THE SPIRIT

Put a compulsive ""powerfully built"" dog food tycoon on the trail of a Bigfoot monster (North America's version of the Abominable Snowman)--already tracked by a schizophrenic ex-Green-Beret Flathead Indian and his talking dog--and you have the makings of a grade B sci-why? thriller with meager overtones of the Deliverance ordeal and an ethnic slant. The director of the Kansas City Primate Research Center and a hip young female anthropologist fill in theories of Bigfoot and some Indian lore between fast-paced episodes of the beast's forays (he kills people cleanly by decapitation but prefers vegetables) and strenuous encounters with the hero, who seems indestructible thanks to isometric exercises. Bigfoot turns violent in defense of his species which--in a Darwinian quickie--is becoming human (and from a primate's point of view monstrous) via some man-made hanky-panky in the Old West. ""Bestiality?"" cries the shocked anthropologist. ""Who could have done it?"" (Not altogether a dumb question considering that the Bigfoots, er, Bigfeet are seven feet tall, covered with long matted hair, and stink.) The saga unreels in primer style with occasional unfortunate flights (""a thousand pythons of wind and snow gibbered in"") and much of the same old dialogue (""They'll come for us, won't they?""/""It's human blood all right."") It all ends in a massive blizzard-explosion-avalanche-fire-gun battle--a sort of meaningless Natliskeliguten (that's Indian for Bigfoot) dÄmmerung--and none too soon.