_**The Bigfoot of southwest Arkansas**_

"The Legend of Boggy Creek" (1972) is docudrama with horror elements about the supposedly true sightings of the Fouke Monster, a three-toed Sasquatch-like creature that was seen in the Fouke region of southwest Arkansas from the 40s onward. Several locals recount their stories, often played by themselves.

The modest film only cost $100,000, but unexpectedly became the 10th highest-grossing movie of 1972, raking in a whopping $20 million at the box office and another $4.8 million in 1975 with a North American rerelease. It was director Charles B. Pierce’s breakthrough. He went on to do respectable B-flicks like “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” (1976), which addressed the real-life Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946, and “Grayeagle” (1977), a colorful Western that took “The Searchers” plot and made a more entertaining movie.

He later did a sequel to this film in 1984 called “Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues.” There are also a couple of unofficial sequels made by different directors which eschew the docudrama approach: “Return to Boggy Creek” (1977) and “Boggy Creek,” aka “Boggy Creek: The Legend Is True” (2011). In addition, there’s a documentary about various skunkape encounters in the Midwest called “The Legacy of Boggy Creek” (2011).

Obviously something about this film clicked with audiences back in its day. It features some nice nature photography with a spooky bent, a (wisely) vague creature, some quaint narrations and a few old-fashioned folk songs. Some people find it effectively creepy in an understated way while others find it so dull it’s worthless. I’m in the middle. I can enjoy it for what it is and respect its notable history, but it’s also admittedly tedious. It would play better to modern viewers if the runtime was cut in half.

The film runs 1 hour, 26 minutes, and was shot in the Fouke, Arkansas, region.

GRADE: C

This is not a good movie. It's one of those artifacts from the past that manages to retain the temperature and the mood of the time that it was made. This is crude and could be called a predecessor to today's Found Footage movies, but that's giving "The Legend of Boggy Creek" more credit than it deserves. Most of the Found Footage movies today are made on the cheap. It can be an effective way to generate scares in the Horror movie genre. "Boggy Creek" however, looks how it does because it had to. It's cheap by nature. And by accident, the cheapness is the most effective part of the movie.

The grainy shots of swampy nature scenes sets an eerie tone. Later, the mood set by these earlier shots gives the monster scenes impact. A great choice, most likely out of necessity, are the blurred images of the monster. These scenes were still effective and if I had seen this as a pre-teen, it would have given me some solid nightmares.

This is not a Horror movie to be taken seriously. It's too poorly made. But it's enjoyable because there's a dirtiness to it. That, along with the horrible acting of the cast as a detriment, makes "Boggy Creek" look like an old film reel that someone could have found in a dusty desk drawer in a cabin deep in the swamps of Arkansas.