Spook du jour

If I was in middle school and the teacher was hungover from too many margs the night before (very plausible) and she decided to put The Legend of Boggy Creek in the ole VCR in lieu of teaching that day, I may have enjoyed it. I probably would have sketched pictures of Bigfoot in my notebook, and maybe I would have even written a poem about the terrible beast from Fouke, Arkansas (pop. 350). Alas, I did not have the pleasure of experiencing this movie in that way…

This quasi-doc has been on my watchlist for several years. I mean, the movie is 46 frigging years old for godssake. Why it didn’t dissipate into the ether like so many dust motes, never to be seen or heard from again is beyond me. But regardless, here we are, and I watched The Legend of Boggy Creek, and I am no different having seen it. Maybe a little more bored.

It tells of the Fouke monster, a three-toed version of the bigfoot legend that supposedly began in the 40s. About 80 of the 90 minutes of Boggy Creek is dedicated to stock nature footage covered in a heavy amber wash, and pastoral music. The rest is a clipshow of re-enactments, staged interviews with locals, and the talking of southern backwoods folk, saying things along the lines of “I never seen no monster,” and “I seen the monster.” Enthralling. For being based on real accounts, this didn’t feel like much of a legend.

I like to think I know a thing or two about legends. There’s the Legend of Ezra from my years of going to summer camp in Missouri, which I talked about in my review for Sleepaway Camp II. Additionally, being from Omaha, Nebraska, means I am privy to hearing the legends surrounding a certain park. Hummel Park…

 

Since the sixties it has been said that a family of albino cannibals lived within the heavily shaded Hummel Park’s wooded areas. Some legends say there is a hidden “albino farm”, while others say they live in the trees. It is a secluded, quiet place, with a history of murders having happened there, bodies being dumped there, and satanic rituals having occurred there. As a child I pictured these albino cannibals as a bunch of Nosferatus. It wasn’t until later that I discovered albinism was different from vampirism. My apologies to the pigment deficient. But it is the combination of fictional and factual tragedy that sees these legends persisting.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah, The Legend of Boggy Creek sucks.

2/10.

Stay slime, and be rad at all times!

-Rat