The Sasquatch Gang Sets Bigfoot Studies Back 30 Years

From what I’ve seen after an extended view of all the trailers I could find, the contemporarily-framed film The Sasquatch Gang may be one of the lamest Bigfoot movies ever made.

The Sasquatch Gang sets back serious Bigfoot studies and Sasquatch research by 30 years to the era of bad Bigfoot paperbacks, fake footprints and mullet haircuts. (If that’s the endorsement they were searching for from me, there it is.)

Beginning November 30, 2007, in limited release, to be followed by broad national screenings, The Sasquatch Gang hits theaters between the eyes and in the funny bone. Formerly called The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang, the film stars Justin Long and is the brainchild of the same people that brought you Napoleon Dynamite, a motion picture I admired for creativity and humor. The Sasquatch Gang was shot in Oregon and won the 2006 Audience Award at the Slamdance Film Festival.

The review site, Film Threat, declared the film a five-star (out of five) success back in 2006, saying it was a “runaway hit.”

Film Threat noted the plot is enjoyably complex, but basically is about a group of teenage friends who discover what appear to be Sasquatch footprints in the woods near the lead character’s home. Soon to visit them is Bigfoot expert Dr. Artimus Snodgrass (whom Film Threat calls “a pretentious, over-the-top scientist played by Carl Weathers”). Ah, is this just what the cinema world needs: a terrible cryptozoologist role model?

The movie allegedly takes some twists down the path of Bigfoot fakery. Are you surprised?

The Sasquatch Gang stars Justin Long, a Vassar graduate and known as the “Mac guy” in ads. Long (above) also starred in Jeepers Creepers, a movie about a Mothman-type creature attacking people, usually teenagers.

Below are various YouTube clips from the movie, when it was titled The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang. They seem, in essence, no different than the repackaging of the long trailer than can be found on the new The Sasquatch Gang site, here.

The Sasquatch (nee: Dumpling) Gang clips, which while having humor, apparently are not going to do anything positive for the popular cultural image of cryptozoology and Bigfoot research:

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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