The Legend of Boggy Creek
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DVD details
Actor: Chuck Pierce Jr., Lloyd Bowen, Vern Stierman, William Stumpp, Willie E. SmithDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 85 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-07-31
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Sterling Ent
DVD Reviews of The Legend of Boggy Creek
DVD Review: Entertaining "Half Truth" Psuedo-Documentary
Summary: 4 Stars
First off, let's deal with what's true and not true here. The first thing is the title, "The Legend of Boggy Creek".As anyone in that part of Arkansas can tell you, Boggy Creek had no more affinity with "The Monster" than any number of creeks or branches in the area. Nor was there any "legend" (explanatory backstory) applied to that creek (and no legend at all applied to the Big Hairy Monster...it was just around the county for no known reason). Charles Pierce, the producer , just simply took a fancy to the "wilderness"-sounding name of that one stream and hooked it up with "Legend" because it all went together for a "catchy" title that he thought would have box office appeal.
He was right. It did.
Nor was the "thing" known originally as the "Fouke Monster".
It's appearances had mostly been reported in a little community outside of Fouke called Jonesville, where area people referred to it as the "Jonesville Monster". In the early 70s, when there was a small flood of sightings out Jonesville way (particularly around the land holdings of an extended family named Crabtree),the local paper in Fouke began printing articles about the thing and these articles were picked up by news services. Because of the Fouke bylines in the press the "Jonesville" Monster soon got turned...against his will, no doubt...into the "Fouke" Monster.
And Charles Pierce saw the possibility of turning Mr. Monster a bright shade of "money green" in investment potential.
Factually, the "whatsit" never really did anything more than be seen by hunters (mostly assorted Crabtrees, as he showed a partiality towards their lands above others),harass dogs, get shot at, shot,stampede horses ( for "kicks"?), wander around screaming and screeching in the bottoms, and get spotted crossing the highway every now and then by motorists
and school bus drivers. Kinda scary? Yes, true enough...but apart
from an alledged hog snatching on one occasion...the thing never did anything aggressive that was known to anyone. "Ahhhh", you say," then what about the Searcy incident with the cat? And the attack on the two couples in the house?".
Well all that actually happened with Mary Beth Searcy and her family was that the thing seemingly came to the edge of the yard and watched them and she saw it through the window and was screamingly terrified by it. What did IT do? Nothing really. This is nothing more, really, than a little goose-pimpler of a story. Pierce "juices" the incident, however, with the inclusion of a purely fabricated fiction (Searcys say it never happened)about the family's new kitten being scared to death (literally) by the booger...with a freeze-frame in the movie of a dead cat's wide-eyed face. A clever touch, but misleading.
The big whoop-ti-do of the movie is, of course, the "night seige" of house of the two young couples, where the thing makes repeated appearances around the house and the home defenders have to rush out to defend themselves with shotguns. This sequence "makes' the movie, pretty much...and hangs a note of fear onto the image of the monster.
The truth, which the movie does NOT tell you, is much more prosaic. A local in the area had an old horse that was considered ornery and about half crazy. This horse was good about getting out of his pasture at night and running around the neighborhood raising a ruckus (snorts, squeals, etc.). He would get into people's flower beds and tear them up and do all sorts of things. Kept the neighbors complaining and irritated at his owner.
In any event, that basket-case horse got out that night and went on one of his rants over near the Ford place ( site of the "night attack"...where the young folks had to blast the Fouke Monster with a shotgun to save themselves). It became a known fact locally that the horse was out there that night...because they FOUND him there the next morning..fairly close to the house...dead of a shotgun blast.
But Charles Pierce (unlike Paul Harvey) is somewhat dishonestly disinclined to tell you "the rest of the story" in his movie. Heck, that would SPOIL the EFFECT!!! And might pull down the box office potential!
As a movie, "The Legend of Boggy Creek" is quite entertaining.The overall use of non-actors and real locations and the photography and editing make it look like a real documentary (as does the cooked up narration that makes it seem it is being told by some reflective local). And it IS at least a
documentary of sorts (all the Crabtree incidents are seemingly recounted pretty much as they occurred, and the same with Searcy except for the cat business). The "Night Seige" is largely true (except for the discovery of the dead horse), and DOES pretty accurately depict how adrenalin-pumping panic can work on the imagination at night. The people really were scared and really trying to defend thermselves from...something. It just appears from subsequent discovery that the "something' WASN'T the Fouke Monster. But presenting it as Pierce did, though, was GREAT cinema!!!
Was there/is there a "creature" there in Miller County? I'd say so. Such things are seen from the Florida Everglades on across the Gulf states to Texas ( The Big Thicket country is the "stomping ground" of "Ol' Mossyback the Wildman" and the Honey Island Swamp Monster in Louisiana MAY be kin). A big
something ran around South Carolina's coastal Fripp Island back in the 30s and 40s. Called "Old Salt", it ran through a Coast Guard barracks staffed with beach patrollers one night...in the front door, out the back...and had all those worthy gentlemen in agitated excitement. From Pennsylvania to West Virginia, on to Wyoming, Idaho, and the Pacific coast, the sightings have occurred.
People pay more attention to this enigma now, and for a lot of them this stems from seeing "Boggy Creek" on the silver screen years ago. It is an intriguing movie, cleverly assembled, and it can still raise the hackles a bit when you watch it. Definitely worth a look, for nostalgia value...and for for mental chew-food on what may or may not be out there in the "real" world.
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