Southern Fried Bigfoot (2009)

The Bigfoot marathon continues with this documentary I found on Amazon Prime. It was less than an hour long and looked interesting. Instead of the normal Pacific Northwest stuff this was supposed to look at the various legends in the American South. This is very different, so I thought that I’d give it a try.

The documentary is split into sections with a couple dealing with the history of Bigfoot in the South and various explanations for why it could exist. These are the wraparound with some specific examples such as The Fouke Monster, the Lake Worth Monster, The Skunk Ape and the Honey Island Swamp Monster. The same experts show up for each segment with eyewitnesses for the individual sightings appearing as well. That is pretty much it for the description as this one has no plot to speak of.

This isn’t very good. You know that it isn’t going well when less than an hour feels like forever. This documentary is totally uninspired and rehashes the same information that has been given to us in much better productions. They spend a lot of time on the plaster footprints, which aren’t that interesting, but seems to be what they hang their hat on here. These guys are supposed to be believers and that is all they put forward as evidence? Even Mysterious Monsters has segments on the sounds and unidentified hair found near the sightings. None of that here.

Another problem that I had with Southern Fried Bigfoot are the experts they interview. Sadly, they aren’t all that well informed or interesting. They keep going back to them for commentary on each of the sightings that they cover and basically get the same response again and again. There is one expert who only gets excited when they start talking about the statue that he commissioned of the Fouke Monster based on the eyewitness reports. The best part about the interviews and experts is the one zoo director that gets a “what the hell am I doing here” look as they talk about Bigfoot. He basically responds that he likes the idea but then begins the science of why it isn’t possible… they cut away quickly.

One of the best parts of Bigfoot documentaries are the reenactments. Here we get the same five or six generic shots of someone walking in the trees wearing an ape costume. They just keep running it over whatever story we are hearing like we wouldn’t notice. I did and found it annoying.

There isn’t much more that I can say. If you haven’t figured it out yet I’m not recommending Southern Fried Bigfoot. This is a lazy exercise that simply presents the same stories without anything new brought to the table. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a high school kid’s class project that somehow got dumped on Amazon. Luckily this was part of Prime and I didn’t have to spend anything other than an hour of my time on it. Though I still feel cheated. Skip this one and watching something far more entertaining like the aforementioned Mysterious Monsters or The Legend of Boggy Creek.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer