The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

the film is a 1972 cult treasure! the film is one of the best Bigfoot films ever! the film a docudrama about a monster staling a swamp. but the real problem is finding a good DVD of the movie. the best not oop DVD is the cheesy flicks DVD. the second best but is oop is the hens tooth versian. the 3rd best and the one most fns will like is the retrosploition DVD. this DVD is sometimes regarded as the worst but is actually a very good versian if the think about it. it has 2 prints of the film trailers, a preview for " Legacy of Boggy Creek". but the movie is creepy and atmospheric. the monster has about 3 min of total screen time and it is mostley seen as a tall shadowy figure. the creatures face is glimsted upon at the end of the film. the movie is very kid friendly and most kids will enjoy it but the film is not for everyone. the film is not very hard to find but a good print is required for the full experience.

Rather than pay actors to tell a story, a new art form was created with The Legend of Boggy Creek. I guess you could call it a Faux Documentary with real folks from the piney woods of southwest Arkansas telling of their story with a Bigfoot type creature.This film has become something of a cult item. It shows that folks with absolutely no talent at all can get in front of a camera and just simply be themselves. For that reason I can't really criticize those in the film. It's not bad acting, it's no acting at all.Some apparently found some entertainment value in the Boggy Creek saga. I did not.

A documentary-style drama which questions the existence of a monster in an Arkansas swamp. It is really more of a glimpse at lower-class swamp culture from the seventies, though, than a monster flick.As the plot summary says, this is really more a look at Arkansas than it is a look at Bigfoot. There are some "horror" elements, but mostly we are getting to know the people in and around the swamp. This could have been a Les Blank film. How much the people are acting or being themselves is unclear, but it seems to be much more natural than scripted.The film is more than a little rough. This is probably partially due to its falling into the public domain (somehow). But even so, it appears to be more or less rough by design, with lower quality cameras and lighting. Could a proper DVD release fix this up? No way. But maybe it should not be fixed.

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.