wisconsinator "Something came through here last night and killed my two prize shoats." I remember going home after seeing the movie in 1972, to look up what was a shoat. It is a young weaned pig. Yes, the music is hokey, or corny, but it sets a logical tone for this film. The man who is near rating it, should be near rating for a living, because he has such a perfect voice for it. The sound of "the creature" vocalizing reminds me of a bear.Here's a song sung about the creature:The Legend of Boggy Creek" Lyrics and Music: Earl E. Smith Sung by: Chuck BryantThis is where the story plays, A world on which we seldom gaze, A page from the book of yesterdays, Birds and beast and wind and water.Here beneath the bright blue sky, No man smoke blinds the eagle's eye. And things that crawl or swim or fly, Feed and breed and live and die.Here the sulfur river flow, Rising when the storm cloud blows. And this is where the creature goes, Safe within a world he knows.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.

topsfrombottom The Legend of Boggy Creek - like so many 'cult classics' - is a great example of how a film can carry a low critical rating and still be awesome.I remember seeing this film in Roger's Theater in the (then little) town of Poplar Bluff, Missouri - the nearest town to where I grew up, in very wooded, lakeside, Wappapello. So, I actually DID live in the same sort of woodsy, lakeside spookiness setting the film. Where I grew up, the word 'neighbor' meant the 'nearest house' and often you couldn't see their lights - or they may even be a nervous flashlight-trek through the pitch-black woods and along lonely, moonlit, gravel roads - and if the Fouke Monster happened to be tearing you apart out behind your place, they MIGHT hear your loudest screams. Probably not - and definitely not, if he got INSIDE.My pal and I got brought into town by my Grandma and dropped off outside the Roger's that night. Having been lured-in by the short, terrifying trailers on TV, we anxiously bought our tickets and headed for the center-front seats, shoving and prodding each other over our mutual certainty that the other would get a scare that would make him pee his pants.I can still remember ourselves - along with many others - cringing and ducking through several parts of this movie. As far as me and Bruce were concerned, to our eleven-year-old brains, the (then novel) documentary-like presentation and 'I-Sweah-Befo'-Gawd-Awmitey' testimony just seemed ALL too plausible - and real. We both KNEW people like those!Leaving the theater in shudders from flashes of snarling memories - and a new and real dread of returning to the remoteness of where we both lived - we climbed into the big, crimson-velor back seat my Grandma's Delta 88, wordless and white. To us, that Fouke Monster was REAL - and not only that, but it - or one just like it - could easily be living in the endless woods behind our very own houses!This film is a treasure for several reasons, not the least of which is the nostalgia it will hold for those of us to who got to see it at that perfect, naive age when it hits a kid exactly the way it was intended to - it's the perfect 'scary movie' for preteen sleepovers.I can watch it now and roll my eyes, of course, but, when I reminisce back to that darkened, all-enveloping theater, so many of us gasping, crying out, grabbing our armrests and jumping in unison - and the nighttime nervousness for a week, afterward... it still makes me smile. :}

The_Film_Cricket I do not fit the mold of the classic skeptic. I admit that my mind is comfortably open to permit such pop oddities as UFO's, Ghosts, telepathy, ESP and in some late night pseudo-intellectual discussions, possibly the Loc Ness monster. Catch me a on a good night.Sasquatch is another matter.Not that I would give Bigfoot any less affirmation then Nessy but for me it all comes down to an issue of credibility. Judge for yourself but take note that the sort of people who claim to have seen Bigfoot 'Dun seed it wit'tay own two eyes!' There are just as many reasons, I suppose, to affirm the existence of Bigfoot as there are to deny it. The people of Fouke, Arkansas have been convinced for generations that a large, hairy, hulking beast walks among the heavy acres of trees (follow it around long enough and I bet you'll catch it stumbling out of the bar late at night). Looking at The Legend of Boggy Creek, it isn't difficult to understand where the legend was born. Fouke is densely populated and seems to be mostly made up of trees, swamp and eyewitness who were scared right out of their trailers.One of Fouke's residents is the film's director, Charles B. Pierce who set off a generation of hokey, jokey sort-of documentaries about the legendary creature with this 1973 turkey. A folksy narrator informs us that for several years the creature lived back in the woods and would occasionally how, steal chicken and pigs and would occasionally stumble upon a trailer and scare the pee-jingles out of some hapless resident.Those occurrences make up half of the film, as actual assaults are re-staged and we suffer half-cocked explanations from the actual eyewitnesses, one of whom informs us: "I reckon there's a lot of folks that won't believe nothing til they see it for theyselves, and if they're like me, they'll wish they hadn't seen what they did. You know, that thing is gonna up and kill someone one of these days, sure as the world".The rest of the movie is made up of long shots of thick clusters of trees which occasionally contains glimpses of a hairy behemoth stumbling through (actually it's a guy in a suit, the movie assures us in a pieces of text). The shots are so clumsy that you can almost see the wristwatch on the actor.What makes the movie a gem are the reenactments. Pierce doesn't spare a bit of detail and at one point, right before the creature drops in on a slumber party, we get such heart-tugging dialogue as 'I wonder where that thing is they talk about, oh well I'm gonna go get a coke, y'all want one?' This is followed by one of the girls heading off to use the bathroom. Pierce, ever the stickler for details, allows the camera to follow her in and we get a peeping tom view of her sitting on the can. When the creature comes banging on the window . . . well let's just say the kid is lucky to have been sitting on the toilet.These scenes are so bad that you wonder if this is a documentary with reenactments or Oh, Chuck Pierce you hard-working craftsman you. You didn't even spare us a theme song: Here, the sulfur river flows, rising when the storm cloud blows, this is where the creature goes, lurking in the land he knows. Perhaps, he dimly wonders why, is there no other such as I? To love, to touch before I die, To listen to my lonely cry.*sniff* nor did he resist the temptation to make a sequel, two unfortunately. The first Return to Boggy Creek, a fiction film feature a pre-felony Dana Plato and the other Boggy Creek: The Legend Continues where one half of the movie is documentary and the other is just half-baked.The Legend of Boggy Creek serves its purpose. It's not more or less believable than any other Bigfoot movie. Do you believe that a fur-bearing creature stumbles about the woods and swamps howling and screaming and scaring the locals. To me it all seems plausible because that's my uncle Ernie after a bender.

AaronCapenBanner This effective docudrama about a legendary swamp monster from Fouke, Arkansas, was a surprise box-office hit in its day; with clever narration from the perspective of a man who lived through that time as a boy, and has gone back to his old house to reminisce.Recreates the look and feel of the people and their experiences of the monster, which range from skeptical amusement, to terrifying close encounters. The monster is speculated to be quite lonely and lost in their world, and this aura of melancholy permeates this film like a sad old fireside guitar song.Heavily atmospheric and genuinely eerie; only negative is that sometimes it does get goofy(the Crabtree song) and amateurish, but oddly, that just adds to the authenticity(though that monster costume is best kept in the shadows!)May have influenced "In Search Of...", which profiled similar cases.