Harry and the Hendersons
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| Harry and the Hendersons | |
|---|---|
 Movie poster |
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| Directed by | William Dear |
| Produced by | William Dear Richard Vane |
| Starring | John Lithgow |
| Editing by | Donn Cambern |
| Release date(s) | June 5, 1987 |
| Running time | 110 minutes |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Harry and the Hendersons is a 1987 American film starring John Lithgow, Melinda Dillon, Lainie Kazan, and Don Ameche. It was also made into a follow-up TV series.
[edit] Plot
The Henderson family, on their way home from a camping trip, accidentally run over an unknown creature. Not knowing what to do, they decide to strap it to the roof of their car and take it home. At their house, the creature goes wild and rampages through the house. Slowly, they come to realize that the creature is Bigfoot and that it is actually very gentle. It is also given the name "Harry." Harry escapes and runs through the city. Sightings of him strikes fear into the city's citizens. The Hendersons have to hide Harry from city authorities and a Frenchman who wants him dead. They come to realize that the best thing for Harry is to let him go back into the wild, which they do at the end of the movie.
Credits contain an artistic representation of key scenes from the film.
The film was subsequently expanded into a half-hour TV sitcom, also called Harry and the Hendersons; however, the artistic representations were lost. This lasted for three seasons and 72 episodes. Bruce Davison and Molly Cheek played the parents with Carol-Ann Plante and Zachary Bostrom as the children. Kevin Peter Hall played the role of Harry in both the film and TV series.
[edit] Trivia
- Bill Martin, who co-wrote the screenplay, also wrote songs for Harry Nilsson's "Harry" album, and is pictured wearing a bear suit inside the album's cover. Martin says that the character "Harry" in the film is named after Harry Nilsson.
- According to cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, some characters in the film are based to varying degrees on actual figures in the search for Sasquatch. "Jacques LaFleur" (David Suchet) is a nod to the late Canadian Rene Dahinden, and "Dr. Wallace Wrightwood" (Don Ameche) combines some qualities of John Green, Peter Byrne and the late Dr. Grover Krantz.
- Richard Foley and Dana Middleton, the two news anchors listed in the credits, were real-life news anchors and talk-show co-hosts at Seattle's KOMO-TV. Their brief appearance in the movie was from the set of their nightly local news magazine "Weeknight" which aired from 1983 to 1985.
- When originally relased, the title of the movie in the UK was 'Bigfoot and the Hendersons'. The 2006 DVD release used the US version of the title, 'Harry and the Hendersons'.
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