The Man Who Wrote About The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot and Then Prison School

This post contains spoilers for both the movie and series in the title. Also note that this piece contains some potentially NSFW description, especially in the back half.    

“The Man Who Killed Hitler and then The Bigfoot.” Amazon, 2020, https://www.amazon.com/Man-Killed-Hitler-then-Bigfoot/dp/B07KZHV8JT/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+man+who+killed+hitler+and+then+the+bigfoot+dvd&qid=1596835126&s=movies-tv&sr=1-1   

            If you were to guess that The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot (2018) was a comedy based off of the title alone, you’d be about half wrong. I say “half wrong” instead of “half right” because the wrongness of the assertion outweighs the rightness in the sense that while The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot has elements of comedy in it—starting with but certainly not limited to the outrageously absurd, long title where the “the” before “Bigfoot” does so much heavy lifting. It’s not Bigfoot, you see; it’s the Bigfoot—I would not actually classify the film as a whole as a comedy. It takes its subject matter quite seriously tonally, and that can be itself a source of comedy since you have the juxtaposition of the absurd-seeming Bigfoot angle with the tone, on top of other silly or weird beats that function in the same way; however, the overall vibe of the film is that it is telling a serious story. It behaves like a movie with things to say or truths to speak, and maybe that’s just its brand of comedy, but maybe (just maybe) it is actually a serious film. There are no elements of wink, wink, nudge, nudge irony-poisoned self-deprecation here—no fourth-wall-breaking, no stylish flourishes that go too far too consistently and shatter the “illusion” of seriousness.

            The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot is more or less a serious movie, and the assertion that it might be a comedy is more or less (mostly more)… wrong. If this is a parody of serious or “literary” films, then it doesn’t feel or behave like one. Nor does it feel, as its title and initial premise might suggest, like a movie made by the SYFY network for a few thousand dollars. In an age of cynical self-awareness, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot has confidence in its wacky, weird, original idea and simply rolls with the weirdness in a sincere way rather than trying to protect its big, warm heart with self-aware, self-deprecating hijinks. And the film, in my opinion, only works because it chooses this approach. There is a version of this movie in an alternate universe somewhere that is insufferable and godawful because it insists on itself in a way that’s meant to endear it to a jaded audience but overshoots the mark like most genuinely vulnerable class clowns trying to put up a front and instead simply becomes annoying.

            A lot of reviewers give the star Sam Elliott a bunch of credit for imbuing the movie with actual weight, but I think that’s giving him too much credit. That alternate universe The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot could very well have preserved Elliott’s role and performance entirely as recorded and simply changed the characters, music, cinematography, and so forth around him to recast him as the straight man in a wacky universe of nonsense. I’m trying extremely hard not to say “Sharknado” here since A) I haven’t actually seen all that much of the franchise and can’t fairly judge it, and B) I try to avoid being outright negative on here against something someone created since I’m just sittin’ here a-typin’ and where’s my beloved comedy film franchise, right?! But! I can’t stop thinking about Sharknado (and other, assorted made-for-a-few-thousand SYFY films and mockbusters) as I’ve watched and am now writing about The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot because what little I have seen of Sharknado and the impression it left me with leads me to believe that it is exactly the obnoxious alternate universe film I keep alluding to. There’s a version of this movie that looks like that (whether Sharknado is truly “that” or only maybe “that”-adjacent), but, thankfully, this movie is not like that. It’s better because it believes in itself too much. If it is a parody, then it’s a bad one since there’s not a clear indictment. It seems to be what it is on its surface—a character study of the man who killed Hitler and then the Bigfoot.

            Comparatively very little of the movie is actually devoted to the absurd elements evident in its title. In a sense, it’s very true to the literal meaning of that title. This story is about “the man” who did those things and not so much the things themselves. Much of the movie is composed of dialogue, both in and out of flashbacks, and the action is fairly limited in the grand scheme of the movie’s run time. The actual Bigfoot, for example, doesn’t really become a presence until after the 50 minute mark in a film that is just over 90 minutes long, and our first sighting of the hairy fellow comes alongside Elliott’s Calvin Barr shooting the cryptid in the head after a quick cut from the previous scene where Barr was nowhere near the creature and was only just about to begin his hunt. There is a more pronounced conflict with the Bigfoot after the first headshot, including a tracking sequence through the wilderness, but the impression the movie gives is that Bigfoot isn’t ultimately as important as killing him and getting him out of the way is so that we can find out how Barr feels about the whole business. As I said, there is a lot of conversation here, and while The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot is no horror movie, it feels like it borrows from the trend of contemporary slow-burn horror films. Maybe it’s a comparable example of the slow-burn schlocky (but not actually because sincerity) seeming-B movie? There’s probably a more elegant way to put that.

            The movie doesn't feel like a middle-shelf product where dialogue is concerned either. It's pretty heightened or stilted a lot of the time, but the dialogue here is much closer to what you would find in True Detective Season Two, The Counselor, or Cosmopolis than a made for TV creature feature. “Literary” is the term that springs to my mind since it reminds me of this style of dialogue, sometimes used in cinema or television but more often in drama and books, where capturing the ebb and flow of human speech isn’t really the point. Rather than try to replicate the ways that humans actually speak to one another, the works in question use conversation as a chance to more explicitly philosophize or, in my opinion, to try to capture the feeling or vibe or pathos of a conversation without aiming for verisimilitude in the subject matter or the words used. I don’t think The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot comes anywhere close to touching Cosmopolis in terms of heightened and awkward but also meaningful exchanges, but it’s closer to that than it is to actual human speech a lot of the time. In this regard, it is like an arthouse flick. It cares about dialogue and character a lot, but it also has Barr get into a fight with Bigfoot where the hairy old fellow busts out a Mission Impossible-style take down involving Barr’s arm while Barr tries desperately to knife the creature, ending with a schlocky vomiting sequence where the Bigfoot throws up in graphic detail on Barr from close range. Maybe it’s a cousin to Bone Tomahawk, a movie that wants to have its schlock cake but also puts in a lot of effort to decorate it in a high-class sort of way—lots of swirls in the icing, gold leaf, etc.

            The culmination of the film’s focus on Barr as a character occurs in its climactic conversation—a flashback to Barr taking a walk with his girlfriend Maxine (Caitlin FitzGerald) the night before he’s to deploy to fight in World War II. Maxine is a teacher, and while the two walk, she tells him about an interaction she had with a student earlier that day. The student had a small wound on his forehead and insisted Maxine read his recently-submitted journal to find out how it happened. In the journal, the student described playing good guys and bad guys with some other kids with toy guns. The student in question hid in a tree during the game but ended up falling out of it and landing on a teammate. When others gathered around to check on them both, one of the good guys shot everyone and won the game. When Maxine asks Barr why the student was so desperate for her to read this story, Barr suggests that maybe the boy wants to know what she thinks of him and the game. Maxine asks for Barr’s thoughts, and he says that a boy like the one who shot everyone will probably grow up to be some sort of leader (maybe president). Maxine then asks which boy Barr is, and he tells her that he’s the boy who got squished when the student telling the story fell out of the tree.

            This is an interesting response, of course. We might expect Barr to say that he was the unlucky boy who fell out of the tree and cost his friends the game given the way that much of the movie characterizes him as somber and regretful. Or maybe we might expect him to be the boys who ran to check on their teammates—someone who cares deeply for others like Barr does, to the point that he’s visibly shaken after killing Hitler and is willing to hold the hand of a (seemingly) dying Bigfoot and cry over the strange creature he’s only just met. We probably wouldn’t expect him to say he’s the boy who shot everyone during their moment of weakness, though that position does kind of fit for a tracker and infiltrator like Barr has been in the past. And the characterization of this boy as someone who did what needed to be done for the “good guys” to win despite the despicable tactic actually kind of fits with Barr’s actions in the film and with the type of character he initially seems to be. He comes off as a typical jaded, drunk, old soldier in the movie’s opening scenes.

            The film begins with Barr in a bar being told by the bartender that he should spend his final years somewhere warm, only for him to brush off the suggestion somewhat angrily before leaving the bar. On his way to his car, he first gives change to a homeless man and then proves that he’s still badass in a familiarly cinematic sort of way by taking out some would-be muggers. Based on this sequence alone, Barr seems to be exactly the sort of character one would expect to take the lead in a movie with a title like this one. The rest of the movie challenges this early characterization with its more nuanced tone and dialogue, of course, but there’s still a bit of the grizzled warrior with a particular set of skills trope in Barr throughout. The fact that he ultimately chooses, without hesitation, the boy who was squished by his peer as his representation in the story complicates matters considerably. It’s an eccentric choice for an eccentric character—a man who, past or present, seems to be either holding himself back or haunted by something. The something in question seems to be symbolized by the rock Barr finally manages to find and remove from his shoe at the very end of the film, the same rock he has been checking for repeatedly throughout without finding somehow. And after the removal he finally perks up, calls to his dog with a newfound energy in his voice, and jogs off into the night with a box in his hands that contains something seemingly important to Barr’s character we never actually get to see. I’m trying not to get lost in the details here, so let it just suffice to say that The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot very clearly and frequently positions itself as something like an arthouse film with its symbolically-coded exchanges, actions, and objects. Is it parody? I stand by my earlier point: If it’s parody, it’s not a good one, as the other shoe (the indictment of the arthouse genre) never drops. And by refusing to wink at its audience and by insisting that they take its subject matter seriously, the film pushes on toward something like genuine feeling rather than settling for cynicism or irony to sustain itself and justify the weird premise.

            On a note adjacent to all this, I love humor, and, in particular, I love doing that thing you’re not supposed to do with a good joke, which is explain why and how it’s funny in the first place. For the title of The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot, the humor comes from the length, the specificity, the unlikely pairing of the seemingly unrelated figures, and the way that it basically “spoils” the plot of the movie. I’ve tried to emulate it here, making my own title even longer and harder to parse as I add more words and, perhaps, an even more seemingly unlikely pairing of topics. It also kind of sounds like the man who killed Hitler and Bigfoot has now set his sights on Prison School as well due to the bad phrasing, which I think is hilarious. I obviously could have gone with something more elegant or even academic, but I chose the unwieldy and awkward approach to better appreciate and appropriate the humor of the original. If you didn’t know the title of the film, how big of a shock would it be when a World War II story about a secret plot to kill Hitler pivoted to being about a deadly infection spread by Bigfoot? Likewise, if I didn’t title this blog post like I did, would anyone be expecting this little analysis of a (maybe) arthouse film to pivot to being about the 2015 sex comedy anime Prison School?

“Prison School.” Crunchyroll, https://www.crunchyroll.com/prison-school/videos

            Prison School is the story of five boys who are the first male students to be allowed into a competitive all-girls academy. Shortly after their enrollment, they get caught attempting an elaborate peeping scheme into the girl’s bath and are sentenced for a period of time to an actual, literal prison on the school grounds that is operated by the “Underground Student Council.” The council is led by the daughter of the school’s ass-obsessed male administrator, and she has an axe to grind with all men as an extension of her hatred for her father’s own barely-concealed perversion; therefore, the council conspires to trick the boys into breaking out so that they can get them all expelled from the academy. After they manage to frame the boys in this way, the plot shifts to the boys attempting to prove their innocence from inside the prison before their expulsion goes through. Meanwhile, thanks in part to the council’s machinations but also to their own personal desires, the boys fall out with one another and have to work to overcome the divisions between them to maintain their friendship.

            I only watched Prison School earlier this summer, but it may be one of my favorite anime of all time. When I was watching The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot and was starting to shape my reactions into something like an essay, I thought of Prison School. I didn’t write about it when I watched it, and given how much I liked it, I felt like that was something I wanted to remedy. It felt appropriate to pair something as seemingly dissimilar as Prison School with The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot as well for the reason mentioned just above (to parallel the pairing of the original’s two “halves”). However, Prison School doesn’t just fit well here as an extension of a gag in a title. Instead, I think it pairs well with the Hitler-Bigfoot movie because it has the same core strength—As much as it is a comedy and definitely has moments that are clearly intended to be funny, it usually takes itself seriously. Just like The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot, comedy in Prison School arises in part from the juxtaposition of a serious tone with ridiculous elements, and it never really breaks down into the sort of irony or cynicism you might expect. There’s an alternate universe version of the show done wrong that is probably even more insufferable than that alternate universe version of The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot.

            While I don’t watch anywhere near as much anime as some people, I’ve watched a fair amount over the years, and I have never laughed at supposed “comedy” in anime as much as I did at Prison School. Maybe that speaks to the series I’ve chosen to watch rather than anime comedy in general, but I’m still going to generalize here and say that most anime overshoots comedy and just lands right in obnoxious territory. What makes Prison School work where those others failed (in my opinion) is the commitment to its serious tone in spite of the wacky-sounding premise and its status as a sex comedy. A lot of anime that is trying for comedy grinds awkwardly to a stop for a moment and insists upon itself when it’s time for a joke: “Look at how funny I’m being right now! Wow!” Prison School largely keeps a consistent tone, so the comedic bits and the drama all roll together naturally and to the point where you start to wonder whether this is all comedy or if there aren’t parts that aren’t actually serious. It’s similar to The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot in that way. You can never quite answer the question of whether this is all just a big joke or if there isn’t something real at its heart. I will pause a moment here to admit that Prison School eventually does start falling prey to those unfunny anime impulses I alluded to earlier in later episodes when it seems to start contriving ways to get funny T-and-A into a scene. It’s almost like it remembers it’s supposed to be a sex comedy and then just desperately has its most scantily-clad character do something silly and salacious wholly separate from the immediate plot rather than making the silly and salacious stuff arise more naturally as part of its actual narrative. In these moments, it seems to lose faith in itself in the sense that it starts doubting whether its drama can carry the plot for a few minutes without something more blatantly funny and sexual to help it out. This is essentially the crime of a lot of bad comedy—the belief that there must be something explicitly coded as funny happening at all times to prevent the audience from losing interest.

            Prison School features frequent sexual innuendo and panty shots, gross-out gags involving poop, sweat, and piss, some at-times absolutely beautifully-animated bone-crunching violence (ostensibly deployed for laughs given the lack of long-term consequences but still appropriately wince-inducing), cross-dressing, elaborate plotting that can be genuinely surprising in the twists and turns that bring apparently unrelated threads together, and genuine heart and tension in the predicament of the boys as they fall out and ultimately resolve their conflicts. As much as large chunks of that formula fall into the realm of “comedy,” the show’s tone stays serious most of the time, and, as I said before, it all ends up blending together more often than it doesn’t by treating conventionally dramatic moments and more comedically dramatic moments with about the same weight. There’s genuine tension when the boys are on the cusp of escaping or have an escape plan foiled. And, especially, there’s real heart in their interactions with one another. Prison School is clearly not aiming for literary or arthouse status like The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot, but the two still fit close together in my mind because of their honest total commitment to their individual, specific bits.

            How to truly bring all this discussion home, though? I suppose one way to spin the content of this post toward some sort of final, broader-reaching conclusion is to say something about the phrase “guilty pleasures” and about how I’ve recently seen a fair bit of discussion online about how we should unironically embrace the things we enjoy. On the other hand, I don’t like that message exactly because it could be interpreted as giving people carte blanche to uncritically consume media when instead we should enjoy things but also be willing to examine the flaws as well. Trying to push people in this direction online can sometimes be aggressively mischaracterized by the offended party as “not letting people enjoy things,” so there’s clearly still a real need to get people out of the habit of conflating any level of criticism with outright hatred. There’s plenty of room to criticize something you enjoy while still enjoying it.

            The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot? Maxine doesn’t get much development as a character and dies off-screen, largely serving as a source of motivation for Barr in a tired manner that echoes the treatment of women characters across a broad swath of less interesting films with fewer aspirations. Additionally, the film gives the Nazis way too much credit for successfully devising a conspiracy involving Hitler lookalikes to keep his ideas alive in the event of the real man’s death. While they might be the villains, it’s definitely probably possible to watch this movie as a white nationalist and still feel some pride in the Nazis’ machinations. A lot of speculative media involving Nazis and/or World War II does this—granting the Nazis some sort of magical powers or advanced tech or whatever—which does (albeit hopefully unintentionally) give anyone consuming it with a particular disposition room to see the treatment as positive in a way.

             Meanwhile, on the Prison School side of things: Nonconsensual piss play is all well and good (note: not actually), but they also have to do the old Man In A Dress thing as a major focus at one point. And then there’s the obvious issue of the male gaze-yness of the whole enterprise, as well as the problem of how it continues a trend of sexualizing teenage girls (not just in Japan where the story is set but in other cultures as well). It’s fictional, and fiction doesn’t impact reality in a one-for-one sort of way, but desensitization is a real thing, and the cumulative weight of particular shitty worldviews portrayed in fiction adds up in the brain over time. The results are more difficult to predict than just reenacting the media in question, but it’s worth considering that maybe training minds to conflate teenagers with sexiness through a literal avalanche of media with that as a focus is not the absolute best thing in the world. It’s fine to enjoy even this sort of thing unironically as an audience, but it also shouldn’t be done uncritically.

            A different way to spin the message of this piece is to instead look at it from a creator perspective. As a creative, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to have my art taken seriously. When I was a kid, I used to share my work with family, and I had a friend of the family laugh at something I wrote when it was supposed to be a serious beat. As I grew into a young adult, I wrote a lot of ironic and cynical postmodern stuff, partly because that was what I was into at that age and wanted to emulate but also because on some level I was trying to outsmart my audience. “You can’t hurt me if I’m self-deprecating” has been a major theme of my life, creative or otherwise, and it’s been very hard to try to un-internalize that message. I’m sure there are elements of that in this very post! Maybe the take-away from all this is that if you genuinely like something as a creative and want to make it, maybe don’t pre-envision a sneering modern audience smirking at it that you have to somehow anticipate and out-maneuver and instead go ahead and swing for the fences. In the end, I enjoyed The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Big Foot for its sincerity, after all. In a final plot twist, though, I will reveal that I actually didn’t love it. I probably would have hated it if it had been the movie it seemed to be from its title, though, so… sincerity! It’s a better movie for it, Prison School is a better series for it, and we’d probably be better off as a society if we stopped trying to irony our way out of committing to something warmly and openly.