Documentary Review: “Bigfoot Lives” by Todd Douglas Bailey

I was raised watching IN SEARCH OF and the occasional documentary on numerous channels so I was kind of excited to sit down and watch this new documentary that was supposed to have new information. Let’s pretend I don’t know squat about ‘Squatch and try to sit through this film with little in expectations.

First, let’s discuss film making techniques. The film makers behind this could take a class or two. The camera work is lazy. Imagine if the film crew were following something far more dangerous like a war correspondent. According to their film style you might see some dirt and hear some noises off in the distance all the while the correspondent is asking the audience, “Do you hear that? Can you see that?” See what? If war footage of Vietnam was shot this way, it would look like an art piece and no one would take it seriously. If you have a camera on a documentary, you are responsible for capturing images of the subject of the documentary. Keep this in mind because I’m going to come back to this later on.

The map graphics are abysmal. There’s no need to double label the abysmal map graphics but they do. It’s akin to saying, “We’re in Paris, Texas… yes, Paris, Texas.” Just put one label up and be done with it. No typing noises for effect because no one is going to believe that this was produced on a typewriter, circa 1952.

The music is cheap and unnecessary. It was likely produced in a music suite without much direction and little in the understanding of music theory or it’s impact on a film. I think if they removed the music, the film would be better for it because it wants to sound mysterious but it’s only distracting.

The scene breakdowns under the title of “Search Results” are a rather silly way to try to establish theories as fact. It’s long been known that people often give value to something that they read over something that they hear, so film makers will use buzz words printed on the screen to try to establish theories as fact. This is probably also why film snobs give so much credo to foreign films, because they usually have subtitles.

I’ve nitpicked all I really can about the aesthetics so let’s get down to the information within.

All Sasquatch suffer from ridiculously malformed feet. It’s sad but this is a fact or at least what you have to believe when you see the casts they show off. I thought one of them was a cast of Sideshow Bob’s feet from THE SIMPSONS. Remember when they discovered that he didn’t wear clown shoes to be funny but to cover up his insanely large feet? That’s what some of these casts look like. The others look like they were all purchased at the same store. All of them are extremely clear as if Ohma is careful about stepping in mud and leaving a tell tale marker of his passing. I’m not saying the film crew are a bunch of liars but it’s interesting that there’s no slippage or step artifacts that show which direction the foot was place and then removed within the tracks. Maybe Sasquatch hops everywhere and he was the inspiration for Tigger. Wait, Tiggers don’t hop, they bounce. My bad.

Some of the new evidence is compelling. There’s a hand with missing fingers that no one seems to know the origins of and video of a disembodied “foot” that seems to have oddly human features while still appearing to be non-human. All of which has inconclusive (shock) DNA findings. Tom claims that four out of five labs didn’t even want to touch the DNA because of the controversial subject matter but I would think that the first DNA lab that cracks the Hairy Dude’s DNA would be able to use that in their promotional materials.

There’s photographs of all sorts of manner. Mainly Blobsquatches. Why is it that when we see a picture of a deer, it’s clearly a deer or when we see a picture of a rhino, it’s clearly a rhino but when we see a picture of a blob, it’s clearly Bigfoot? Sometimes, a blob is a blob. I’ve had a lot of pictures taken of me and I’m pretty identifiable in all of them but Sassy seems to be the best criminal around as every picture taken of him, he’s a blur or a smudge.

This brings me back to the duty of a documentary photographer, film the subject as much as possible. Chase it if you have to. Don’t point your camera at a blurry forest and hope that the audience can see that you’ve captured definitive proof.

If we were to name this documentary based on what we see the most of, it would be called, TOM BISCARDI TALKS… AND TALKS…. AND TALKS SOME MORE. I give the guy kudos, he’s been chasing The Tall One for a long time and using his own money to fund the search whenever he can but I don’t think he hears some of what he says. For instance, he states this as fact, “I come up with the story that they kind of hibernate like bears but they don’t and then when they do they go on their migratory trail.” What the hell does this mean? Is this doubletalk for “they might hibernate but probably not because they are migratory or probably not,”? I guess he’s leading us to believe that they stick with the warmer climates but then a few scenes later he’s discussing how Sasquatch has been seen in the winter time. Which is it, Tom? Are they migratory? I have my own theory: maybe the Bigfootses… Bigfeet… Bigfooti… are just bored. Maybe they aren’t migratory but nomadic. Maybe they are illusive because they are people and know how dangerous we hairless apes are. Maybe they are more human than we are. They seem to live as one with the world around them and maybe it would do more harm than good to introduce them to consumerism, modern health care, politics and religion.

In spite of what this documentary has done to Bigfoot in the public eye, which is set it back by about twenty years, I still believe they are out there. I might get ridiculed occasionally but I am not so self righteous as to think that we know the whole of what makes up our world. That’s how the Jedi met their downfall.

So, in short, if you enjoy listening to Tom Biscardi discuss, at length, everything he “knows” about Bigfoot, check out this documentary. However, there’s nothing on here that you can’t find elsewhere with better production value and less of a need to make you believe.

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