Release Date: August 23rd, 1972
Format: 16mm (Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, CA)
Written by: Earl E. Smith
Directed by: Charles B. Pierce
2 Stars
I found myself alone with nothing to do on a Saturday night, so why not head over to The Frida for a movie and some popcorn? What’s that you say? Tonight is a super secret grindhouse triple-feature of 1970s Bigfoot movies on 16mm? Even better!
First up: The Legend of Boggy Creek, a 1972 docudrama that “interviews” Fouke, Arkansas locals about their encounters with the Fouke Monster, a mysterious creature that harbors itself in their state’s interior swamplands.
As a kid who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, can I claim cultural appropriation on Boggy Creek director and longtime Arkansas resident Charles B. Pierce? What is this southern fried version of my Sasquatch, who everybody knows lives a gentle existence in the expansive evergreen forest of the Washington Cascades? What is this bootleg swamp creature version, going around scaring poor southerners?
As a film, Boggy Creek doesn’t work very well. There is a complete absence of tension, especially for what should essentially be a monster flick, and there are some strange tonal detours too, including a couple of original songs sung by Pierce himself, backed by lush ‘70s orchestration.
Where the film excels is in Pierce’s documentation of a time and place, forget the Fouke Monster. Starring Fouke locals and haunting southwest Arkansas swamplands, Boggy Creek shows us a world where Hollywood seldom ventures. Fouke is a simple place inhabited by simple folk. When they’re not being scared by Bigfoot in the swamps they’re probably being scared by the devil in tent church revivals, or professional ‘rasslin on the TV, or by integration in their public schools.
Fear creates monsters in many forms, even one as strange as the Fouke Monster.
