Squatchy horror collection

I don't own this particular DVD, but I've seen the three films it contains: "The Snow Creature" (1954), "Snowbeast" (1977) and "Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot" (also 1977). If you like low budget productions featuring monsters - not always convincing ones - this DVD must be a veritable crunch meal. People who for some reason don't like Bigfoot-related B-movies better stay away!

"The Snow Creature" strikes me as very low budget even for a 50's movie. The plot revolves around a murderous and seriously out-of-place Yeti. In "Snowbeast", filmed on location in Colorado, the villain is a Bigfoot with a taste for human flesh. The creature terrorizes a ski resort while the local authorities try to keep the matter under wraps so the tourist industry won't get bankrupt. Sounds familiar? "Snowbeast" is lousy, but the concept could have worked with better actors and, I suppose, a better monkey-suit. Incidentally, the Snowbeast moniker was recently used in an episode of "MonsterQuest" to describe Bigfoot reports from Colorado.

"Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot" is the most interesting of three films. Ostensibly a documentary or docudrama, it's really a fiction account of an expedition to "the Peckatoe River" in British Columbia. The river doesn't exist, and the whole thing is actually filmed in the Cascades in Oregon. The fictional element becomes obvious when the expedition is attacked by a crazy cougar on a low special effects budget. Still, "Sasquatch" is well worth watching. This is presumably how many people during the 1970's *wanted* a Bigfoot chase to look like. I was particularly struck by the strange mixture of rough cowboys and hippie love summer, complete with nature romanticism. The only thing missing is Ralph Waldo Emerson showing up, cracking a poem. The more trigger-happy Zeb Macahan isn't far away either. Eventually, the heroes reach the mysterious "valley of the Sasquatch", only to find out that the squatches really don't like strangers... As if we expected anything else!

As already said, this is really a review of the three films included, rather than this DVD itself. Judging by the other reviews, however, it seems to be really squatchy. Therefore...five stars.