The Legend of Boggy Creek
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- Release Date: August 25, 1972
- Directed by: Charles B. Pierce
- Written by: Earl E. Smith
- Runtime: 1 hour 26 minutes
- Series: Boggy Creek
After the famous Patterson-Gimlin footage was shown at various locations in 1967-68, the public's interest in the supposed existence of Bigfoot began to explode. Naturally, this led to a small surge of Bigfoot-related films in the late 1960s through the early 1970s. Many of these were very low-budget, and tended to play at local drive-in movie theaters in smaller circuits. Some of these were documentaries with questionable Bigfoot footage, such as The Legend of Bigfoot. Others were part documentary, part narrative feature, such as Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot (not to be confused). The best of these films, and probably the one that started the entire trend, was 1972's The Legend of Boggy Creek.
Made on a budget of $160,000, the movie is a quasi-documentary about the Fouke Monster, a Bigfoot-type creature said to inhabit the woods near the tiny town of Fouke, Arkansas. I label this as a quasi-documentary because most of the stories that are told in the film are supposedly actual encounters with the creature that residents of the town had. The film was made on location in Fouke and the surrounding areas, and featured many local residents as actors. It also features little spoken dialogue, instead mostly using a narration from someone purportedly from the town. These budget limitations somehow created a great atmosphere for this movie. The grainy film stock really picks up how dark and swampy this area is. The opening credits over a sunset on the titular Boggy Creek has such a great, muggy summertime mood, and I've always wanted to watch this thing on a projector screen by some woods. It's also a very quiet movie at spots, using a lot of forest animal sounds and ambience that really brings this setting to life.
Funny enough, despite being known as a horror film, The Legend of Boggy Creek is famously known for being G-rated. You may think that that means this movie is devoid of scares, but don't be fooled. The filmmakers manage to pull off making their no-budget Bigfoot costume look mysterious and even threatening in spots. When you see its dark form moving around in the background of a shot, or simply lurking in the shadows, or even a scene where it's emerging from the edge of the woods, it actually looks real. I can put myself in the shoes of these people and imagine what it would really look and feel like to see a thing like this in real life, and that makes the movie work very well for me. Yes, there is one scene where you very briefly see its face and it's obviously a Halloween ape suit, but that doesn't ruin the experience for me. The documentary feel somehow puts me in the perfect mood to take this story as 100% true, and be on edge imagining a creature like this just outside my window like in the film.
The Legend of Boggy Creek has been my favorite Bigfoot movie for many years now, and as a fan, I have to recommend that you purchase the Blu-Ray from its official website. Because of poor film preservation, there were decades of home media releases that suffered from awful transfers that made the movie too dark to watch. It took until 2019 to get a proper restoration done, and now it looks exactly as it did back in theaters in 1972. Get yourself a copy and watch it on a hot summer night, preferably with the sound of crickets and frogs nearby. It's a great, folksy monster experience that just might convince you that there is something unknown out there.