SASQUATCH. I imagined a collective groan when trailers for Hulu s
Sasquatch rolled across screens on the North Coast. Another exploitative, sensationalist documentary on the Emerald Triangle to make a buck off a bunch of curious outsiders, great.
That wouldn t be unfair, given the impact of
Murder Mountain. We re a proud and insular bunch, not necessarily unfriendly to outsiders but certainly to the misconceptions that breed outside of the redwood curtain.
I didn t watch
Murder Mountain and, unlike this column s regular writer, I have largely steered clear of the true crime/documentary boom of the streaming age. I enjoyed the podcast Serial, an honest exploration of the journalistic process, a messy, ambiguous journey fraught with uncertainty. My few other forays into the contemporary genre
(Welcome to
The Quarantine Stream, a new series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series:
Where You Can Stream It: Hulu
The Pitch: While working on a weed farm in Northern California in the early 1990s, David Holthouse witnessed a fellow employee tell an unbelievable story: according to the guy, multiple people on the farm where they worked had been ripped limb from limb, and Bigfoot was to blame. Decades later, Holthouse (now an investigative journalist) sets out to get to the bottom of that story and find out what really happened in those woods all those years ago.
Supposed footprints of Bigfoot in Sasquatch. (Hulu)
A scene of Mendocino County, Calif., from Sasquatch. (Hulu)
Published May 01. 2021 12:01AM
Lorraine Ali, Los Angeles Times Get the weekly rundown Email Submit
True crime, weed wars and monster tales meet in Sasquatch, and Hulu s three-part docuseries delivers on all fronts.
This hybrid whodunit/monster-hunter mashup is centered around one central unsolved mystery, and several ancillary riddles, in the Emerald Triangle, a swath of Northern California wilderness across Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties. It s renowned for its natural beauty, marijuana production and Bigfoot sightings.
Leading us into the tangled woods is investigative reporter David Holthouse, who was working on a Mendocino dope farm in 1993 when a group of terrified men burst into his cabin with claims of finding three mutilated bodies at a nearby farm. The deceased were torn limb from limb, heads ripped from t
The best documentaries of 2021 on Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV Plus and more
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WeWork co-founder and former CEO Adam Neumann in a still from WeWork: or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn. Courtesy of Hulu
Documentaries give insights into subjects that viewers might never otherwise even know exist. While there are many ways to learn about new cultures and topics, from podcasts to YouTube rabbit holes to classes, there may be no easier way to explore a new world than by simply scrolling through a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu and pressing play on a feature-length documentary or docuseries.
On one of the final days of shooting
Sasquatch in Northern California, journalist David Holthouse was meeting a source on Spy Rock Road. The mountain is one of the most shadowy and sinister places in the weed-growing region remote, secluded, and notoriously violent. But the source, a weed grower who lived on the mountain, supposedly had information about the 1993 triple homicide that Holthouse was investigating for the documentary. So he went on his own and without cellphone service. Related Story
When he got there, she began telling a story about two guys who were murdered on the property recently. As if it was comedic, she relayed to Holthouse that her dog had dug up one of the men’s boots after he was buried because he had urinated himself before he was shot, and the dog picked up the scent. “She was telling me this story like it s the height of hilarity, right?, Holthouse tells Esquire. And on the outside, I m like laughing along with her, on the inside I m like, ‘