We'll lumber into the month of April with a drive-in classic right out of the shadowy bottomlands of seventies' Texarkana folklore, as realized by local ad salesman and film set decorator Charles B. Pierce largely on a hundred thousand dollar donation by one of his clients, only to return some twenty-five million dollars at the box-office to date, standing as one of the most successful films of 1972.With the aforementioned budget limitations, Pierce cast his movie with many locals, using a gaggle of high schoolers as a makeshift film crew and approaching would-be actors with his plans while haunting a gas station(!) while producing, directing, filming, and even crooning the title track himself, resulting in a shabby-yet-authentic feel to his cryptozoological mockumentary, which would later inspire genre hit The Blair Witch Project(1999).The memorable artwork for the one sheet, as seen above, was supplied by none other than Ralph McQuarrie, who also designed the original Star Wars trilogy.The titular "Fouke Monster" has been reportedly seen by the southern Arkansas community as far back as the fifties, described as a hulking reddish-brown hominid of abhorrent fragrance, lonely cry, and giant three-toed footprints that it's been known to leave in the surrounding beanfields, and upon the eyewitness testimony of these townsfolk Pierce drew his own inspiration.Despite some amateur camerawork, acting performances, and a creature that looks at a glance to be a combination of a Howard Stern wig and a cheap gorilla costume, this one is probably the most terrifying G rated movie ever made this side of The Apple Dumpling Gang(1975), Escape to Witch Mountain(1975), or Benji the Hunted(1987).
"ZOMG! The hen just layed like, FOUR EGGS.."
After endless fuzzy eco-shots of wetlands and wilderness are interrupted by the Fouke monster's trademark 'lonely cry'(more resembles somebody taking a blowtorch to a baboon's egg purse, but that's just me), we see the narrator(Vern Stierman) as a young boy(Chuck Pierce, Jr) excitedly hurrying through countless fields to get to a country store, where he tells the local rocking chair set about a wild man terrorizing his family's home nearby, resulting in the coots laughingly promising to fix the wagon of any hairy varmints at a later date and sending him off.On-screen testimonial and lo-fi re-enactments of encounters with the creature from residents with expositive narration about Fouke's swampy and desolate locale follows; the prodigious Crabtree family apportions much of this screen time to their avail: Smokey's got a colossal hat, while teen trapper/fisher extraordinaire, Travis, is later immortalized in a frothy country ballad that'd break Boxcar Willie out in hives.To further serve the deceased Equus ferus caballus the taste of the lash, Buddy Crabtree's playing James Crabtree, and Jeff Crabtree is in the role of Fred Crabtree, both of whom flounder into the creature's path packing redneck heat with similarly anti-climactic results."He always travels the creeks...", notes the narrator, matter-of-factly.He also likes to peep tom around Mary Beth Searcy's pad, with a hot lead-tittie hereby administered by swamp-savvy Travis directly afterwards; a moment of silence for the kitteh, expiring from fright during the night.Wounded, the beast still manages to punk out the finest hunting dogs that Texas and Arkansas had to offer, respectively, in a hunt that goes as well as DAC on Showtime at the Apollo.Then the real terror begins in the form of a wildlife montage accompanied by a bromidic ballad as cackled by the film's director.C'mon everybody, sing along at home:This is how the story plaaaaays, a world on which we seldom gaaaaze, apagefromthebookofyesterdaaaaays...
She was astounded to find 1962 on the back porch, looking for it's 'secretary look' back...
Hey Travis Crabtree, wait a minute for meee.Let's go back in the bottoms, back where the fish are bitin', where all the world's inviiiiiitin'...Herb Jones, on the other hand, enjoys the secluded penetralia of his shack out in the bottoms, visited occasionally by those Crabtree boys what furnish him tobacco and sugar and whatnot.Though the penurious old codger who once blew part of his foot away in a boating(?) accident makes for intriguing filler, his segment is creature-free.Some footprint investigation and speculation thereafter segues us into Bessie Smith's encounter with the unkempt brute, who then procedes to intrude on three isolated girls' pajama party as a gent named Walraven reports on his hide-ripped hound from a nearby mobile home."The creeks...he always travels the creeks.", adds the narrator.Next, Charles Turner and Don Ford, two locally employed cattlehands, move their wives and small children into a small house together to conserve money, only to have the infernal wretch harrass their lonely wives, until they're forced to flee to the landlord, who's gotta be distantly related to Tarantino somehow, I'm telling ya.The next day Bobby Ford and young Corky Hill find strange three-toed footprints in the mud while fishing Boggy Creek for a minute, and that very night, the Fouke monster is fixin' to return; to shamble around their property, sticking a hairy mitt through the bathroom window while Bobby's dumping for knowledge.The men of the house fire several rounds at the cryptid, which a constable later dismisses as a panther that's been living underneath the house, from the porch.After much fart-assing about with flashlights in the dark, the creature man-in-a-suit-handles Bobby, causing the traumatized hillbilly to crash through the front door while it's closed, in a state of stupefaction.Bobby recovers rapidly, and the Fords and Turners?Well, they mosey outta town with no future plans of ever returning, believe you me, Buster.Finally, we see the adult narrator revisiting the empty house, pondering the existence of such things and mysterious sounds in the night.Another monster howl cues a longer, more embarrassing reprise of the embarrassing main theme over a title montage...
Hey, what's (insert-your-mother's-name-here)'s swampy bottom doing out here in the swampy bottoms?
This one goes out, hands down, to Chesna, a cat I met through Doc that helped keep me reviewing flicks after my zine stint through his Bigfoot website; probably the only guy on this plane of existence that can pretty much recite tonight's review, verbatim.He'll even sing both tunes for you, as I learned one summer night while zooted sac around a fire at his place.Once we get the upcoming YouTube channel off the ground, you can expect to see and hear some of just what the hell I'm talkin' about, oh my cohorts.My earliest memories of this one stem from late night network television broadcasts as a young jar o'sauce, making light of the monkey suit with my kindred movie spirits and laughing at Bobby Ford busting through the door in a state of shock.What can I say, we were an odd conglomerate, me and my lads.I can throw this one(I dove at the Hen's Tooth bare bones dvd on sight, years ago) in every once in a while, and it takes me right back to those glorious days where anything seemed possible. Though Boggy Creek, from a technical standpoint, would merit somewhere between one and two Wops, I'm forced to give it the entertainment value score instead, which is three Big ones, all the way.A cult classic in every sense of the term.
" 'Try Texarkana, Louie,' you said.'There's bound to be bananas down there,' you said."
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