The Man Who Killed Hitler and then The Bigfoot

On paper, The Man Who Killed Hitler and then The Bigfoot sounds like a dream. A fever dream, maybe, but a still a super-cool, old school exploitation flick that had to have fun coded right into its DNA. An American soldier in World War II, just a regular guy from a small-town with a gal waiting back home, also happens to be a lethal, multi-lingual super-spy who is assigned to track down and assassinate the most evil man in the world, Adolph Hitler. Which he does in the first quarter of the movie. Then in the present, we discover this same soldier is still alive, an old man wracked with guilt over the heavy burden of his lethal capabilities. He’s recruited by the government again as the only man who can track down and kill the Bigfoot. Yeah, that’s right. Apparently, the sasquatch is carrying a lethal disease that will cause a massive plague unless he’s put down, and only our elderly super-spy friend has both the skill and the natural immunity to complete the mission. 

 All that and it stars the ultra-cool Sam Elliot as the old man and TV’s Aiden Turner as the younger version? For someone who loves ridiculous, high concept exploitation films, this sounded perfect for me. Because my wife has a deep, abiding affection for Aiden Turner, she agreed to watch it on streaming with me over spring break.

Unfortunately, like so many dreams, the greatness of The Man Who Killed Hitler and then The Bigfoot failed to really materialize the way I’d hoped. 

The film’s primary problem is that it refuses to embrace either of its two impulses. On the one hand, it wants to be a meditation on the passing of time, the power of regret and loss, the melancholy of aging, and on the other hand, it also wants to be a ludicrous, action adventure movie about a guy killing Hilter AND Bigfoot. It probably could have successfully been either version but because it tries to be both, it ends up being neither.

It’s never really clear what Elliot’s character Calvin Barr is so sad about. We find out that he lost his girl back during the war (though I don’t think it’s ever clear exactly how) and here he is half a century later still acting like a 15 year old who just got a break-up text. The film spends a lot of time watching him mope and only breaks the monotony when he pauses to beat three would-be thieves to a pulp – which he then proceeds to feel sad about.

The Hitler assassination sequence is nervy and fun, and there are a few flashes of exploitation silliness like when Barr, presented with an entire military arsenal to choose from to hunt Bigfoot, just points and says, “This knife, that gun, and this scope” and the camera zooms in on his determined face with a big musical fanfare. But those kind of winking, ain’t-this-fun flourishes are few and far between in a film that, for its amazing concept and title, is actually quite boring.

Elliot cuts an impressive leading man figure even at 74 years old, but when the script is undisciplined and the direction poor, there’s not much for even the best performer to do. Despite my wife’s deep love for his work on the BBC’s Poldark, we both agreed that outside of that particular program, Aiden Turner is actually not a very good actor. His nearly wordless performance was probably supposed to seem strong and silent, but it mostly comes across like Turner couldn’t pull off a convincing American accent. Larry Miller as Barr’s brother is probably the worst piece of casting I’ve ever seen.

Writer, director and producer Robert Krzykowski (criz-KOW-skee) had almost all the creative control on this picture but he really would have benefitted from at least one other strong voice urging him to trim here, cut there, and choose a definitive direction for his wonderfully conceived but clumsily executed movie.