The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

Tagline: “The true story of ‘The Fouke Monster’”
Duration: 85 minutes

Film Quality: 2/5
Gore Content: 0/5
Entertainment Value:3.5/5
Originality: 4/5

Introduction

Back in the early 70s, as drive in horror movies were somewhere approaching their peak, American theatres were always on the lookout for something different. In the land of opportunity, and perhaps sensing that there was a profit to be made with a small amount of money and lot of drive, one Charles B Pierce borrowed $100,000 to make a quasi-documentary about a bigfoot type creature terrorising a small Arkansas town. Using locals and students instead of actors the result is a terrible movie that has some kind of strange hold over people of a certain age who saw it at a certain time in their lives, like a piece of celluloid shrapnel lodged in our combined movie consciousness!

In a nutshell

The narrator of a ‘docudrama’ returns to his home town where he reminisces about his close encounter with ‘The Fouke Monster’, a Bigfoot type creature that legend had it roamed the nearby ‘Boggy Creek’. His narration then takes us on a journey to recount some of the significant events in the legend’s history and asks us to make up our own minds about the existence of the beast.

So what’s good about it?

Here is a film that relies almost entirely on the time and place that it was created and consumed. Back in the very early 80s, BBC2 screened this film at tea time, which meant that a number of youngsters, me included, were exposed to our first encounter with a monster movie. It didn’t matter that the film is blatantly fiction, at the age of 4 you believed what you saw on TV and very easily frightened by something that appeared different. The voiceover and documentary feel made it look more like the News rather than a film and that WAS real! Parents had no way of knowing what the content of this film would be…it was on early, there were only three TV channels at the time and there was no Internet. I was scared, had no idea why I quite enjoyed it and that conflict of hitherto unknown emotions left its mark.

This is where nostalgia plays strange games with you. I finally got to see this film again some 37 years later and it’s incredible how much of this I both remembered and misremembered. A song that I had attached to the film wasn’t in it, but there are songs which meant my memories had shifted meaning from this unfamiliar film onto something more familiar. There was one single line and scene that genuinely frightened me…a cat dies following an encounter with the monster and the narrator says “There was not a mark on it, it was literally scared to death”. I’m not sure that I knew it was a ‘documentary’ or if I’d discovered that by looking it up when the Internet came along but again, this stuck in my mind. I can now see it for what it is, a crude if honest and interesting docudrama that I clearly believed during my early years when the concept of things being made up but made to look real was alien to me.

There is a certain eeriness about the film!

Going onto the film itself, for today’s audiences it would be largely forgettable but it does have a certain something. The narrator’s dry, almost dull, monotone voice is oddly detached from the onscreen proceedings, despite apparently being made by someone personally affected by the monster. The film itself oozes nostalgia and the opening few scenes, perhaps three minutes of seemingly innocuous shots of wildlife are suddenly shattered by the eerie cries of the monster which causes them to flee and behave erratically. It certainly adds to any effect of authenticity which is soon destroyed by the human cast which is as wooden as the forests that surround Fouke.

We’re treated to some re-enactments of Fouke Monster encounters which range from quite well done to bloody awful, perhaps outstaying its welcome to a certain extent, but it surprisingly holds your interest first time around. That said, it’s clear whilst watching that there is a certain amount of padding, as if they had a good 55 minutes of footage with no idea about where to get the other 30! Again, you’re under no illusions that what you’re seeing is real but you can’t escape the notion that this is a story that, though clearly based on legend and hearsay, is one familiar to a number of those who lived in small towns and watched it on the drive in circuit. The Fouke Monster may be one of many unassuming legends, but the story is very real, alive and fully realised in every urban legend from every small town.

What about the bad?

Dear oh dear, the film really doesn’t stand up well to technical scrutiny. The acting is the kind you would expect if you asked the local residents of a small town to ‘act natural’ and play themselves whilst feeding them dialogue. The lights are on but nobody’s home! It’s as slow and meandering as the Creek from which it’s named and there is no real attempt to offer any explanation or even real evidence of its existence beyond staged re-enactments and passed on stories. It offers no resolution other than a ‘it may still be out there or it may not’ monologue which makes for a somewhat empty feeling as the end credits roll.

It does labour the point in terms of its reconstructions to the extent that they become a bit boring, however it is broken up around the half hour mark with not one but two, very odd and horrendously misjudged musical numbers! First up is a bizarre folk song that posits the theory that the monster is lonely and just needs a cuddle. It is cringe worthy to the say the least with lines such as ‘Perhaps he dimly wonders why, there is no other such as I, to touch, to love before I die, to listen to my lonely cry’…perhaps he’s waiting for The Hendersons!!!. Thankfully it’s a brief interlude until they unexpectedly crowbar in a second folk song a few minutes later that manages to be even worse!!! Called ‘Nobody Sees the Flowers but Me’, the song appears to have no significant purpose other than to introduce us to a young boy by the name of Travis Crabtree! His sole purpose in life is to ramble through the woods on his own with a gun, delivering food and supplies to an old hermit called ‘Herb’ who shot off most of his foot in a tragic boating accident!!!

Thankfully, before it veers too far off into unintentional comedy territory it does take a long hard look at itself in the mirror to give us a few good scares in the final half hour with some fairly dark and creepy moments of the monster terrorising a family at night.

Any themes?

It’s first and foremost an exploration of childhood fears and the deep rooted nature of local legends. I still remember being afraid of passing a certain pub in the small town where I grew up, I still have no idea why but even now the building creeps me out. I don’t know if it was the name of it, the motif on the sign hanging on the wall, if I was told off whilst outside, if I woke up from a nightmare whilst passing it…all I know is that I associated it with fear and that’s what this film is about. The narrator heard an animal noise and, because of the stories of monsters and the legend within the small town, that was the most logical explanation of its source.

Release History

No censorship issues, in fact the main issue for the past 40 years seems to be getting to see it at all! In the UK at least there has been no worthwhile release. It was available on VHS, bootleg or substandard DVD releases have hit the market and occasionally do the rounds on auction sites but the best way to get hold of it, in the UK at least, is on demand where it has decent but not great, pan and scanned picture quality, at least on the version I saw on Amazon.

Cultural Impact

Fake documentaries and found footage movies are ten a penny at the moment and have been for years. You can thank ‘The Blair Witch Project’ for that! There’s an argument to be had that ‘Boggy Creek’ was where it all started and, though not exactly a runaway hit that year, it has gone on to gross some $20m which some lists claim puts it in the top ten highest grossing films of that year!!!
Let’s not also forget that this is based on a real legend. There are countless Pinterest, social media sites and websites dedicated to the Fouke Monster as well as a number of piss-poor sequels or tie-ins (the most recent being ‘Boggy Creek Monster’ from 2016) which make the original look better with every viewing. It still has a cult following, largely from those who, like me, saw it as an impressionable child and it stuck with us, just like the shrill cry of the Fouke Monster stuck with the fictional documentary maker within the film.

Final thoughts

Let’s be brutally honest, this is not a ‘good’ film! Yes, it has a few effective scenes but nobody could possibly argue otherwise, however it holds a special place in my cinematic heart as my very first encounter with a low budget horror flick. You can pick holes in the acting (it’s impossible to do the opposite!), laugh at the folk songs and pour scorn on the production values but there’s something about it I can’t shake off. It doesn’t hold up to repeated viewing but I know I’ll return to it again. However, I fear that it must be watched with a heavy dose of nostalgia!

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘The Last Broadcast’, any ‘Bigfoot’ film

The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Tagline: “Can anyone survive the demented, marauding zombies in…”
Duration: 86 minutes

Film Quality: 4/5
Gore Content: 4.5/5
Entertainment Value:4/5
Originality: 4/5

Introduction

Following ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’, ‘City of the Living Dead’ and ‘The Beyond’, Lucio Fulci was developing a bit of a reputation amongst gorehounds. Whether or not this sat well with the Italian director, who had carved out a decent career in the giallo and western genres, was another matter but it was clear that fans were screaming for more. Just five months after ‘The Beyond’ he brought out the film that would end what became known as ‘The Gates of Hell’ trilogy (one of the quickest trilogies ever released…just 15 months separated this from ‘City’) that combined the unusual approach to space and time he gave to ‘The Beyond’ with the Lovecraftian atmosphere of ‘City’.

In a nutshell

Dr Norman Boyle moves his family to a house in New Whitby to pick up on the research of a former colleague who murdered his mistress before killing himself. His son, Bob, begins to pick up on warnings from a mysterious little girl called Mae that he should not stay at the house. Meanwhile a series of murders and disappearances suggest a monstrous presence in their basement…who is Dr Freudstein and just what is he doing behind that locked door?

So what’s good about it?

From the opening scene to the final moments there is an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere that is brought to the fore expertly by Walter Rizatti’s superb score. His main theme that plays over the opening titles wouldn’t sound out of place in a documentary about old, haunted churches and immediately lets us know that what we have here is not a zombie film but something more akin to a haunted house movie. The rest of the score features understated guitars, sinister chords and manipulated, distorted sounds designed to disorientate and confuse; we can’t really tell where the threat might be coming from…is it the little girl, the babysitter, something more sinister that may or not be supernatural?

De Rossi’s effects are once again excellent and VERY gory. In ‘The Beyond’ his effects were very much a mix of the sudden and brief, I’m thinking of the skewered eyeball, the hole in the head, short but sweet alongside the ‘watch this’ long and lingering shots! ‘The Beyond’ starts with a very long scene of a warlock crucified and melted with acid, here it opens with a very short and sudden shot of a woman attacked with a knife that enters the back of her head and comes out of her mouth. It’s an odd beginning as, although this is a very gory film, the emphasis is on tension and atmosphere but here it’s almost as if we join the scene halfway through! We’re treated to some seriously nasty stuff, most notably the poker attack on the estate agent which is genuinely shocking.

This is probably the most serious of the trilogy and has further literary influences. Whereas ‘City’ and ‘The Beyond’ were very Lovecraftian in their exectution, despite similar flourishes this one has more in common with Henry James, in particular ‘The Turn of the Screw’ in the way that it approaches the movie in the manner of a haunted house film. Fulci included a quote, allegedly from James, “No one will ever know whether the children are monsters or the monsters are children, or at least that’s what it says at the end of the film with the quote being made up by Fulci. The ending does recall ‘The Turn of the Screw’ which sees the story’s ghost disappear with the death of the child…here the child disappears with the possible death of the ghost, Mae.

It’s a very strange film in tone and execution and may appear that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a gory fright flick or a frightening gore movie? I really did enjoy it but it’s hard to pinpoint precisely why. It seems at times to be a bit of a scattergun of random unrelated scenes and characters who at times seem to know each other very well and then act like complete strangers. This does continue a theme of Fulci’s trilogy playing with cause and effect, perhaps it doesn’t work quite so well here because it’s on a smaller scale with fewer characters and played a little more straight. Either way, like a Knickerbocker Glory or an Eton Mess, it works despite itself and rounds off the trilogy on a high.

That voice really irritated Dr Freudstein!

What about the bad?

I’m not sure how it comes across in its original Italian dialogue (I really must watch it in Italian with English subs) but the dubbing of Bob is annoying, bordering on a deal breaker for the entire film! I can’t work out if it’s a man trying to be a boy, a very young boy with the sound slowed down to make him sound a little older, I really don’t know. It sounds like some of those old Japanese cartoons redubbed for the English market like ‘The Mysterious Cities of Gold’ but without the humourous visuals. The rest of the dubbing is pretty good, they even dub Bob’s screams!!!

Dario Argento has always faced the ‘misogyny’ charge and I think it’s worth saying here that the female characters in ‘House’ get a very raw deal. I think only two male characters bite the bullet and none of them are terrorised to the extent of the women. The boyfriend in the opening scene is killed before the film starts and only briefly shown whilst Norman has his throat ripped out after a half-hearted attempt to stop Freudstein. Our ladies though are dealt with much more harshly! Decapitated, poked full of holes, stabbed through the back of the head and dragged violently down the stairs before having her head crushed against the concrete floor. I’m not saying that Fulci is a misogynist but if that kind of criticism can be levelled at Argento then this film is guilty of the same trick.

Any themes?

Could all of this be a projection of Bob’s nightmarish fears? That final, fabricated Henry James quote “No one will ever know whether the children are monsters or the monsters are children” does rather suggest that the children are the supernatural force. Certainly Mae is not ‘human’ in the sense of being alive, only Bob can see her, even in the window in the painting, and Bob is the only character who enters the titular house and survives the film’s running time. Is Freudstein a manifestation of his fears and desires to punish his parents for moving him halfway across the country and the only friend he can find is a ghost? He is there to see the mannequin fall through the shop window and decapitate itself in a morbid example of foreshadowing from Fulci.

You also have Dr Freudstein’s cries which sound more childlike than adult. Is Freudstein himself now a monstrous child, unable to die but also unable to live and reverting back to his childlike, almost feral bass instincts to consume and survive with little regard for the provision of adults?

The fact that Bob is dragged back into the house’s past keeps up the theme of the trilogy where places and time have no respect for cause and effect. Mae comes to the present to warn Bob who is taken back to her present in order to survive. Is Bob is also a ghost whose presence in the house has brought Mae back from the grave to secure her family’s future? If that’s the case then the Freudstein family and its legacy is completely reliant on two ’monstrous’ children.

Release History

Fulci’s film was given an absolute pounding by the BBFC. The original cinema run in the UK was missing nearly a minute and half of gore, mostly from the very gory murder of the estate agent and the decapitation of Ann, and it was this version that was released on VHS by Vampix in 1983 and promptly banned. Elephant Video picked it up in 1988 but really needn’t have bothered, butchering it in a manner that would have made de Rossi weep in his sleep with a total of 5m37s missing. The whole of the poker murder was missing, and the subsequent dragging away of the body, the opening murder, the unconvincing killing of a bat, the famous shot of the disembowelled man (who was he anyway?) in the cellar and pretty much anything that was red!

When VIPCO got their grubby little hands on it in 1993 they put out a version that was pre-cut and missing a whopping 6m19s. It is possible that this was done to make those original cuts less jarring but even though, there was no attempt seemingly made to release a more complete version which again begs the question…why bother? VIPCO did redeem themselves slightly in 2001 when they put out a DVD missing just 33 seconds (part of the poker death and throat slicing) to take into account the recent prosecutions (ridiculous law!!!) Arrow finally released an uncut version in the UK in 2012.

Hats off to the US though…apparently one of the original prints was shown out of sequence so that two reels didn’t play in order. It made the sometimes tricky cause and effect elements of the film and characterisation even more difficult to follow. Some characters they’d just seen killed are walking around right as rain later on but, being a Fulci film, some didn’t question it and passed it off as a quirk of the trilogy!

Cultural Impact

Concluded the unofficial ‘Gate of Hell’ trilogy. Fulci has always been unfairly compared to Dario Argento and this could be seen as Fulci’s answer to his countryman’s ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy. Taken film by film I don’t think there’s much argument that ‘Suspiria’ and ‘Inferno’ are superior films but as a trilogy, ‘The Third Mother’ lets Argento’s trilogy down. This may be controversial to some (I’m more of an Argento fan myself) but you could argue that Fulci’s trilogy is the more complete and ultimately satisfying when viewed as a ‘trilogy’. Three very good and individual films, linked by theme whist not by character.

Final thoughts

Often overlooked in favour of ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ or ‘The Beyond’, I have a real affection for ‘House by the Cemetery’. It has lots of atmosphere, plenty of gruesome special effects and a stunningly eerie soundtrack. It’s also the most frightening of the ‘Gates’ trilogy, placing a very young (albeit annoying, even more annoying than your own) child right at the centre of the gory mayhem. A minor classic from Fulci.

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Inferno’, ‘City of the Living Dead’, ‘The Beyond’, ‘The Innocents’

Related reviews

Zombie Flesh Eaters - click here
The Beyond - click here