Universal spent the summer of 1987 hiding its star. Posters and trailers offered only glimpses of the eight-foot Sasquatch in the title role, apparently hoping mystery would sell tickets, and when the movie underperformed, that secrecy took some of the blame. Several overseas markets dropped the coy approach entirely and retitled it Bigfoot and the Hendersons, which is funny because Harry is absolutely the reason to see the movie.

Heading home from a camping trip in the Cascades, the Henderson family hits something enormous, hairy, and extremely smelly with their station wagon. Assuming the creature is dead, George Henderson (John Lithgow, Terms of Endearment) straps it to the roof and drives it home to Seattle, where it wakes up hungry and starts redecorating. George’s wife Nancy (Melinda Dillon, A Christmas Story) and their kids warm up quickly to their unexpected guest, soon named Harry (Kevin Peter Hall, Predator). Keeping him hidden becomes more than a neighborhood problem once obsessive Bigfoot hunter Jacques LaFleur (David Suchet, Poirot) starts closing in, forcing the Hendersons to protect the creature George initially wanted mounted on his wall.

Cinematographer Allen Daviau, who shot E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, helped bring director William Dear into the Amblin fold, and you can see why. Harry and the Hendersons has that same warm suburban-fantasy streak, with an ordinary family trying to protect an extraordinary creature from people who would rather capture, study, or destroy it. The real star, though, is Rick Baker’s creature work. Baker, who won the first Academy Award for makeup for An American Werewolf in London, modeled Harry partly on orangutans, and his face can sulk, plead, grin, and look genuinely wounded. Inside the suit, the seven-foot-two Hall gives Harry a physical personality every bit as important as the makeup. Hall makes Harry eight feet of fur, and every inch of it can act.

Baker won another Oscar for the work, and it’s easy to understand why. Harry never feels like an effect waiting for the camera to look away; he feels like another actor in the room. Lithgow meets him halfway, giving George’s simple shift from hunter to protector enough warmth to keep it from feeling like a screenplay requirement. Dillon matches him nicely, while Don Ameche (Cocoon) brings some welcome eccentricity as Sasquatch expert Dr. Wallace Wrightwood.

Nothing here will surprise anyone old enough to recognize the formula. The lessons about tolerance, family, and protecting outsiders arrive exactly when expected, yet that sincerity is also why the movie has lasted. It doesn’t wink at its own sweetness or apologize for wanting you to love Harry, and there are little pleasures all over it, including the Bigfoot-foot lamp that feels like a sly nod to Dillon’s leg-lamp history.

And if the movie gets you, don’t be surprised if it gets you all over again near the finale. I cried when I first saw it in 1987, and I got misty again watching it nearly 40 years later, when George realizes the only way to keep Harry safe is to convince him to leave. Watching him turn cruel toward a creature he has come to love still hurts, especially because Harry has no way of understanding why it’s happening. Harry and the Hendersons may not be the sharpest Amblin-era fantasy, but by that point it has completely earned the emotion. You believe Harry deserves a home, even when protecting him means sending him away.