I tend to liken the people who made Bigfoot movies in the 1970s to the gold prospectors of the old West. One of them got lucky with that Legend of Boggy Creek movie, a huge box-office phenomenon, then suddenly what seems like hundreds of likeminded prospectors converged on the same area, hoping to strike it rich and make the next Boggy Creek. I once went through a period of trying to binge watch as many of the 1970s pseudo-documentary films about Bigfoot as I could, but can’t for the life of me tell you their titles now. They all tend to blur together in the memory after a while, an endless loop of vox pop interviews with folk who claim to have encountered bigfoot, stock shots of animals scurrying about and scenes of so-called experts trekking around the great outdoors...occasionally getting excited over some dried up faeces that they take to be bigfoot shit, only to discover half an hour later into the film that it is just yer’ standard animal crap.
These are films that leave you wondering how people didn’t vengefully burn down the drive-ins that played them, they must have bored the arses off people back then, especially those pumped for a rowdy, Saturday night, action packed drive-in experience. Today, these films tend to work better as Sunday afternoon TV watches, where all those picturesque views of the American wilderness and nature footage make for the kind of agreeable moving wallpaper that is easy to doze off to. Fortunately the bigfoot movie wasn’t entirely the domain of bores, bigfoot’s dick ripping, entrails throwing antics in 1980’s Night of the Demon got that film onto the video nasties list, and if you want to dive deep into the rabbit hole marked ‘Bigfoot XXX’ there is 1971’s The Geek...yes, a bigfoot movie with hardcore sex.
I tend to suspect that the identity of whoever made The Geek will forever remain a mystery, but it seems to have been born out of the thinking ‘all those boring, National Geographic type bigfoot movies would be greatly improved if people stopped every five minutes to have ugly, unsatisfactory sex...then at the end bigfoot shows up and turns out to be an ass crazy rascal who pops one of the female explorers in the ass’. That, I’d wager, is how The Geek came into this world.
1974’s The Beast and the Vixens treads similar cinematic turf as The Geek, albeit walking the more socially acceptable path of being a softcore, R-Rated, T&A movie, rather than hardcore porn. The Beast and the Vixens’ fragmented narrative party evolves around two swingin’ chicks Ann (Jacqueline Giroux) and Mary (Uschi Digart). In typical exploitation film fashion, aimless teasin’ introduces Ann...exterior shots of suburbia scored to cocktail lounge music...Ann rising out of bed...lingering cutaways to a clock...Ann smoking a cigarette...Ann staring into a mirror...Ann reading a note...more lingering cutaways, this time to a radio. Ann begins to take her clothes off, at which point the scene coyly fades to black. Cut to Ann in the shower, in another scene that’s seemingly centred around showing some skin, but stubbornly refuses to deliver the expected goods.
It’s a peculiar start to a sexploitation film, setting up scenes that resemble dirty, homemade suburban porn, yet focusing on just about everything but female nudity. A decision made even more peculiar by the film’s complete change of heart not long after, where we go from scenes where female nudity seems essential but fails to materialise, to scenes where female nudity feels randomly tagged on...better get used to strange decisions in The Beast and the Vixens though, it’s a film full of them. Once the action relocates to a woodlands cabin, the film finds its sexploitation mojo as Ann and Mary begin knocking back the brandies, leading a tipsy Ann to start baring her breasts by the fireplace and making sexual advances to her best friend.
Fear not, straight male viewers however, as Ann and Mary aren’t real lesbians, they’re just man crazy heterosexuals who occasionally drink too much and end up in bed together. Ann brushes off the previous night’s girl on girl action as simply “a welcome change of pace”, while Mary admits “I don’t think if we’d have been so stoned we would have done it”. Having gotten that out of their system, Ann and Mary go off in search of a man, and not just any man either but primitive man, a book on the subject having stoked Mary’s interest in tracking down Bigfoot. Unbeknownst to them, the pair have already appeared on Bigfoot’s radar, Bigfoot having peeked in on the couple’s lovemaking the night before, which had also attracted the voyeuristic interest of an elderly hermit too.
Much to the no doubt relief of anyone who has suffered through all the bigfoot movies that prefer to keep bigfoot’s screen time to a bare minimum, there is a hell of allot of bigfoot action in this film. Even before the opening credits have rolled Bigfoot has already made off with a topless sunbather, adding her to the collection of gals he keeps captive in a cave. Unfortunately if you’ve exposed yourself to many of the pseudo-documentary bigfoot movies of this time, you’ll know damn well that the type of people who claimed to have encountered the creature were never as easy on the eye as the parade of Hollywood sexploitation starlets who get captured by bigfoot here –among their number being Sharon Kelly and Sandy Carey- and they certainly dressed more appropriate for the great outdoors than the sassy hot pants and white go-go boots sported by female cast members here. Then again, when did exploitation movies ever need to have any basis in reality.
Unlike the makers of The Geek, the people behind The Beast and the Vixens waved their right to anonymity, by leaving their names on the film. This was Ray Nadeau’s first (and would you believe last) film as a director. Nadeau’s background being in editing, while his biggest claim to fame was working as an extra on ‘Hill Street Blues’ and occasionally doubling for its star Daniel J Travanti. Producer Arthur A Jacobs had a background in 1950s B-Movie horror, with She Demons and Giant from the Unknown being his two most famous credits. Jacobs’ involvement in the film does explain why The Beast and the Vixens plays like a 1950s B-Movie that’s been sex-ed up for the 1970s with the addition of full frontal nudity, graphic sex scenes and hippie sympathies...at its heart though it’s just an old fashioned monster on the loose flick.
The presence of a rookie filmmaker, taking up his one and only residence in the director’s chair, does also explain the multitude of decisions in this film that are either going to hit you as endearingly wrongheaded or just plain ol’ frustrating. Uschi Digart is given allot to do, acting wise in this film, with pages and pages of dialogue being fed through the meat grinder that is Uschi’s thick, Zsa Zsa Gabor type accent. It’s a 180 degree reversal on Uschi’s usual lot in the film-world, where she was generally relegated to nude walk ons and frequently dubbed. Here however you can see Uschi bravely battling with dialogue that never sounded very coherent to begin with. As well as a particularly unflattering moment in the script that calls for a well-fed Uschi to slouch down on a couch and make the un-ladylike announcement “I’m stuffed”.
While the smart money would be on Uschi having some kind of run-in with Bigfoot, such an encounter never takes place. Instead Uschi’s character Mary and her friend Ann run into a carefree bunch of hippies, whose female members are played by more hard working gals of the LA smut movie scene. The most recognisable of the bunch being Susan Westcott, a porn veteran who played the title character in the sicko hardcore flick ‘Widow Blue’ aka Sex Psycho, a film that like ‘The Geek’ is a movie normal people ain’t never gonna know about. Westcott is a Stevie Nicks/Gaylen Ross lookalike, who always gives the impression of being slightly stoned in her movies, I like her allot. My favourite of the hippies though has to be Sarah, who in contrast to the laid back peace n’ love vibes been given off by the rest of the group, puts on a malicious, pissed off front. “If you expect to eat with us, you better get lost” is Sarah’s way of welcoming Ann and Mary into the fold. Sarah seems to especially have it in for Ann, who keeps making lovin’ eyes at Sarah’s man Hank.
Nothing confirms hippie sympathies behind the camera quite like the narrative being waylaid by a folksy, guitar ballad (see also: 1971’s Zaat). So, take it away Hank with a fireside performance of ‘Gypsy Mountain Madness’ (choice lyrics “I talk to trees, kiss the ground, dance out in the rain...down in this gypsy mountain heaven, you’ll have lovely dreams”). Everyone grooves to Hank’s ode to nature, everyone that is apart from Sarah, who scowls, crosses her arms and probably fantasizes about writing ‘Pigs’ on the cabin walls in Ann’s blood.
Apropos of nothing, The Beast and the Vixens then drops everything and momentarily decides it wants to be a Western, as Sarah has a dream that sees her and Ann having a Wild West shootout while wearing only boots and holsters. Snow is visible in the background of these scenes, good God these gals were really earning their pay on this one.
The Beast and the Vixens’ allegiance to the youth of the day means that finding favour here are the hippie gang, who spend the winter squatting at an off season boy’s camp, and keep themselves afloat by making belts and candles for the locals. The film also looks favourable upon Bigfoot’s best friend, the elderly hermit who has similarly dropped out of the rat race and embraced nature. Undoubtedly one of the film’s more memorable characters, the elderly hermit is clearly played by a young man who has been given a full Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments makeover, complete with fake beard and staff, but who also speaks in an over the top mess of an Irish accent “don’t ya be running away, come on back, I’m just an old man, I wouldn’t hurt a flea”.
Inadvertently bigfoot and the hermit manage to get the hippies into trouble. The hippies have been leaving food out for the pair, after Sarah spotted Bigfoot loitering about in the dark (as Hank tactfully explains “she got up late one night to go potty”). In order to replay this generosity, either the hermit or Bigfoot have been leaving them rare coins that the kids have been wearing as trinkets. Unfortunately the coins originally belonged to a pair of criminals Pete and Frenchie who hid them at the camp before doing prison time. Thanks to Bigfoot’s redistribution of the coins, Pete and Frenchie now have the kids in their sights. Pete vowing “I didn’t spend seven years in the stir, just to let a bunch of hippies make trinkets out of my coins”.
Bigfoot movies tend to either portray their title creature as a misunderstood, nature loving pacifist or a rampaging monster, but The Beast and the Vixens tries to have its cake and eat it. The film can never quite decide whether Bigfoot should be regarded as an honorary hippie or a savage beast. On one hand, Bigfoot robs from the greedy, materialistic bad guys to give to the hippies, but he is simultaneously abducting women and breaking up a bickering stroll in the woods between an Afro-ed soul sister and her white old man...maybe Bigfoot has racial issues...who knows. By the standards of men in the film, Bigfoot though is a fairly chaste character. He is no ‘The Geek’ that’s for sure. A grope of an unconscious Sandy Carey is as perverse as Bigfoot gets. Once he gets women back to the cave, he doesn’t really do anything with them, even bringing Carey’s clothes back to the cave so she can retain her dignity. Bigfoot’s bag it seems is just collecting for collectings sake.
By far the rudest thing about bigfoot’s cave is its entrance, which bigfoot seals shut while he is away by jamming it with dead bushes and woodland debris. Actions which make the cave’s entrance resemble...errmm... an intimate part of a woman’s body. If that symbolism was intentional you do have to wonder why they bothered, given that there is no shortage of what that cave’s entrance looks like in the film itself anyway.
Nadeau’s film first played drive-ins in 1974 in a cut down R-Rated version under its ‘The Beast and the Vixens’ title, presumably to cash-in on the Russ Meyer ‘Vixen’ movies. Cast members Uschi Digart and Sharon Kelly having both appeared in Supervixens. During the VHS era a significantly longer version of the film emerged on tape in America under the title ‘The Beauties and the Beast’ (with the Desperately Seeking Susan parody tag line ‘Desperately Seeking Yeti’). New to this version were additional shots of full frontal nudity (both male and female), the Western fantasy sequence, and several of the type of protracted, real time sex scenes more associated with Harry Novak’s Box Office International productions.
The 2016 DVD release from Fred Olen Ray’s Retromedia company collects the 71 minute theatrical version, and a composite uncut version that pieces together a 35mm print with footage from the 1980s VHS, bringing the running time up to 84 minutes. Also on the disc is the 1972 quickie, softcore adaptation of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, featuring Beast and the Vixens stars Uschi Digart, Sandy Carey and Susan Westcott, proof if ever it were needed that the LA softcore industry of the time was a very small world indeed.
In his brief audio commentary Fred Olen Ray speculates that The Beast and the Vixens might have been an Al Adamson style chop-shop production, made up of footage shot at various times and operating in completely different genres. The Beast and the Vixens is certainly a viewing experience akin to Adamson’s Dracula Vs Frankenstein and The Blood of Ghastly Horror, with various scenes taking stabs at being sexploitation, a crime movie and a horror film, plus an ‘introduction’ by a phoney expert which sets up the film as a pseudo-documentary. The only thing working against the theory of this being a chop-shop production is that these seemingly disparate elements of the film occasionally reference each other. Uschi never lays eyes on Bigfoot but has dialogue mentioning ‘primitive man’, and while the hippies aren’t destined to meet Bigfoot either, they do have a run in with Pete and Frenchie, whose sub-plot bleeds over into the Bigfoot material. The most likely explanation is that The Beast and the Vixens began life as a crime flavoured sexploitation film, centred around Ann and Mary finding themselves caught up in Pete and Frenchie’s scheme to get the coins back. Only for its makers to realise that the film wasn’t really coming together, remembered the producer had a raggedy old monster costume left over from his 1950s B-Movie days, and managed to salvage the production by turning it into a Bigfoot movie.
There’s no two ways about it, The Beast and the Vixens is an unholy mess of a movie, but at least it is a lively unholy mess. Maybe you have to suffer through many of the snooze inducing Bigfoot movies of the 1970s to appreciate it. Clumsy and borderline incompetent as it may be, you can’t deny that The Beast and the Vixens does what it says on the tin. It’s a softcore bigfoot movie that is wholeheartedly committed to filling the screen with nudity, sex and Bigfoot attack scenes. Guaranteeing at least that there is always something hairy onscreen, and even with her clothes mostly on and her strong accent in full throttle Uschi Digart is still preferable to wasting 90 minutes of your time watching some dullard wandering about the American wilderness in search of Bigfoot faeces.
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