanation for the mummy's resurrection really doesn't pass muster. It has something to do with ancient herbs put into the tomb that somehow kept the mummy dormant until our heroes come along. So, does that mean the mummy was buried alive? Again, there's no way of knowing.Somebody thought it was a good idea to pad out a 17-year-old film- club project and put it on TV. Of course, it was 1975 and drug use was pervasive. Maybe that explains it.

kevin olzak Those Chiller Theater fans in Pittsburgh who stayed up for the special triple (as opposed to the usual double) feature on October 30 1976 were highly entertained by both "House of Frankenstein" and "House of Dracula." Ah, but the real Halloween 'trick' was this rickety home movie, shown in between the two Universal classics, which actually saw two repeat airings over the next 6 years (Aug 2 1980 and Jan 23 1982). With its classroom instructor discussing the shark in "Jaws," some of it at least appeared to be new, but by the time the flashbacks began, I noticed the late 50s vintage cars on display, and slowly began to realize that someone had decided to take an unreleasable 59 minute turkey of uncertain origin, add 29 minutes of 'new' footage, resulting in a full length feature that was truly a difficult sit. All I can say is that Larry Buchanan's Azaleas look like beloved works of art in comparison. The first half hour, set in a classroom, is interrupted by interminable stock footage of logging (!) and a slow crawl through the woods after a Bigfoot wannabe, seen for all of 10 seconds. Once the flashback begins, relating the original "Teenagers Battle the Thing," it fails to improve. By the time the excavation unearths an ancient mummy, it doesn't start walking until the last 23 minutes out of the 88 total, and is glimpsed for about 90 seconds (if that sounds like fun, be my guest). Bad movie buffs may find some entertainment value here, with no actual relation to Bigfoot (topical only during the 70s), I just hope that the updated version and additional footage did help the filmmakers turn a profit, since it has proved to be, in a sense, unforgettable, though for all the wrong reasons (just getting it shown must have been an achievement in itself).

lemon_magic I once saw this collection of exposed film as a member of a group of bad film fans who gloried in watching skin-peelingly bad movies. We agreed that this movie (in whatever incarnation) was one of the most wooden,lifeless pieces of dreck we'd ever come across.Several years later, I came across it again on archive.org, and downloaded it to see if it was really all that bad. This was after I'd notched several more years of watching pathologically undistinguished movies from people like Jerry Warren, Ray Dennis Steckler, Larry Buchanan and Bill Rebane, and I wanted to see how well "Teenagers Battle The Thing/Curse Of Bigfoot" stood up against these new contenders in the Bad Film Showdown.I have to admit, that time and perspective have improved my opinion of this film. Oh sure, I've only upgraded it from one star to two, but my opinion of it HAS improved.This movie really is just an obvious "Amateur Night" effort. There isn't a real performance...hell, there isn't a single convincing reading of a line of dialog by anyone in the movie. The "actors" obviously had no idea what to do, and neither did the director. Or the editor, who seemed to feel that every...single...scrap...of exposed footage needed to be included in the final product, no matter how ill considered or badly shot, scripted, performed, blocked or miked. (My favorite example is where two of the "teenagers", upon learning that their policeman cohort has been attacked some distance from their "ambush" site, pick up pails which are supposedly full of gasoline and go "running" to help their friend.) And yet, it's relatively harmless. Compared to the in-your-face,narcolepsy inducing boredom of 2nd tier Bill Rebane flicks like "The Alpha Incident" or "Invasion From Inner Earth", or Norman Thomson's "The Revenge Of Doctor X", this exercise in static tedium and wooden non-acting at least has the charm of feeling naive and childish, like a high school student's first attempt at a film.You shouldn't pay a dime to watch this thing. In fact, you shouldn't watch it at all unless you are an extreme fan of bad,bad film. But at least it's better than I remember.

roddmatsui No, they don't show this one on late-night TV anymore, and it's a crying shame. If you can track a copy of this one down, buy it! Pay as much as anyone asks. Sell anything you own! No Bigfoot film enthusiast should miss this. It's better than "Night of the Demon."One of the very worst of all the Bigfoot films, this one is a lot of fun--if it's your kind of thing. It was, as noted elsewhere, made in two sections, and is unique in that it features one main character who appears younger in the 60's footage, and older in the 70's footage. No aging makeup was necessary! The actor aged all by himself!The Bigfoot costume appears to be made out of hair with a certain amount of twigs, nuts, and berries mixed in--it kind of resembles a heap of leaves someone has raked into a pile. Observe the ingenuity at work when the Bigfoot is set on fire--someone stuffed the suit full of newspapers or something, stuck it on a stake hammered into the ground, and attached wires to the arms, so that they could wave the arms about as the creature catches fire. And I'm sure they squirted a whole can of lighter fluid on the thing before they lit it, because it really flares up nicely. It appears to be smiling as it falls apart. Forget CG effects; trust me, this is cooler than anything!One of my favorite scenes has the kids having a LONG discussion about how much change everyone gets back after bottles of soda, referred to as `pop,' are bought. It's all in the details--in this case, the profuse and unnecessary details. If you like movies as bad as you can get them, this one is for you.