Trivia / Cry Wilderness

• Colbert Bump: Really, the only reason most people know about this movie is because it was featured on Season 11 of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• Creator Backlash: Based on the passage below, screenwriter Philip Yordan was well aware of how void of substance the film is, and doubted that anyone could even sit through it, much less enjoy it.
• Dueling Works: This wasn't the only Bigfoot movie released in 1987;
  • There was the more famous Harry and the Hendersons which was about a family sheltering a Bigfoot.
  • Disney had a telefilm called Bigfoot about a family encountering one in the mountains.
• Executive Meddling: According to the screenwriter, Philip Yordan, the mess that is this film is entirely due to this. According to this interview, he wrote a coherent script only to then have it butchered by his producer who insisted that it had to be for children and demanded that he rewrite it. The demands made it impossible for him to come up with any meaningful Conflict for the film, and by the end of it he was literally told to make a movie about absolutely nothing.
  "The distributor, who had done Sasquatch (1978)^note  Whatever film that is, which is not mentioned on Wikipedia, IMDB, or elsewhere on This Very Wiki, it should not be confused with a few other documentary films about Bigfoot, all of which are from 1976 and have different distributors., which cost maybe $150,000 and made over $4 million profit, says to me, "Give me a picture about Bigfoot and I'll make millions." So I sat down and wrote a picture. He says 'No, no, no, you don't understand. You got scenes in the beginning that will scare the audience. It's for kids.' So I had to take out all the scary scenes. Bigfoot couldn't be threatening; he had to be nice. No blood, no violence, no sex, no bad language. I said, 'You really want a picture about nothing!' He says, 'That's it! Now you've got it! Nothing! I want nothing!' I said, 'That's the most difficult to write.' Well, the picture is about nothing, if you sit through it, which I don't know if you can."
• He Also Did: Phillip Yordan, the screenwriter who disowned the movie, was best known for being a frontwriter for victims of The Hollywood Blacklist.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: A rescued example: Despite the presence of TV spots on YouTube indicating it had some publicity, and the fact that Phillip Yordan mentioned it in an interview, as well as some critical reviews from Variety and Motion Picture Guide magazines around its original release, Cry Wilderness does not seem to have gotten any video release until its 2004/2005(?) DVD release by Trinity Home Entertainment. Presumably its original copyright owners, Visto International, went defunct, as multiple distributors have released it in multi-feature DVDs, such as Vinegar Syndrome and Phase 4 Films.

---