The
early 1970s were a strange time for documentary films. With such peculiar oddities as the Oscar
winning “documentary” The Hellstrom Chronicle garnering critical and
commercial attention despite the debatable integrity of the piece, the way was paved
for more genre-bending documentary films to be unleashed on the unsuspecting
public. Not long after Hellstrom made
waves in the documentary film genre, indie filmmaker Charles B. Pierce would
unveil one of the strangest docudrama films ever produced in the 1970s with his
meditation on a ‘bigfoot’ type creature sighted around Fouke, Arkansas: The
Legend of Boggy Creek.
The
debut film of the indie horror filmmaker (and eventual writer of Sudden
Impact, believe it or not) is as homegrown as movies come. Feeling less like a documentary feature and
more like a group of locals making a home movie in their backyard, the film is
comprised of “interviews” and staged reenactments of encounters with the
inhuman creature. Aided with voiceover
narration by Vern Stierman who warns forebodingly of the ‘Fouke Monster’ over
the soundtrack, The Legend of Boggy Creek’s cast is made up almost
entirely of locals wanting to be in a film.
Despite being photographed in Techniscope, the film never escapes its
footing in the director’s backyard when he and his crew aren’t wading through
swamps and wetlands with their cameras.
Probably
most inexplicably is the financial success of the picture. Whereas something like this today would air
on network television, The Legend of Boggy Creek went to theaters and
took in $20 million against a $160,000 production budget. The film’s director even went so far as to
use older 35mm cameras to save on production costs. Moreover, the film paved the way for many
like-minded drive-in movies loosely based on true stories including but not
limited to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well as Charles B. Pierce’s
very own The Town That Dreaded Sundown.
The film even spawned an official sequel helmed by Pierce though that
film is best remembered on Mystery Science Theater 3000 which should
tell you all you need to know.
Released
recently on a 4K restored blu-ray disc for the first time with a collectible
booklet, The Legend of Boggy Creek seen today doesn’t hold nearly as
much water as it did for audiences in 1972 and whose closest kid cousin is
arguably The Fourth Kind. The
non-acting cast of locals don’t have much in the way of range but get the job
done running away screaming in terror from a man in a gorilla costume.
That
said, the film is representative of a bygone era of mockumentaries that would
rear its ugly head again decades later with films like The Blair Witch
Project and a whole slew of found footage movies that would follow
after. While we’ve grown accustomed to
TV shows like Unsolved Mysteries or Sightings which function as
docudramas surrounding the supernatural or extraterrestrial, The Legend of
Boggy Creek remains a curiosity by being among the very first purveyors of
the docudrama form irrespective of the silliness of the subject matter.
--Andrew Kotwicki
