It happened two million years ago.
Five students, their professor (Dave Flocker) and Dr. Bill Wyman (Bill Simonsen), the curator of the Lincoln County Museum take a field trip into the mountains. They are on an archeological dig looking for artifacts. While scouring the area they find a cave. In the cave they discover an underground tomb. In the tomb are some pottery and what looks like a mummy. They take the mummy from the cave and bring it back to the cabin where they are staying. They store it in the shed behind the cabin.
While in the shed the mummy begins to come back to life. When one of the students goes out to the shed he finds that the mummy is gone. The monstrous paper Mache headed creature is loose and looking for someone to kill. Anyone in his path is doomed.
“Teenagers Battle the Thing” was released in 1958 and was directed by Dave Flocker. (Listed in the credits as Don Fields.) The movie was written by his brother James T. Flocker. (Listed in the credits as James Fields.) It’s an obscure low budget independent “B” movie. The movie is only about 58 minutes long. The only theatrical release was in the director’s hometown.
It was then put on a shelf and left for about 17 years. The movie was then absorbed in 1975 and expanded upon. An additional half hour or so of footage was added. A prologue was added to bring it up to about 88 minutes long. The reincarnation was then re-titled “The Curse of Bigfoot” and released for distribution. The creature in the film is not really a Bigfoot but kind of a mummy. He also doesn’t look like a mummy. He looks more like a moth-eaten half ape thing with a paper Mache head. The re-titled movie was released during the Bigfoot craze in the 70’s.
The actors are mostly drama students at local high schools. The ‘actor’ playing the teacher, Roger Mason, is also the producer and director Dave Flocker, AKA Don Fields. He is un-credited as the teacher. I found a reference that states the mummy was played by his brother and the writer of the movie, James Flocker AKA James Fields and that the sheriff was played by Dave and James’ father. The film credits reflect the supervising producer as Hugh Thomas. Whether this is the same Hugh Thomas that produced “Plan 9 From Outer Space”, I can’t verify.
Information on the film and the film makers is sketchy at best. I’ve check several places and there are differences recorded for actors and film dates and such. Some of the actors are also uncredited. Even Wikipedia and IMDb don’t always match. I did find a blog called movievigilante.blogspot. In it the blogger has a string of e-mails where he corresponded with one of the actresses in the movie, Jan Swihart (Hart). It’s quite interesting.
As for the movie itself, it’s quite amateur and it’s not surprising. All the actors were drama students and the film makers were newbies cutting their teeth on their first film. I cut them all a lot of slack.
In 2010 James Flocker was found guilty of child pornography. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison and 10 years supervised release. He was 70 at the time. I did find a record that he died in 2014. I believe it was on a website called mylife.com but I couldn’t verify that tidbit anywhere else.