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