Media Blitz for Tonight's SyFy Bigfoot Movie Staring Barry Williams and Danny Bonaduce

More like King Kong than Bigfoot, but we will take it. Tune in tonight as SyFy broadcasts, "Bigfoot" Starring  Barry Williams and Donny Bonaduce.

TONIGHT! "Bigfoot" on the SyFy Channel 9/8 Central!

All right fans this is the event we have been telling you about since our Feb 2 post, "New Bigfoot Movie with Danny Bonaduce". In fact, click on the following link if you want to read our entire SyFy Bigfoot Movie Coverage. The media is doin' an all out blitz revealing lots of enticing details and mocking comments. We picked out the best quotes from around the web and shared them with you below.

Cast of Syfy channel's "Bigfoot!", clockwise starting top left: Sherilyn Fenn, Andre Royo, Barry Williams, Alice Cooper, Billy Idol, Danny Bonaduce, Bruce Davison and  Howard "Johnny Fever" Hesseman.

Syfy stomps out more schlock with ‘Bigfoot’

By Mark A. Perigard

The cable network last year scored a hit with “Mega Python vs. Gatoroid,” a film best remembered for the scene in which its stars, ’80s singers Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, brawled at a lawn party.

Hoping to cash in again on a twisted sense of nostalgia, Syfy pits ’70s teen idols Danny Bonaduce of “The Partridge Family” and Barry Williams of “The Brady Bunch” in a race to snare Bigfoot.

Neither actor has the camp appeal of Tiffany or Gibson, but they sure are bosom buddies in bad acting.

Bonaduce plays a concert promoter nicknamed Harley, and Williams, in a Mike Brady perm, appears as his onetime musical partner Simon, now an ardent environmentalist. There are sly references to their sitcom pasts. Harley loves to rib Simon about sleeping back in the day with his mom, who sounds a lot like Carol Brady. One of Simon’s many female followers is a Marcia look-alike with an IQ that matches her shoe size.

The two men clash as Harley’s outdoor rock concert in Deadwood, S.D., is ruined when the legendary mountain monster stomps all over the party.

There are real actors in the film. Sherilyn Fenn (“Twin Peaks”) plays the frazzled law enforcement officer who tries to save the community. She’s dressed like Frances McDormand in “Fargo,” oversized hat and all, and it’s sad her career has dribbled to this. Couldn’t Lifetime’s “Army Wives” draft her for duty? Howard Hesseman (“WKRP in Cincinnati”) is a hoot as the venal mayor, who, when asked to pony up some money to capture Bigfoot, offers up the firefighters’ pension fund, reasoning it will never be missed. Oscar and Emmy nominee Bruce Davison plays a sheriff and also directed “Bigfoot,” and to his credit, he keeps the film moving at a brisk clip.

The cheesy comedy horror film doesn’t stint on the CGI beastie. Bigfoot here is King Kong-sized, with feet that can flatten an unsuspecting human. His footsteps reverberate like thunder, yet he always manages to sneak up on his victims. He has a nasty habit of biting heads off the clods who get in his way and kicks cars like soccer balls into helicopters, severely undercutting the military’s attempts to corral him. src: Boston Herald

We forgot that Barry Williams and Danny Bonaduce had crossed paths before on Celebrity Boxing. This show is essentially a rematch.

Barry Williams accepts Danny Bonaduce 'Bigfoot' rematch 'on one condition: I can kick his butt'

By Jay Bobbin 

The two actors were among ABC's most popular stars of family-friendly sitcoms in the late '60s and early '70s, Bonaduce as precocious Danny on "The Partridge Family" and Williams as earnest Greg on "The Brady Bunch." Their paths crossed memorably in the 2002 premiere of FOX's short-lived (as in, two episodes) "Celebrity Boxing," with Bonaduce pretty much ruling their bout.

On Saturday (June 30), they're back together in "Bigfoot," a new Syfy movie that makes them opponents again, this time in pursuit of the title creature. Other notables are involved -- Howard Hesseman ("WKRP in Cincinnati") and rock icon Alice Cooper are among co-stars, and actor Bruce Davison ("X-Men") is the director -- but there's no question the Bonaduce vs. Williams rematch is the main event.

"I felt terrible," Bonaduce tells Zap2it of the outcome of their meeting a decade ago. "I box, and I had boxed for years. It was a good payday, but trainers and other people I knew said, 'Hey, he's gotten himself into a situation. You've got to carry him a bit.' But boxing is kind of a dirty business, and he was going to a real gym, where champions of the world train."

In a separate interview, Williams maintains he "got in a lick or two" during the bout but admits, "Danny dominated the fight. I've got to tell you, on both a personal and professional level, that was not very comfortable for me ... so when they approached me about being an adversary of Danny's in 'Bigfoot,' I said, 'I'll do it on one condition: I can kick his butt.' And I do. And he was great about it." src: Zap2it

 The Deadbolt also reminds of the celebrity boxing match and with a nod to how both actors have moved on to make the SyFy Bigfoot movie.

Fighting Over Bigfoot with Barry Williams and Danny Bonaduce

by Reg Seeton

Nowadays, years removed from their boxing match and even more from the shows that made them household names, Danny Bonaduce has a better understanding of Barry Williams, the man, after their time in the ring.

“I hit him so hard my shoulder hurt and he continued to get up. What’s the biggest scene in Cool Hand Luke? The guy who won’t stay down. George Kennedy, if I’m not mistaken, is not the star of that scene. It’s Paul Newman because he refuses to stay down. And I know this may sound like an overdramatization of a fight, but until you’ve been in one, they’re pretty dramatic. That’s my impression of Barry Williams.”

In taking on Bigfoot, both Danny and Barry were all about having fun together on a project that pits one against the other as they both hunt for the mysterious creature for different reasons.

For Danny’s Bigfoot character, it’s all about the hunt and kill. For Barry’s Bigfoot character, it’s all about conservation and preservation. But, like in life, there can only be one final outcome for a hunter either way.

Going into the Bigfoot, how did Barry feel about going up against Danny on screen instead of the ring?

“Doing the movie, we’re coming into it in a completely [new] way, both trying to make the best movie and have the most fun and make the best movie we could. So there’s no real animosity there except the acting part.”

In Bigfoot, Danny Bonaduce and Barry Williams star alongside Howard Hesseman (Head of the Class), Sherilyn Fenn (Twin Peaks), Andre Royo (The Wire) and shock-rocker Alice Cooper. src: TheDeadBolt.com

The best review so far is BLC's hometown paper the Oregonian.

SyFy's 'Bigfoot' pits Danny Bonaduce, Barry Williams against a forest monster

By Grant Butler, The Oregonian 

SyFy network wraps up what they've been calling "the most-dangerous month on television" on Saturday with "Bigfoot," a low-budget original film that stars 1970s sitcom stars Danny Bonaduce and Barry Williams. Like most SyFy Saturday night movies, this one appears to have been shot on a budget of roughly $37, and features special effects that may have been created on a Commodore 64 computer. But no one watches a SyFy flick expecting great artistry. People want laughably bad acting and campy dialogue, and "Bigfoot" certainly delivers.

Bonaduce plays a radio DJ in Deadwood, S.D., who is organizing a 1980s rock festival (oddly headlined by Alice Cooper, and only attracting an audience of about 50 people). Williams plays a washed-up musician turned environmental activist who is concerned about the festival's effect on the environment. Before the former stars of "The Partridge Family" and "The Brady Bunch" can really square off, the festival is disrupted by Bigfoot, and mayhem begins. 

There's lots of running around, people being stomped on, and plenty of geographic oddities (South Dakota, at least in the SyFy world, is located near the Pacific Northwest). It all culminates with a scene on top of Mount Rushmore that pays homage to but hardly rivals the finale of Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest."

Included in the cast are Andre Royo (he went from "The Wire" to this?), Sherilyn Fenn (of "Twin Peaks" 20 years ago), and Howard Hesseman (from another '70s sitcom, "WKRP In Cincinnati"). It's directed by Bruce Davison, a one-time Oscar nominee who these days is playing judges on shows like "Drop Dead Diva." 

Should you watch it? Heck, yes! It may not rise to the campy glories of "Jersey Shore Shark Attack" earlier this month, but it's got Williams and Bonaduce enough cheese to make nachos. Don't forget the tortilla chips! src: OregonLive.com

LISTEN to Finding Bigfoot's Bobo Interviewed Tomorrow

Illustration by Rictor Riolo who will co-host with Sharon Lee
as they interview Bobo of Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot

James "Bobo" Fay is on a break from filming Season 3 of Finding Bigfoot (due to premier this fall on Animal Planet). You can catch up and hear what is in store for  the upcoming season by tuning into Sharon Lee's BlogTalkRadio Channel.

Sunday at 5pm is the time to tune in. As an extra bonus, Rictor Riolo, Bigfoot illustrator extraordinaire, will be co-hosting.

Dr. Jeff Meldrum Compelled by Freeman Tracks

Dr. Jeff Meldrum Adjunct Associate Professor of the
Department of Anthropology at Idaho State University

“I thought about the grief I would get from my peers. Do I want to go down that road? But as I looked at this, how could I not?” --Dr. Meldrum after seeing the Paul Freeman tracks

If you have had the fortune of listening to Dr. Jeff Meldrum speak in person, you may have heard his encounter with the Paul Freeman tracks. This was a pivotal moment for Meldrum and there are two things we love about it. First, you become privy to Meldrum's inner thoughts and initial skepticism. Second, you learn what kind of evidence looks for when checking out a trackway.

We don'e think there has been a better retelling of Meldrum's first encounter with the Freeman tracks than what Scott Sandsberry has done below. 

Footprints turn skeptics into believers

June 26, 2012 by Scott Sandsberry  

YAKIMA, Wash. — Jeff Meldrum is a foot guy.

If you want to understand how humans and some apes have evolved to walk on two feet — how the tendons and muscles flex, how the bones work together, how the weight is distributed — Meldrum is your man. A Ph.D. who teaches anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, he has widely published on bipedal foot function throughout natural history.

Jimmy Chilcutt is a prints guy.

For 18 years he ran the fingerprint portion of the crime lab for the Conroe (Texas) Police Department. His crime-scene investigations put people in prison or demonstrated their innocence.

Sixteen years ago, Meldrum and Chilcutt — the prof from Idaho and the CSI cop from Texas — crossed paths in an arena neither thought he would ever enter: Bigfoot tracks.

Each went in expecting to debunk a hoax.

But a hoax wasn’t what they found.

• • •

In 1996, Meldrum was asked to review a compilation of Bigfoot-related columns by the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin’s Vance Orchard.

One of Orchard’s favorite interview subjects was a man named Paul Freeman, who said he had on numerous occasions found — and cast in plaster — gigantic, human-like footprints. Freeman had either been fired from or quit his Forest Service job — reports vary, and Freeman died in 2003 — several years earlier after quite publicly declaring he’d seen a Bigfoot. He was believed by some, even within the community of Bigfoot believers, to be a hoaxer.

“I’d been given an earful by people about Paul’s reputation, and it was bad,” Meldrum says of Freeman. “I went into it very skeptical.”

He became even so when Freeman blurted, “Would you like to see some fresh tracks? I just found some this morning. First tracks of the season!”

Meldrum’s immediate thought: Right. Fresh tracks. How convenient.

Meldrum and his brother drove with Freeman into the Mill Creek area of the Blue Mountains and stopped in the middle of an open area where, Meldrum recalls, “Here was this long line of tracks, very clear in wet, silty soil.

“We got Paul’s take on it. At this point, I’m still kind of scratching my head thinking, ‘How did he do this?’ Literally. But as I knelt down I saw skin-ridge detail. Just as you have details on your fingertips and palm, the sole of your feet does that as well, as do all primates. One of the ways you could tell the difference between a bear and a gorilla print would be the texture of the skin, the ridging.”

But one thing struck Meldrum as odd. The route of the “footprints” — the legitimacy of which Meldrum still doubted — seemed to start and end at the same place, right where their truck was parked.

“I could just picture this guy jumping out of the pickup truck, running around the field with these (large fake) feet and then coming back and diving into the bed of the pickup, taking off the feet, climbing into the driver’s seat and taking off.”

So Meldrum took Freeman home and returned with the materials to cast some of the prints. “If it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax,” he recalls thinking. “And we can expose it as such.”

• • •

Upon their return to the field, Meldrum and his brother parked near where they had the first time. As they began assessing the tracks again, something different became clear: The tracks hadn’t started and ended at the same place, as Meldrum had initially thought.

They did a complete change of a direction in the middle of the dirt road — directly under where the truck had previously been parked.

Meldrum began following the tracks, far beyond where Freeman’s boot tracks ended, and found additional sets of footprints coming and going. Whatever had made the tracks had apparently come down the Mill Creek drainage, using the brush along an empty irrigation ditch as cover, possibly to raid the apple and plum orchards further below.

“At that point it was clear Paul had read the whole circumstance completely backward,” Meldrum says. “So the thought occurred to me: Well, if he’s responsible for this hoax, why would he portray it so incorrectly on the chance I would read it differently?”

Freeman had not made casts of any of the tracks at this site, Meldrum says. “His attitude was ‘I’ve seen so many footprints I don’t even bother making casts until they’re absolutely perfect,’ and he said these are such that (he) wouldn’t even bother with.”

Meldrum, though, was dumbstruck by what he was seeing — differences between the tracks, places where the foot had slipped or the toes had dragged, the half-tracks.

“These are all the features that make it come to life in my mind and began to cause me to set aside my skepticism,” he says. “While it’s clearly from the same foot, in one instance the toes are tightly flexed and it’s gripping the soil on a slight incline … in one extended and splayed, the first three toes sunken into the soil but the fourth and fifth don’t quite leave a mark.”

In one print, he says, “It had stepped on a stone and the stone was accommodated by the soft tissue, absorbed kind of by the sole pad of the foot.” In another, “There was a protruding rock and you could see the ball of the foot up onto the rock and then the toes had clearly curled over the top of the rock.”
As Meldrum decided the tracks could not have done with a carved set of fake “Bigfeet,” he thought about the creature that must have made them. “And as that realization set in, the hair on the back of my neck sort of stood up.”

Meldrum knew going public about what he now believed to be a large, unknown biped could damage his professional reputation, turning him into that supposed scientist who believes in Bigfoot.

“I thought about the grief I would get from my peers,” he says. “Do I want to go down that road?
“But as I looked at this, how could I not?”

• • •

Some months later, Jimmy Chilcutt was channel-surfing on weekend when he found himself on the Discovery Channel watching some supposed scientist who believed in Bigfoot.

“I was just halfway watching it, waiting for a football game to come on,” recalls Chilcutt. “He was holding a footprint cast and said there were actually dermal ridges on that cast.

“And I said, yeah, I’ll bet that’s from some human. I figured it was some kind of fake.”
And Chilcutt was precisely the person to know the difference.

In addition to his CSI fingerprinting experience, Chilcutt had also begun researching hand and foot print patterns of all the different primate species, arranging with zoos and animal parks in the South to be on hand to print any apes or monkeys being anesthetized for dental or veterinary work.

His reason: While genetic print-pattern differences between human ethnicities have over time become less distinguished because of racial interbreeding, apes and monkeys do not interbreed between species — so the distinctions between their print patterns remain consistent, generation after generation.

“I wanted to get a database of the different primate species to see if they were different, and why and how,” Chilcutt says, “to see if I could relate that to humans and be more precise.”

And, he adds, “Only primates have dermal ridges.”

So Chilcutt called the scientist he’d seen on the TV — fellow named Meldrum — explained his primate print research and asked for permission to assess the mysterious casts himself. Meldrum told him to come on up, and Chilcutt flew to Idaho.

When Chilcutt arrived at Meldrum’s ISU office, Meldrum took him to the lab where the print casts were and went back to his office. “I totally let him go, without giving him any background or my opinion as to any of (the casts),” Meldrum says. “I wanted him to judge it purely on what he was seeing.”

What Chilcutt found floored him. Three of the castings he examined — out of more than 100 over that day and the next two — were clearly from the same foot. “They were definitely non-human,” he says, but “had all the characteristics of dermal ridges.”

The foot had some scarring on the bottom of the foot. “Any fingerprint expert knows,” Chilcutt says, “when the wound heals, the (dermal) ridges curl inward toward the cut.” Upon close examination of the dermal ridges on the bottom of one of the casts, he says, “No question about it: They were curling back in.”

That particular aspect, Chilcutt says, “would be very, very difficult to fake” — requiring both an extensive background in anatomy and anthropology but also the resources to pull off the hoax.
Chilcutt’s conclusion: The prints were not fakes.

Asked if it was difficult to accept what a week earlier he would have considered laughable, Chilcutt says no.
“Any forensic person, any CSI guy, they look for the facts. It is what it is,” he says. “Whether it helps the defense or the prosecution, it doesn’t matter. And when I looked at the prints, there it was.
“We’ve got some kind of primate out there. Non-human.”