User Reviews

Looking at other reviews, I find I am in good company when admitting to being scared when watching this episode as a kid. I have also found that a number of popular western series from the fifties throw in a spooky or supernatural story every once in a while (check out Wagon Train: The Steve Campden Story) Naturally there is a perfectly rational explanation (usually), but you had to sit watching uneasily through your fingers before you got to that happy stage. With a title like Big Ghost Basin you should expect something different from the usual shoot-em-up righting of wrongs storyline. However, this episode is unnerving from the start. I recall a lone cowboy sitting by his campfire when a pair of huge glowing eyes stare out at him from the bushes. Cue slow, monster point of view zoom, closing in on terrified screaming cowboy and - fade. The scenario is repeated several times, finally with our hero who, of course, prevails against the culprit; a giant crazed grizzly. Phew, is that all it was! Bravado all round; until it's time to go to bed of course! Great episode. Must watch it again sometime (with the light on!)

Throughout the series, Cheyenne Bodie has shown his respect for the natural environment and the critters who share it with us. He might be a tough cowboy but he's got a soft heart. When the situation is sure to be perilous, as happens in this episode, he makes certain that his faithful steed, Brandy, is far from the danger zone, even though that leaves him without a way to get out quickly himself.

The story begins when he comes upon a campfire in the dark and is accosted by a brash young man named Bill Paxton who points a gun at him and, with no interest in introductions, accuses him of being in league with rustlers that have menaced the valley for a long time. He easily disarms the impetuous Paxton but just as he rides away, two glowing eyes appear in the bushes and he hears an anguished scream. When he returns to the campsite, he finds Paxton brutally killed and the fire extinguished. He takes the body into town, only to be met with suspicion from everyone except Englishman rancher Jim Harwick, who hires him and as his first job assigns him the task of finding out what's responsible for a string of deaths like that of young Paxton. Bill's twin brother Pierce, a hothead like his twin, remains skeptical of Bodie's intentions.

After Cheyenne rescues Pierce's fiancée, Sherry, from whatever is hiding among the trees, he shows Paxton papers identifying him as an agent for the Indian Department, with the commission to identify and stop the rustlers who have been stealing cattle from the local tribes. Paxton agrees to help. To do it, Cheyenne sets a trap with himself as bait for the mysterious fire-hating predator. It turns out that the rustlers were using the creature to frighten the superstitious locals into inertia so that they could carry out their nefarious activities without interference. It's a dastardly plan, but Cheyenne has maneuvered events so that he can not only catch the creature but also capture the gang of rustlers.

All the supporting players are very good, including a cameo by venerable Western cowboy Slim Pickens, who injects a note of levity into the drama by admitting to be a coward who is still reluctant to take Cheyenne's horse as instructed and leave Cheyenne alone to confront the mysterious creature terrorizing the basin. This is another case of Cheyenne Bodie overcoming distrust and using his brain to solve a crime. When he demonstrates a humane approach toward the poor traumatized bear, it's yet another facet of his personality that has endeared both the character and the man who brought him to life, Clint Walker, to thousands throughout the decades.

I remember seeing this episode as a tot. I'm not sure how old I was, but I remembered it as a child completely different than when I recently saw it again as an adult.

It may have been a re-airing in the area I lived in because there is no way I could have remembered it from its original air date of 1957. I would have been too small. It must have re-ran in my area in 1959 for me to be able to remember it at all.

As a child, I remember being intrigued with monsters. Once again, it must have been in 1959 when I saw this because this is the first time I heard about Bigfoot (a.k.a. Sasquatch). My mother mentioned a little ways into the episode that the creature must be a Bigfoot.

It wasn't until 1958 that the phenomenon, previously known as Sasquatch, had been referred to as Bigfoot. My parents would have been aware of this phenomenon because an acquaintance of theirs was Jerry Crew, the man who, evidently, was tricked into reporting evidence of a creature dubbed 'Bigfoot' with 16 inch feet. This took place near Eureka, CA.

It was later revealed in 2002, that Crew had been misled. Crew's boss, Ray Wallace, at the time of the 'Bigfoot' sighting, died that year. Wallace's family revealed that he (Wallace) loved to play pranks... and that he had carved some wooden 'feet,' strapped them on and tramped around in the mud at the area where Crew was working, thus leading him to believe a monster had wandered through the site (true believers in 'Bigfoot' have never accepted Wallace's family's admission).

Watching this episode as an adult was disappointing, after having believed all these years that the episode was about a Bigfoot and not a Bear. Even then, it's curious that the viewing audience seemed to have been led to believe that this was a monster of some sort (the glowing eyes staring out from the dark), prior to the Bigfoot hoax that followed it. Perhaps this episode inspired Wallace to concoct this hoax?

As scary as this episode was, there is a glaring plot flaw. Bears and other woodland creatures fear fire. Any Bear who had been singed by fire would fear it and run from it rather than risk being burned again by stomping it out and covering it with dirt - unless of course, it was Smokey the Bear. Perhaps Smokey helped to inspire this episode as well.

Man Oh Man did I love me some Cheyenne Bodie! And this episode "Big Ghost Basin" I remember vividly. I was about 8 at the time and watched all the Cheyenne movies and Fes Parker Davie Crockett movies. I didn't actually know episodes had names until my older sister told me the name which I never forgot. So years later, my son (who was probably about 8 at the time) and I returned late at night to a neighborhood park because he had forgotten to put his skate board in the car and we went back to look for it. Suddenly he pointed in the dark and said "Dad, what's that"! It was if I was suddenly transported back 30 years to Big Ghost Basin because I saw two eyes glowing in the dark. It scared the livin crap out of me. I told my son not to worry, but I was scared $h*tless. My adult mind told me there was a logical explanation so I cautiously approached it. Turned out to be the remnants of a fire in a barbecue pit. Relieved, I laughed and laughed and tried to tell him about the show, but for a few moments I was the same scared 8 year old.

I also saw this show when I was 8 years old. The monster was pretty scary because you never got a good look at it--just the glowing eyes in the darkness. I remember adults saying they looked like headlights, but to the kids of that era who hadn't yet been introduced to modern special effects, the program was awfully frightening.

It turned out to be a bear that had been burned and disfigured in a forest fire and therefore attacked people at night who were sitting around a campfire. Cheyenne camped out all alone and shot the "monster" when it came to get him. I would love to see the episode again, and I never forgot the title. I remember when the theme song played at the end, I thought the words were, "Cheyenne, Cheyenne, WILL you be camping tonight?" because he'd had such a close call.

Like the Frankenstein monster, you had to feel sympathy for the critter at the end when you knew the whole story. It must have been a successful formula because a few years later, Clint Walker starred in a very similar TV movie called "Night of the Grizzly."

I remember the end of the episode and He's in a tree, empties his rifle, and then empties his pistol.

I was 11 years old at the time.

I think there was talk about a prehistoric beast possibly involved.

CONTAINS SPOILERS! Although the plot manages to bring in rustlers, Indians, a would be vigilante out to get his brother's killer, a potential love triangle, a paleontologist, and a big game hunter, all of their problems are solved off screen. The real show down is between our hero, Cheyenne Bodie, and a mysterious killer monster. For most of the show we get hints that the killer monster is an elephant: the paleontologist finds mammoth bones, the game hunter lends Bodie his elephant gun, victims are crushed to death, the creature leaves clawless footprints that are unfamiliar to Bodie. The creature's glowing eyes are represented by a pair of electric lights about four feet apart. One can hardly be blamed for thinking that the mystery of Ghost Basin was none other than The Monster from the episode of Wanted: Dead or Alive, practicing for his future role. But no, the true monster is actually Smokey the Bear. Not CB radio slang for a state trooper, but the beloved bruin that puts out campfires before they can become forest fires. Perhaps the producers were frustrated with PSAs that take precious commercial time.