Curse of Bigfoot (1975)* 1/2 (out of 4) A professor takes some of his students out into the woods where they discover an underground tomb. Inside that tomb they uncover the where abouts of a Bigfoot creature.If you've read my review of TEENAGERS BATTLE THE THING then you'll notice the first line above is the same and the reason that's the case is because this made-for-TV movie is actually that 1958 film but this here a little over twenty minutes worth of new footage. The history of this is pretty confusing because it was released in 1958 to at least one theater. This version was in B&W and ran for less than a hour. The film pretty much disappeared until this "new" version was released to television.Having now seen both versions there's no question that you'd be better off with the original since it runs shorter. As I said in my review, it adds up to a big fat zero but it's one of those movies where you're somewhat entertained hoping something is going to happen but then it ends up not doing so. This new version has some new scenes added in to make it seem like they were really hunting Bigfoot (it was an Indian mummy in the original film) and it's obviously a patch-job. The opening sequence is also added on and features some bad dialogue and an even worse performance.Is there a reason to watch either version? Honestly there's not because both aren't any good but at the same time horror junkies such as myself might want to just to see one of the strangest films ever made. I'd love to hear more about the history of these films but who knows if anyone else would really be interested.

I noticed on IMDb that "Curse of Bigfoot" (aka "Teenagers Versus the Thing") consists of a bad old movie from 1958 which was inter-spliced with newer material from the 1970s. Well, the version posted on archive.org is NOT the version but simply the 1958 film. So, understand that my review is not for the newer version."Teenagers Versus the Thing" is among the most boring and least professionally made horror films of an age where LOTS of bad films were being made. So, saying it's among the worst is saying a lot! The film is about a professor and his students who are out on some archaeological dig. Out of the blue, the students find some stone tablet embedded in the soil and when they pull it up, some silly looking creature is released upon them.Unfortunately for the film, these teen and young adult actors simply have no talent. They cannot deliver lines properly and seem about as convincing as a puppet show! And, the film is tepid and never really provides any horrors...except, of course, for the acting and writing (is there any writing??). Overall a silly mess of a film--and I can see why the film (probably for both versions) has an abominable rating of 2.0. Not fun and amazingly lame.

Representing the ugly, filthy, unwashed hind end of Sasquatch cinema, this dreadful direct-to-TV hodgepodge profoundly reeks more than the allegedly malodorous mythical monster. A little boy and his yippy dog are attacked by Bigfoot in the opening scene; this occurrence is never tied in with the rest of the flick. Next a pompous high school science teacher gives an interminable lecture about the origins and discovery of Bigfoot to his understandably disinterested class. An intense guy shows up to relate a grim story about his own nasty run-in with Sasquatch. Several years ago the intense guy was a high school teacher who with a coed student quintet in tow ventured into the wilderness to check out an ancient Indian burial ground. The expedition finds a mountain and climbs it. They uncover Sasquatch's secret subterranean tomb. They enter the tomb and run across a perfectly preserved mummified corpse. They remove the corpse, which turns out to be Bigfoot (!), from the tomb. Bigfoot awakens from his centuries of sleep and goes on the rampage. Man, is this patchwork muddle one beat movie. Don Fields' static direction sorely lacks both finesse and energy, the performances are terribly wooden, the narration is very annoying (Bigfoot is described as "a monster of evolution"), the pace lurches along at an excruciatingly sluggish clip, the story uses a confusing and disjointed flashback-ridden narrative structure with mind-deadening results, the cinematography offers a wealth of appalling mismatchings of footage shot in two separate eras, the cornball bellowing score sounds like it was lifted from some Grade Z 50's schlock creature feature, the faded color film stock is pure torture on the eyes, a stupefying surplus of extraneous filler abounds, the supposedly exciting climax is simply pitiful (Sasquatch gets torched in a small brush fire), and the Bigfoot is a real letdown -- he's some short heavy-stepping schmo in a ragged bush league hair suit with a pop-eyed, inexpressive paper mache mask on his face! The absolute pits.

My brother and I also enjoyed making fun of how bad this film was back when channel 9 showed it every two months or so in the mid to late seventies. Remember the incredible delivery of the girl talking to her dog, reminiscent of that "What? Sandwiches again?" commercial about learning to drive a tractor-trailer? I mainly recall the moment when they pull the plate covering the ancient tomb off and gas spurts out, with the leader of the expedition a full thirty seconds later surmising that the gas might be coming from a hole. I wonder if that scene was in any way an inspiration for Steven Spielberg in the equivalent scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when ... never mind.