Elusive...mysterious...menacing...magnificent...Bigfoot. Is there any idea that has captured the human imagination more than the whispered rumor of a mighty, hairy biped living undisturbed in the undiscovered corners of the earth?
Since the dawn of the modern era, man has dreamed of finding that elusive mammal known as Bigfoot, and fucking him. Whether it's Night with Sasquatch or The Beast, the idea that we can find this, our distant ancestor, the so-called missing link, and immediately impale ourselves on his penis has made anthropologists horny for nearly five decades.
And now, Gerald DiPego, the screenwriter behind Sharky's Machine, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, and Death of the Incredible Hulk has dipped his quill into an inkwell full of man juice and given us 1984's...Shadow of the Beast.
The ingredients in this book's rape cake are summed up accurately, if choppily, on its back cover:
A MAN WHO NEVER MET
A WOMAN HE COULD NOT CONQUER.
A WOMAN WHO REFUSED
TO LET ANY MAN MASTER HER.
A TEEN-AGED BOY
LONGING TO PROVE HIS MANHOOD.
You know whose name you don't see on that list? Bigfoot's. Because in this book Bigfoot is a gentle creature and a guardian of nature who keeps his hairy wiener tucked safely away inside his Bigfoot pants. All mankind can learn from this Bigfoot, specifically Charlie Rose.
Meet Ruth Cassen, "a woman who refused to let any man master her," but every man makes her horny because she's an anthropologist who's 34 and single. She invites a grad student into her classroom to sketch Gigantopithecus (or "Giganto" as she affectionately refers to bigfoot) and instead he draws a picture of Ruth naked and makes her all hot and bothered. This seems to happen to her three or four times per day.
Meet "a man who never met a woman he could not conquer", Jack Lillion, a mean cowboy working as a hunting guide who strangles a dog in the first chapter. I'm assuming it was a lady dog.
Meet "a teen-aged boy longing to prove his manhood", Henry Webb, son of genial and popular television actor, Hank Webb, who yearns to bond with his father, and whom we first meet jerking off in the shower to sexual fantasies about his stepmother.
These three horndogs are thrown together on a horseback riding expedition into the Oregon wilderness to find Bigfoot, led by a man named Furlough and Jack Lillion. It's marketed as a fun way to spend two weeks outdoors, but is anything ever fun when so many sexually dysfunctional people get together in the woods to find Bigfoot? These jerks are about to be enrolled in...
Where, surprisingly, Bigfoot isn't a teacher.
A lot of other people are on this expedition, too, like Dick Barth, photographer, and boyfriend to Linda Pheffer, a nude model whom he helped get her big break in Oui magazine and now he's taking nudes of her in the Oregon wilderness for a Playboy pictorial that "could lead to movie interest." He's also a sexual sadist who hates women, and his photo sessions with Pheffer consist of him snarling at her, "Ugly. Turn over. Bury that face. Slide one leg up. Push your stomach into the ground. Push. Move your ass. No, that's foul. That's a whory move. Try something else."
There are also a bunch of other people, but really we're mostly focused on Lillion, Ruth Cassen, and Henry Webb. Or, more importantly, their eyes.
Jack Lillion is the kind of tough customer who gives firm handshakes and stares into other men's eyes.
“Lillion marked a man by how he dealt with the stare of Jack Lillion.”
He also stares into women's butts.
“Lillion had his eyes on Ruth’s ass as she walked away. He was marking her in his mind. She had met his challenge and challenged him back. She was pretty and had a tight ass and he would have her.”
There's a lot of sex in this book, but it's pretty much all between the humans, because Bigfoot isn't disgusting and he respects societal taboos against sex with other species. Lillion wants Ruth, she doesn't want him, Henry Webb keeps getting boners, Ruth's "eyes burned," Hank "stared at the girl," Lillion makes love to the young cook and "The sky was replaced by his ice blue eyes," and Ruth and Henry start to flirt, "their eyes and smiles finding each other."
There's so much staring going on that we don't even see Bigfoot until page 98 after Lillion gets tired of the "baby trip" they're on and fakes Bigfoot tracks so that Furlough will take everyone over the mountains and into unexplored territory and they just ride right into Bigfoot’s lap. Henry is the one who sees him first, and the sight blurs his vision and makes everything look new.
Meanwhile, Lillion has sex with Linda Pheffer and she runs away from him and stumbles into one of the tripwires that activates her boyfriend's camera traps that he set for Bigfoot. The flashbulbs bring everyone running, Dick Barth beats up Linda, then storms away in anger, and Bigfoot decapitates him. Yay, Bigfoot!
Lillion starts staring at everyone so much that Hank Webb, Henry's father, calls him out on all the eyeballing and Lillion gets his horse to kick Hank's horse off a cliff and Hank falls into a deep valley and dies. Henry has lost the father he loved and he's so upset that Ruth knows only soulful lovemaking will ease his pain. Lillion squats outside her tent door and stares at them with his red eyes as Henry prematurely ejaculates.
Thus bonded, Henry, Ruth, and Lillion decide to ride down into the deep valley to retrieve Hank's body, but a monster storm hits and they almost die in the wind and driving rain. Lillion gets them to shelter but insists that Ruth thank him for saving their lives by having sex with him. She refuses, and Henry knocks Lillion out with a log, then Lillion comes after them with his awesome hunting bow, Ruth and Henry hide and start making out again, but they have a feeling someone is creeping on them, and they look up into...The Eyes of Bigfoot:
"His eyes were on her. His eyes were speaking to her...Its eyes were deep-set, and dark, and moist...They touched the boy, somehow. They probed him and entered him and stared at his soul...Henry stood before the creature, captured by eyes that seemed to speak, and to know, to understand. The giant did not move or blink...Ruth blinked her tears away..."
Henry is moved to mystical heights, sobbing, "There was no killing in the creature's eyes...I knew he couldn’t kill, not him. He’s helping us."
Then Lillion ruins everything by bringing his "burning angry eyes" into this staring contest and he fires an arrow at Bigfoot but Henry saves the gentle giant's life by leaping up and taking the arrow in his chest like a champ. Suddenly, dozens of Bigfeet come out of the shadows, surround Lillion, and "reach for him with their eyes."
Then the corpse of Hank Webb falls from out of a tree, where it was stuck, and lands on top of Lillion, killing him instantly. Bigfoot pulls the arrow out of Henry's shoulder, and Henry basically goes insane.
"Hen studied the face of the shadow giant and the powerful eyes, and he felt peaceful...The creature's eyes held Hen and forced the young man to stare deeply for a long, long while...He felt tears of gladness in his throat; he wasn't sure why. Why am I glad? Why do I love you? Who are you? Are you the one? Are you the one who is going to take care of me? The others leave. Will you stay? My mother left. My father is gone. Is it you, then? Was it always you? Did I have to wait until now? Who are you? Who will take care of me? Who is it? Is it you?"
While Henry babbles like an idiot at a therapy session, Ruth realizes that Bigfoot isn't an earlier version of man, but a more evolved version of man, and she and Henry return to civilization having learned the wisdom of Bigfoot, and also that man is the real monster. Meanwhile, annoyed that every time he tries to do the simplest thing, like pulling an arrow out of some kid's chest he winds up practically engaged to them and entangled in all kinds of emotional psychodrama, Bigfoot retreats into the wild, vowing to never mingle with needy humans again because they always want to rush into relationships.
And the reader is left with the most warm and special, most magical glow inside of them, like a seed that has sprouted and is quickening inside. A feeling like we have looked into...The Eyes of Bigfoot.
