Presented in the modern miracle of synchronized sound.
The Legend of McCullough's Mountain is a re-edited version of a 1965 micro-budget horror comedy called The Legend of Blood Mountain starring George Ellis as a bumbling reporter named Bestoink Dooley who travels to a small Georgia town to investigate a series of murders attributed to a monster living on a mountain that periodically oozes human blood. Different edits of the film were released under the alternate titles Blood Beast of Monster Mountain and Demon Hunter. In the 70s, a distributor shot new segments and re-cut the film into a Boggy Creek-style pseudo documentary to cash in on the then-current Bigfoot movie fad. The '75 edit replaced the original's rubbery Swamp Thing-like monster with a hairy Bigfoot creature seen only in backlit silhouette.
I had never watched the film until Christmas day 2023, when a discussion about the movie's one sheet poster inspired me to seek it out. I was disappointed to find that every online version of the '75 cut had a horribly out-of-sync soundtrack. The audio was several seconds ahead or behind each shot, making the film unwatchable. I wanted a version I could enjoy, so I edited the audio to sync it to the picture shot by shot.
After years of hearing how bad this movie was, I was surprised to find it quite fun and effective. Bestoink is a prototypical Kolchak with an annoyed editor who yells at him while he tries to pitch a story about a monster. As a former reporter, I could identify with some of the early scenes of Bestoink arriving in the town and questioning the locals. There are stock music cues from the same library used in Night of the Living Dead, which sets a nice, creepy tone. The 70s documentary segments are jarring, but have a clumsy charm. They come across as almost a parody of 70s Bigfoot docs. The 60s/70s hybrid approach reminds me of Curse of Bigfoot, another non-Bigfoot film that was re-edited with new material to cash in on the 70s Bigfoot craze.
5 сен 2024
