The Legend of Boggy Creek

Charles B. Pierce – 1972 – USA

Drive-in classic from the early 70s; the tail end of that golden age that saw an explosion of truly independent filmmaking all around the country.  I use the word “independent” differently from how it’s normally used today.  Pierce is in a category with people like Herschel Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer and John Waters, who not only shot their films on a shoestring budget with absolutely no studio backing, but distributed them personally too; cleverly sidestepping the standard process used for studio films.  What is particularly rewarding about this phenomenon was the fact that unique and eccentric regions of the country could be represented as they are not in Hollywood.  Just as Waters shined a spotlight on his hometown of Baltimore, Piece’s films gave voice to the American south as no one had before.  Often taken for a Bigfoot film, The Legend of Boggy Creek is actually based on the “Fouke monster” of Missouri, which is basically the bayou version of the Northwestern Sasquatch.  The film has an unusual “docu-drama” structure  comprised of many sequences that would come to be known in documentaries as “re-enactments.”  The fact that these are re-enactments of completely fictional events drags us into a murky swamp cinematically.  There are also interviews with actual locals recounting their various alleged encounters with the hairy humanoid cryptid.  What remains vividly in the mind of fans, however, (who saw the film either in theaters or on TV in the 70s & 80s), are the handful of truly scary sequences when the Fouke monster stalks and attacks people and homes, especially a scene in which some children hide in a rickety house while the creature scratches and pounds at the door.  The fact that the film is so cheaply executed is the litmus test of fandom.  It’s cheapness naturally turns off a majority of viewers who can’t tolerate it; but it is also what makes it so frightening.  There is an immediacy in its treatment of locale and character that is worth more than a calculated re-creation could ever have.