Crew
Director/Screenplay – Sam Qualiana, Producer – Gregory Lamberson, Six Fingers Created by Craig Lindberg, Makeup Effects – John Renna. Production Company – Metroshia Productions/Slaughtered Lamb Productions/Crow-Nan Productions.
Cast
Andrew Elias (Neil Rockwell), Sam Qualiana (Andrew Bailey), Lynn Lowry (Ester), Bill Brown (Butch), Alain Alvarez (Rex), Debbie Rochon (Melissa Walter), Tim O’Hearn (Six Fingers), Daniel Arrasjod (Bryce), Alexander Sloan McBride (Chris Dawson), Simeon Qualiana (Alan Baxter), Hernan Caraballo (Beer Man), Kim Piazza (Diana Sivano), Tia Maurice (Kristina), Nicole Ferrara (Sara)
Plot
Filmmakers Neil Rockwell and Andrew Bailey have disappeared in the woods around Royalton, New York. The nerdy Rockwell dragged his buddy Drew with him to make a film about the animal disappearances in the area. An old woman told them the legend of what the Indians call Ya-Yahk Osnuhsa, which translates into English as Six Fingers, a creature of the woods that some locals had reputedly made a bargain with to sacrifice livestock in return for being spared. Neil and Drew went camping in the wood with videocameras in search of Six Fingers, but instead it found them and began a series of psychological games as it hunted them.
Director/writer Sam Qualiana first appeared with the painfully bad gonzo killer shark film Snow Shark: Ancient Beast (2011). He followed this with The Legend of Six Fingers and then another incredibly bad gonzo killer shark film Post Apocalyptic Commando Shark (2018) and the monster movie Lake Effect (2023).
Around the time that The Legend of Six Fingers was made, the Found Footage film had taken off in a major way thanks to the sleeper success of Paranormal Activity (2007) upon its theatrical release in 2009. The Found Footage genre touched on a great many themes. Among these, there were quite a number of Found Footage ventures into the Bigfoot film – see also the likes of Hair of the Sasquatch (2008), No Burgers for Bigfoot (2008), Sawtooth (2009), Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes (2012), Willow Creek (2013), Exists (2014) and The Bigfoot Project (2017).
The Legend of Six Fingers is not quite a Bigfoot film. It concerns a different Bigfoot-like local creature, but to all intents and purposes it draws on the Bigfoot Film and its tropes. The scenes with the two characters (Andrew Elias and Sam Qualiana) lost in the woods and the Bigfoot playing a series of psychological games taunting them has distinct overtones of The Blair Witch Project (1999) – we even get a scene with Qualiana in his tent dictating a tearful last confession to the camera.
None of Sam Qualiana’s films are very good. The Legend of Six Fingers is probably the best I have seen of these so far in that it is the least worst. It is a better film in that, unlike Qualiana’s shark films, it is not dependent on shitty effects. The Bigfoot suit looks big and bulky but serviceable enough, although the creature’s face does seem to be obvious makeup. One of the more obvious things is that this is a Found Footage film that doesn’t look like it is a Found Footage film – there is none of the jagged photography and raw handheld camerawork characteristic of the genre, it just feels like regular photography.
The lead character played by Andrew Elias does nerdy and socially awkward off the chart. The problem is you are not sure if it is meant to be acting or is the way Elias, who has appeared in all of Qualiana’s films, is in real life. The film can be considered perhaps a mirror of the apparent real-life friendship between Qualiana and Elias. Rather amusingly, Qualiana casts himself here as the cool, laidback everyday guy lumbered with the nerdy friend, who in reality is a horndog who just wants to be shooting videos where he gets girls naked – something we see him trying to do throughout, albeit never with any success.
The Legend of Six Fingers is also the first of Sam Qualiana’s films that has recognisable actors. In this case, he has a then 69-year-old Lynn Lowry who gained a cult following for films like The Crazies (1973) and Shivers (1975), who explains the legend of Six Fingers, as well as Debbie Rochon, who has appeared in a lot of B movies usually undressed, as a woman whose pet has gone missing.
Trailer here
Trailer here