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Shooting Bigfoot: America's Monster Hunters

sherbetbizarre

sherbetbizarre

Special Branch
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Sep 4, 2004
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This documentary is on BBC4 tonight...

Shooting Bigfoot: America's Monster Hunters

Documentary looking into into the religiously obsessive, competitive and bitterly divided cult of Bigfoot hunting, as filmmaker Morgan Matthews accompanies three American Bigfoot search parties trying to capture proof of the elusive ape-like creature.

Tom Biscardi has been hunting down Bigfoot for 37 years and adopts a military approach with his 'A team' of guys armed with thermal imagers and tasers in increasingly far-out attempts to capture the beast.

Unemployed Dallas and Wayne in Ohio use more basic techniques, utilising cans of mackerel and Native American chants to lure the creature in.

Only renowned 'master tracker' Rick Dyer is intent on shooting and killing the mysterious beast as he stakes out a stretch of woods in Texas populated by homeless people, many of whom claim to have seen Bigfoot.

As truth and fact tip into malarkey, night-time hunts devolve into farcical displays of voodoo and comic stretches of the human imagination. What starts as a humorous look at perception gone off the rails, descends into a dark mystery as things get out of control during a close encounter in the woods.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03z05nr
 
It was recommended in the FT recently. I've recorded it so it can sit on my digibox for a year until I get around to it.
 
I have to say, this is probably one of the best documentaries I've seen in years. And (unintentionally?) funny to boot. Some of the scenes & characters were simply golden.

Highly recommended!
 
Dallas and Wayne are just hilarious. But what about the 'bigfoot' who shoves Morgan Mathews' camera in his face? One of Dyer's cronies or a genuine BHM?
Looks too human to me, maybe a feral human of some sort?
 
What the hell was that all about? I really don't get who's supposed to be taking the piss out of who.

Was it all spoof/gonzo or just the Dyer sequence, what?

Honestly I don't get it.
 
OK, I might watch this a bit sooner now.
 
Minnow Films are an award winning documentary team, I think their modus operandi here was simply to roll the cameras and let the subjects reveal their comedic potential themselves.
Tom Biscardi and Rick Dyer claimed to have a frozen bigfoot corpse which turned out to be a rubber gorilla suit. Neither have any credibility as bigfoot researchers. I've seen stills of Dyer's latest body, it looks utterly fake unless of course it had got a bath and washed it's hair before turning up outside Dyer's tent for him to shoot. The video is on YouTube.
Actually I'm not 100% sure about the attacker, it's jsut not quite human enough. Maybe an ugly Dyer sidekick with some makeup. or possibly a young biggie, not yet wary of humans nor skilled at evading them.
 
Bigfoot73 said:
Minnow Films are an award winning documentary team, I think their modus operandi here was simply to roll the cameras and let the subjects reveal their comedic potential themselves...
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Mate you want to edit your posts they're full of spoilers for those who haven't seen the programme.
 
Shit I've pressed report instead of quote, sorry mods and Bigfoot 73 I didn't mean to do that.
 
Mate you want to edit your posts they're full of spoilers for those who haven't seen the programme.
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Spoilers are a necessary evil involved in discussing it, if we waited for everyone to see it then something else would come along to distract us.

Shit I've pressed report instead of quote, sorry mods and Bigfoot 73 I didn't mean to do that.
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No worries.
:)

Maybe it is just a gonzo job in which case the creature must be a hoax, which is going it a bit when minnow have a reputation to uphold. However there are other less high-profile Bigfoot researchers they could have filmed, none of them victims of biggie attacks nor intent on shooting one.
 
My 2c worth re the ending... (Don't read if you're yet to see it, although I'm not giving anything away that isn't known).






Let's assume something genuine did happen for a second, I'm pinning it on the odd kid (with the poor dog)! Made me think that just maybe we should link the ol' werewolf myth to "Bigfoot" sightings!?!
 
No worries.
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Thanks mate, again sorry about that.

Spoilers are a necessary evil involved in discussing it, if we waited for everyone to see it then something else would come along to distract us.
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You're right of course, I will though follow donkeydoo and add a spolier warning

********************SPOILER ALERT************************

Right this programme confused me, I'm not very sophisticated with TV to say the least. The ending was set up you realise that as soon as bigfioot turns up. Further you know Dyer and Morgan were both in on it as soon as you see the way Dyer was framed rifle raised right in the lens of the supposedly fallen camera. IT was rehearsed and set up. Also as the review I linked to points out Morgan receives a writing credit.

I don't think Minnow have to worry about their reputation as I think the audience it was intended for (i.e not people like me) will recognise this as a familiar trendy genre of semi gonzo moko/doco film making. They're not taking risks they're following a formula. A formula which the reviewer seems to find familiar.

I promise you at no point did anyone consider that anyone in the target audience would take bf's appearance seriously. They're reputation is safe, as no one would even remotely consider the fact they were trying to be taken seriously, it's as though they'd cut in some Roger Rabbit style cartoon sequence.
 
donkeydoos said:
My 2c worth re the ending... (Don't read if you're yet to see it, although I'm not giving anything away that isn't known).






Let's assume something genuine did happen for a second, I'm pinning it on the odd kid (with the poor dog)! Made me think that just maybe we should link the ol' werewolf myth to "Bigfoot" sightings!?!
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Yes good point what about the Kid with the wounded dog, whose wounds were not recent by the way. That was a bit of in a semi spoof TV programme.
 
I really don't know what to make of it. At the end I found myself wondering if everyone in the film apart from Biscardi & Dyer who have previous, were actors or at least acting. Dyer I think was in on it, Biscardi & his team I'm not so sure.

Are there that many homeless people living in the woods? The guy who insisted that the obvious airplane could be a UFO? The ribs in the tent incident…..The man with the dog with the ripped throat? I was having my dinner at that point….

The surprise in the woods is never talked about by either participant. Don't you think they might discuss it a little?

Basically it was entertaining bollocks. Not one thing or another - neither full on documentary or funny enough for a comedy mockumentary.

Dallas & Wayne could have their own show though.
 
Basically it was entertaining bollocks. Not one thing or another - neither full on documentary or funny enough for a comedy mockumentary.

Dallas & Wayne could have their own show though.
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I'd say that that's about the as succinct and accurate a synopsis we're going to get, except for the fact that I didn't find any of it entertaining, except in retrospect when with the benefit of hindsight I find Dyer's performance to be very good.

In fact I think it failed on any criteria that it could reasonably be judged on.

As for the dog with the wounded neck that's a sequence that I'd like to see again before making a further comment on.
 
An hour's worth of dislikable nutters and gun freaks achiving nothing. The sequence at the end is a hoax. I even regongnize the style of costume. It's very distinctive with a swept back fringe and human like nose. The same make was used in Penn and Teller's bullshit. It was no more big foot than it was a tiger's arse.
Morgan Matthews joined the CFZ team for two or three days in India and Sumatra. He also interviwed Lars Thomas in Copenhagen. Minnow were going to make a documentory about the CFZ. That seems to have fallen by the wayside now and i can't say i'm sorry after wasting an hour of my life watching that crap.
The wound on the dog's neck looked more like the injuries caused by an imbeded collor or chain.
 
oldrover said:
Shit I've pressed report instead of quote, sorry mods and Bigfoot 73 I didn't mean to do that.
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No probs. Report removed.
 
More on this sorry tale here:
http://whofortedblog.com/2013/05/03/source-claims-killing-bigfoot-documentary-climax-big-hoax/

The homeless guy Jeff, living in the woods, claims the final sequence was filmed several times & he was told about it beforehand. Morgan Matthews was fine the following morning and showed no sign of injury whilst packing up his gear.

According to this, he is genuinely homeless & living in the woods. He says he took his dog with the ripped throat to a vet who tells him it was almost definitely a man-made injury with a blade of some sort & not an animal attack. He doesn't say what happened to the dog subsequently but it doesn't seem to be still with him.
 
Having just watched the documentary on you tube , i have to say i really enjoyed it. I thought it showed the madness of the big foot investigators splendidly, the end is the only thing that puzzles me...set up by the mad baldy or the documentary maker? or both of them? :confused:
 
Set up by the film maker, the audience were intended to realise this. It confused a lot of people though, myself included as I'm not sure what the point is of watching a documentary when you're not sure how much was a pretty mean spirited expose, and how much was pre-written.

I really don't see the point.
 
That's him! Rick Dyer's YouTube channel is a train-wreck and I just can't look away from the man who is already standing in a hole and just keeps on shoveling dirt.

People have a license to be ignorant so I'll accept that, but the problem is, Rick thinks bigfooting means blatant lying.

He's an emotional starry eyed dreamer who makes useless speeches, videos about selling cars, his trip to Denver, and shamelessly (and triumphantly) titles his work in the third person. He also prefers his decade-old cell phone to a fifty-dollar camera, which equates to massive black bars on each side of the frame. Plus, you've gotta play short-stop on the volume knob the whole time because he flunked out of the 100-word 'video editing basics' tutorial at ehow.com.

Watching him fail has become a drug, and I'll surely need rehab to build strength for clicking 'unsubscribe.'
 
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