In Extremis: Willow Creek (2013) and Sex with Bigfoot

TW: Sexual Assault and Animal Cruelty

Disclaimer: Get out of here! Can’t you see we don’t want you anymore! Why can’t you go get independent legal advice! And leave us before the movie is spoiled! *Hits Bigfoot* Go!

If you are still here, I want to ask a question that likely has not crossed your mind -- can you legally have sex with a Bigfoot? Are you still there? The question seems ludicrous but raises actual concerns with how humans anthropomorphize animals under the law. Deconstructing these principles by using a “monster” might answer some important questions around how we conceptualize who or what is worthy of rights and how we think of crimes.

In the film Willow Creek (2013), the audience follows Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) and Jim (Bryce Johnson) as they attend a Bigfoot convention and eventually go camping in the woods of Humboldt County, California. They slowly uncover evidence that Sasquatch is surreptitiously stalking the sleuthing soulmates. As a found footage film, director Bobcat Goldthwaite gives us a hurried ending where we do not know the duo’s ultimate fate. However, we are given the following unsettling context clues:

1. Early in the film, there are posters of missing women, including a woman later seen in the film;
2. We see a naked woman stumbling around in the forest -- who is played by the actress whose photo we saw as a missing woman;
3. We hear a struggle, sounds that could be Bigfoot, and then stop hearing Jim’s voice;
4. We hear Kelly screaming for help.

The internet has proposed that Bigfoot is kidnapping women to take back to “his” lair to have sex with them and reproduce. One such video implied that Bigfoot was using women as “sex slaves.”¹ Note that the following assumptions must be made to support this theory:

1. This entity was Bigfoot or a Bigfoot;
2. Bigfoot has sex to reproduce;
3. Bigfoot as a species can reproduce with a human or believes that they can;
4. Bigfoot took the previous woman or Kelly for a sexual purpose;
5. Bigfoot can understand the concept of kidnapping or forcibly constraining someone for a sexual purpose.

The kidnapping of women is a trope of monster films from King Kong (1933), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), and even played comedically in Young Frankenstein (1974). The films attribute the animus that humans have for "kidnapping" to the creature/monster’s actions. This occurs in reality with animals that humans consider intelligent, such as dolphins and chimpanzees. Articles have dealt in the past with whether animals can commit sexual assault or murder. ² These are legal terms for behaviours that humans engage in and which we have determined are criminal in nature. We observe facts about the dolphin, such as their breeding outside of fertility season, their groups of males that potentially engage in forcible sex with females, and call them gangs committing sexual assault and imposing human logic to their behaviour. We are anthropomorphizing a dolphin if we suggest that they engage in rape and that is both unfair to the animal and reduces the seriousness of the behaviour in humans.

Luckily the courts in California actually dealt with whether animals can commit crimes. In People v. Frazier,³ a woman ordered a dog to attack someone, and then argued that she was not the principal committing the crime and instead was a mere aider or abettor in the crime justifying a reduced sentence.  The California Court of Appeal determined that:

Despite the physical ability to commit vicious and violent acts, dogs do not possess the legal ability to commit crimes.⁴

There was further case law that held that dogs cannot form the “criminal intent” necessary to commit a crime. So it turns out that they are LEGALLY good boys, even if they are doing bad-boy behaviour.

Accordingly, is Bigfoot an animal or a human? According to Black’s Law Dictionary, an animal is “[a]ny animate being which is endowed with the power of voluntary motion. In the language of the law, the term includes all living creatures not human.”⁵ Human is not defined in the Black’s Law Dictionary, however a person is defined as “A man considered according to the rank he holds in society, with all the rights to which the place he holds entitles him, and the duties which it imposes. A human being is considered as capable of having rights and of being charged with duties; while a “thing” is the object over which rights may be exercised.”⁶

What we know is that a person has rights and duties. Pursuant to US Federal Legislation, a person shall include “every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development”.⁷ This definition is very important to reproductive rights as it prevents arguments on a federal level for the protection of “unborn children”. If we apply this definition, then Bigfoot is not a person and therefore does not have rights or duties from their personhood. If by that logic Bigfoot is not a human, they are an animal. Using that definition of animal the following would be animals - the fish monster from The Shape of Water, all the Gremlins, mermaids, most extraterrestrials including Superman. Whereas some monsters would be human - vampires, zombies, werewolves, cyborgs, Brundlefly, Wendigos, and Medusa, as they were previously infants born as homo sapiens.

Having sex with an animal is legally considered Bestiality-- sorry Lois Lane. By the above definition, Bigfoot is an animal and automatically in 46 states, sexual activity with Bigfoot will be a crime.⁸ Even if Bigfoot might be able to articulate his desires, and in some media even speak, and communicate those desires. That also means that the court would likely find that a Bigfoot cannot form the mens rea/mental element to commit a crime. At the end of Willow Creek, Bigfoot does not kidnap Kelly, at least in the legal sense -- Bigfoot would simply be a wild animal attacking her under this definition.

It also means that they may add Bigfoot to the endangered species list. It is an offence under the Endangered Species Act to “take”/kill an endangered animal.⁹ However, a person trying to save someone from a Bigfoot attack could kill a Bigfoot, if they "committed the offence based on a good faith belief that he was acting to protect himself or herself, a member of his or her family, or any other individual, from bodily harm from any endangered … species”.¹⁰ The court in United States v Wallen,¹¹ held that the belief of danger is subjective to the person as assessed by the court. You cannot put yourself in the situation to purposely hunt a Bigfoot -- except potentially in Oklahoma where they created Bigfoot hunting laws to protect the beef jerky industry.¹²

Ultimately, legal personhood is a much more complicated question than simply stating that Bigfoot is or is not a human being. Many philosophers have opined on what comes first - the capacity to hold rights and duties or those rights and duties being thrust upon an entity?¹³ We would need many more interactions with Bigfoot...Bigfoots...Bigfeet (we will have to ask them) to assess their capability and to determine how we interact with them to grant a Bigfoot personhood. The legal status of an entity becomes wholly tied to our anthropocentric relationship with them. What rights we give to animals, robots, and even nature will become more prevalent in legal conversations in the future, as we navigate the realms of protection and perhaps even acceptance of non-human as persons (other than corporations).

However, for now, no you cannot legally have sex with a Bigfoot. Keep it in your tasteful erotica, please.¹⁴

1. My Favourite Horror, “Willow Creek Ending Explained (Spoiler Alert!)”. Published July 31, 2017; Accessed online July 14, 2021 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7JG8hk0q-4>.
2. Rutherford, Adam. “Can a Dolphin Really Commit Rape?” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, April 10, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/animals-rape-murder-morality-humans/585049/ ; Reville, William. “Could a Chimpanzee Be Guilty of Murder?” The Irish Times. The Irish Times, September 15, 2016. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/could-a-chimpanzee-be-guilty-of-murder-1.2781687. 
3. People v. Frazier, 173 Cal. App. 4th 613 (2009).
4. People v. Henderson (1999) 76 Cal.App.4th 453, 470; 90 Cal.Rptr.2d 450 ; People v. Knoller (2007) 41 Cal.4th 139, 147-148, 158; 59 Cal.Rptr.3d 157, 158 P.3d 731.
5. Garner, Bryan A., and Henry Campbell Black. Black's Law Dictionary. St. Paul, MN: Thomson Reuters, 2021, “Animal”.
6. Garner, Bryan A., and Henry Campbell Black. Black's Law Dictionary. St. Paul, MN: Thomson Reuters, 2021, “Person”.
7. United States Code, General Provisions,1 USC § 8(a)
   (a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development. ; Note that this is an inclusive definition so other categories could be included than those listed -- I am being facetious with my legal reading.
8. Beastiality as of April 1, 2021 is not an offence in Hawaii, New Mexico, West Virginia and Wyoming - please note that in many states penetration (of a person by animal or animal by person) is required for Beastiality to be charged, an element that I take the position should be amended. https://www.route-fifty.com/management/2021/04/bestiality-legal-four-states-two-are-trying-change/173084/.
9. Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA or "The Act"), 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq., §1538. Prohibited acts - addresses the taking of endangered animals; §1538. Definitions (19) defines the term "take" means to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.
10. 1Doyle, Charles. “Killing Endangered Species: What’s Reasonable Self-Defense?” CRS Legal Sidebar. Congressional Research Service , November 29, 2017. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/LSB10034.pdf.
11. Full case name: United states of America, Plaintiff-appellee, V. Dan Calvert WALLEN, Defendant-Appellant. Animal Law Legal Center. (2017, October 25). https://www.animallaw.info/case/united-states-v-wallen.
12. Elliott, J. K. (2021, January 21). Lawmaker calls for Bigfoot 'hunting Season' in Oklahoma - National. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/7591236/bigfoot-hunting-season-oklahoma/.
13. Gellers, J. C. (2020). Rights for robots. Routledge. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/521be842-c3bb-466f-be16-3bd285f181da/9781000264579.pdf
14. McDonell-Parry, A. (2018, August 14). Yes, Bigfoot Erotica is absolutely a thing. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bigfoot-erotica-is-absolutely-a-thing-704846/.