Revel in the Confusion of the Trailer for The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot

Everything to do with The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot seems calculated to deliver a very dry kind of joke. Armed with a title that would immediately make any audience member expect a zany, exploitation-style B movie, the film immediately started defying expectations once critics got a look at it. Now, as it approaches its VOD release on Feb. 8, we finally have a proper trailer for the film, and yep—this looks far more serious minded than you would ever expect from the title.

The wonderful Sam Elliott is front and center in The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot, playing the title character of Calvin Barr, a secret WWII legend who was responsible for the assassination of Adolf Hitler. Here, he’s called back into service to stop Bigfoot of all things, not because the hairy beast has been tearing apart campers but because the sasquatch is carrying an extremely dangerous disease or biological pathogen. So the film’s second half appears to be a drama in the vein of Outbreak, except, you know … with Bigfoot.

Look, just watch the trailer and you’ll see what we mean.

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What this appears to really be is a serious-minded drama about aging and living with bad memories, wrapped in a title and premise that was brilliant calculated to generate headlines and finger-pointing. And it’s worked quite well—the film is currently holding an 85 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviews from various outlets that hail it as “a fascinating experiment; a dark drama that treats pulp genre with the earnest emotional weight of an awards contender.” Would any of us have paid attention without “Hitler” and “Bigfoot” in the title? It seems far more doubtful.

As stated above, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot hits VOD on Feb. 8, 2019. By all means, check it out, but don’t go in expecting a lighthearted exercise in genre parody. This film is clearly a little bit more complicated than that.