Cryptid Cinema: Meditations on Bigfoot, Bayou Beasts & Backwoods Bogeymen of the Movies

by Stephen R. Bissette

Awarded Best Popular Culture Cryptid Book of the Year in the Top Ten Best Cryptozoology Books of the 2017 by America's Premiere Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman (at cryptozoonews)!
Enter, if you dare, the realm of Cryptid Cinema™...the Movie-land of Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Bayou Beasts, Backwoods Bogeymen and Bloodwater Brutes!
From filmland’s fear & fun-filled real & ‘reel’ history, SWAMP THING artist & CONSTANTINE co-creator Stephen R. Bissette (Rondo Award 'Monster Kid Hall of Fame' winner, 2012) presents an astonishing, fully-illustrated menagerie of monstrosities, curiosities, and wild & woolly weirdos from the 1950s to the present day! In these pages, you'll find celluloid and TV incarnations of 'real world' cryptids like the Yeti, Sasquatch, and the Jersey Devil, 'reel world' critters from THE KILLER SHREWS to the Demogorgon of STRANGER THINGS, and all manner of bizarre swamp-and-bayou beings from the Gillman to the Nutria-Man, from the reviled CREATURE to the revelatory THE SHAPE OF WATER.
CRYPTID CINEMA™ covers cryptid appearances in TV series from ONE STEP BEYOND to STRANGER THINGS (offering a complete 'study & viewing guide' to the first season), as well as comic books, toys, action figures, and other media. In these pages, you'll meet a host of eccentric creators like (and the creations of) H.P. Lovecraft, Ron & June Ormond, Jerry Warren, Arthur C. Pierce, Virgil W. Vogel, Janos Prohaska, and others, on up to today's trail-blazers like Kevin Smith, Stefan Avalos, Lance Weiler, and the Duffer Brothers!
This isn’t a comprehensive guide or history book—it is an illustrated celebration of Cryptid Cinema™ via in-depth essays on a few favorite (and often long-forgotten) film fiends, designed and written for older readers (there is some mature content in this first volume, given the nature of the 1960s and 1970s Bigfoot novels, movies and comics). Independent filmmakers and low-budget 'grindhouse' and drive-in exploitation features are given special attention, as are the first-ever Bigfoot documentaries. Read about the stop-motion animation 'amateur' movie that could, EQUINOX; the behind-the-scenes secrets of the rare direct-to-video Upper New York State gem THE GLASSHEAD; the backstories behind the Swedish-American extraterrestrial Yeti opus TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN, the made-in-Florida Walking Catfish-Man epic ZAAT (aka BLOOD WATERS OF DR. Z), and the surgically-created Walrus-Man movie, TUSK!
This jam-packed 245-page extravaganza is just the first in a series of books on Cryptid Cinema™ and Paleo Pop™ Culture from an author and artist who knows & loves monsters!

264 pages, Paperback

Published November 3, 2017

About the author

Stephen R. Bissette is an American comics artist, editor, and publisher with a focus on the horror genre. He is best known for working with writer Alan Moore and inker John Totleben on the DC comic Swamp Thing in the 1980s.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book to savor! It’s a deep, fascinating dive into movies about monsters, cryptozoology lore and the amazing mind of legendary artist, writer and cult movie maven Stephen Bissette. It took me a while to finish reading this book because every chapter is chock full of info about movies I wanted to watch or rewatch and people and books I wanted to check out online as they were mentioned by Bissette. I’ve been a fan of his since his days doing artwork for classic SWAMP THING comics, so it’s great that he includes some old and new examples of his own artwork in CRYPTID CINEMA (including the eye-catching cover painting). But there’s so much more to enjoy in this book that it makes brief descriptions difficult. I was wowed starting with the first sections, which explore films featuring Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Abominable Snowman and other manlike monsters. Like every part of the book, this part is chock full of intriguing facts and trivia about the movies and the actors, directors and producers involved, and lushly illustrated with movie stills, posters, vintage newspaper ads, newsclips and artwork. Like every part of the book, the sections about manlike monsters include Bissette’s highly-informed, wittily-written, often sharp-edged opinions on various things, like the veracity of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film and why an obscure 1959 Swedish horror movie released as INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE in the U.S. is seminal and worthy of seeking out. And, yes, I did seek out INVASION online when I read what Bissette wrote about it, along with several other films featuring manlike monsters he covers in the early chapters of the book. In fact, each night as I read the text in a chapter and the equally fascinating trivia in captions and sidebars, I’d get sidetracked looking for and watching streaming copies of movies I hadn’t seen, like THE GLASSHEAD, or by rewatching old favorites that Bissette mentions, like THE KILLER SHREWS. It made CRYPTID CINEMA a multi-dimensional, multimedia experience – and one of the most enjoyable books about either cult movies or legendary monsters I’ve ever read. I’d give it more than five stars if I could.

[Eric Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen R. Bissette, acclaimed illustrator of the DC horror comic Swamp Thing, and of the Bigfoot-themed novel The Mountain King and The Vermont Monster Guide, is no stranger to world of cryptids. His latest effort, Cryptid Cinema: Meditations on Bigfoot, Bayou Beasts and Backwoods Boogiemen of the Movies, is a refreshingly informal study of a variety of cinematic representations of both well-known and obscure cryptids lurking across the silver screen.

In this well-researched, lively, and enlightening initial installment – Cryptid Cinema is the first in a proposed series, with future volumes to cover cryptid-themed comics, monsters, sea serpents, and neo-dinosaurs; certainly there is plenty of additional cryptid fare awaiting rediscovery and deserving of Bissette's attention and affection – comprised in part of revised and expanded articles and essays Bissette initially wrote for his superb blog Myrant and for the excellent POD publications Monster! and Weng's Chop. Bissette covers cinematic representations of some of the usual suspects – primarily those of the hirsute hominid variety (the Yeti, Sasquatch, the Jersey Devil) – yet it is his unpacking of lesser-known cinematic cryptids that proves most absorbing. As he did in Teen Angels and New Mutants (2011), a fascinating study of Swamp Thing collaborator Rick Veitch's seminal 1990s deconstructionist comic Brat Pack, Bissette provides much-needed analysis of some frustratingly overlooked films.

Included here are exhaustive analyses of an eclectic group of creatures, from the space alien/Yeti from the altogether bizarre Swedish film Rymdinvasion I Lappland (1959; released in the US in 1962 as Invasion of the Animal People), to a rogue's gallery of Lovecraftian creatures, including the "Demogorgon" featured on the immensely popular first season of Netflix’s Stranger Things (2016). Also featured are a number of human-monster hybrids, with lengthy examinations of two strange yet endearing regional efforts: the drive-in Z-grade picture Zaat (1972) from Florida and the initially streamed then direct-to-video low budget release The Glasshead (1998) from Bissette's home state of Vermont. Bissette also looks at more recent examples human-monster hybrids, from more recent, relatively bigger-budgeted releases, including Kevin Smith's disturbing Tusk (1998), and the box office bomb Creature (2011), considered by Bissette to be a wrongly-maligned modern classic.

While not every topic covered is strictly cryptid cinema-related – for example, there is a brief chapter that amusingly skewers Swamp Thing schwag – Bissette’s encyclopedic knowledge is impressive and his enthusiasm for his subject matter is indisputably infectious. Moreover, this inaugural self-published effort under his recently revived Spiderbaby Grafix imprint is copiously illustrated with rare production stills, newspaper articles, adverts, and movie posters with dozens of fascinating sidebars and asides, making for an altogether compelling page turner. There is unfortunate lack of an index and the illustrations beg for colour reproduction; reportedly, a full-colour “Library Edition” is in the works. Despite these minor complaints, Cryptid Cinema remains a delightful and informative tour of the cryptid cinematic landscape. Highly recommended for Forteans and movie fans alike. - Eric Hoffman, Fortean Times

[Phil Hore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen R Bissette is rapidly becoming one of the world’s leading authorities on pop culture - the ‘go-to-man’ for anything and everything fan based around horror, sci-fi, fantasy and paleontology. Just look through the list of books he has had a hand in, they range from cinema, comics, dinosaurs, monsters, horror, art, biography and cartoons. Certainly, this is an eclectic mix, but so too are the fans of such media. In his latest book it is cinema cryptids that are in his gunsights.
What’s a cryptid you ask? As Mr Bissette himself says, they are “any and all unexplained and as-yet undiscovered unverified-by-science lifeforms”, or more simply put, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the like. There is a large and passionate fan-base around the subject, and the author has created a book full of everything and anything produce in the media about his favourite elusive critters. Want to know what movies contain a Sasquatch? Well here it is.
The book was a surprising size when it arrived, and any fear this might be a dry, humourless A to Z tomb on the subject was dashed within pages. This is a fun book, treating the reader like a fellow traveller, fan and friend. You end up taking a ride with the author, sharing the jokes, thrills, the tragedies and the frustrations around movies containing killer shrews and boogeymen. The book has all the feel of one of those 70s horror magazines, and contains similar advertisements, posters, novels, art, music, photos, TV appearances, movie ads and toys on the highlighted monsters - many of which you never knew existed and are immediately disappointed they are not in your collection and looking up eBay.
The book is great, and I hope the beginning of a series of such fare.

[Kyle Burley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Personally, I would have preferred more focus on Bigfoot/Yeti movies, but, this eccentric collection of essays is still a lot of fun to read.
Bissette’s enthusiasm, for this oddball genre, is infectious and his knowledge is beyond encyclopedic.

[Nick Tangborn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fun and meticulously researched - and very personal - perspective on the history of bigfoot and the like in movies. By the great comic artist Stephen R Bissette (Swamp Thing, Tyrant)

[Eric Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent source for films involving cryptid-style creatures, Bigfoot, Alligator People, and the like...
Stephen says to look out for volume 2!