As you remember, in Part One of our Two Part look at Charles B. Pierce’s long anticipated sequel to The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), we discussed, among other things, whether or not abandoning the grounded, documentary style of its predecessor was to the film's betterment or detriment?
See, instead of building his film around the first hand accounts of eyewitnesses, here, Pierce decided to just use the witness recollections as supplemental materials and focused instead on a collegiate expedition led by Dr. Brian Lockhart into the marshes to find and document the legendary Fouke Monster, and prove its existence once and for all.
And when we last left our intrepid monster hunters -- Doc Lockhart, Tanya, Idiot Tim and Citified Leslie, they had just finished setting up a perimeter of sensors.
But while field-testing it, a mysterious third blip appeared on the radar screen, a blip other sensors indicated was caused by something quite huge and moving very fast toward one of their party.
Thus, tension mounts as a heavy breathing POV-shot closes in on Tanya (Hedin); and as their blips grow closer and closer together on the radar, Lockhart (Pierce) grabs his pistol and heads out to intercept the bogey. But by the time he reaches Tanya, Citified Leslie (Butler) reports the source of the big blip has disappeared, leaving behind only an acrid smell.
Later, while the others sleep, Lockhart continues to watch the radar when the big blip returns. Waking everyone up, they all watch the screen as the thing circles the camp: Closer ... and closer ... and closer still! Wait. What was that noise?! GAH! What? Who turned out the lights?! Okay, Who forgot to fill up the generator? IDIOT TIM?!? I KNEW IT!
Thus, as the camp is plunged into darkness and panic ensues, Lockhart orders the girls to stay inside while he and Idiot Tim (Pierce Jr.) take care of the generator. (And please try and get some gas into the tank, there, Timmy.) Soon enough, as the generator sputters back to life, the flickering floodlights reveal the creature, towering above some bushes and staring right at them!
Lockhart stares back in awe, and then begs the creature to talk to him. The monster screeches and grunts a reply; but as it starts to move forward, Lockhart fires a rifle at the looming menace. As the creature roars in pain, turns out this was only a tranquilizer gun; but the tranquilizers have no other effect. And after plucking the offending dart out of his chest, the creature roars off into the trees and is quickly out of sight.
The next day, our intrepid group heads back to town so Lockhart can interview a sheriff’s deputy about a more recent confrontation. And since everyone's still pretty tense over the previous night's harrowing encounter, Lockhart lightens the mood by relating another close encounter of a more comical nature:
As the trusty Vaseline-cam takes us into the home of Oscar and Myrtle Colpotter, inside, Oscar's looking for the Sears ‘n’ Roebuck catalog because he's got to take a massive dump and needs some reading material to pass the time. (Or some toilet paper. Lockhart is a little vague here.) Told it's on the back porch, we get to follow Oscar (Potter), with the catalog now in tow, all the way to the outhouse. (Thank you, movie.)
We are then treated to Oscar's noisy bodily functions as he drops a deuce and drools over the female underwear models in the catalog. (Again. Thank you, movie.) Thankfully, something sinister starts scratching at the door.
Of course, Oscar thinks it's Myrtle (Waggner) spying on him -- until the monster’s fist smashes in the door! He manages to beat the creature off with the catalog, but gets his foot stuck in the crapper hole in the process. Drawn outside by the ruckus, Myrtle spies the creature running away, and then helps Oscar out of the hole and starts to hose off his feces-saturated leg.
The Colpotter tale brings a needed laugh out of everyone, but Lockhart admits the story might not be valid because Oscar was known for having a bad drinking problem. Sending the others on for more supplies, Lockhart interviews Deputy Williams (Hildreth) alone, who then relates the tale of his strange encounter.
Apparently, after coming home after a successful day of fishing, Williams’ wife ordered him to clean his smelly catch away from the house. But as he headed for the garage, he was brutally attacked by the same ferocious creature.
Well, make that a midget version of the creature we saw earlier (-- that someone threw on top of him). After wrestling with the thing for a few minutes, which had wrapped its arms and legs around him, the officer finally managed to buck the thing off.
Then, Williams watched as the nasty little critter stole his cache of fish, who then ran to a bigger version of the same critter a few yards away. Stupefied, the trooper watched as the bigger critter picked up the little critter, slung it over his back, piggy-back style, and then loped off into the woods.
Swearing the little critter was amazingly strong, and how he needed several stitches in his back after this close encounter, Williams asks if Lockhart has spoken to a man named Crenshaw yet?
Seems this Crenshaw has lived on the bottoms all of his life and has reported numerous sightings of the creature. Told Crenshaw also claims the beast was super-fast and a great swimmer, Lockhart promises to check in with him as soon as possible.
Later, Lockhart has just about had it with Citified Leslie's constant whining and complaining. Ordered to stay in camp while he and Idiot Tim go out looking for the monster -- mostly to just get away from her for a while, after the men leave, Citified Leslie talks -- well, more like scares Tanya into commandeering the jeep and driving her back to town.
But along the way, the girls not only manage to get lost, but manage to bury the jeep up to its axles in a mud bog as well.
As the sun sets, the girls are still screaming at and blaming each other for their current predicament. Meanwhile, when Lockhart and Tim return to camp, they find the girls and the jeep gone. After several hours pass, the men are still waiting, the girls are still bickering, and the jeep is still stuck. Also of note, that hard-breathing Subjective-Cam has shown up again.
As for me? Well, at this point, I've concluded that this movie needs more midget monsters. A whole horde of ‘em, plowing over Doc Lockhart and his hi-falutin, fiery gaze of indignation and death scowl. Then, these midget monsters should pummel him into something that resembles a wet prune.
Seriously, this guy couldn't lead an expedition to find his own ass -- even if he had a map and one hand in his back pocket. And Leslie and Tanya might as well take their catfight outside and start wrestling in the mud. That would be cool. Sure. (C’mon, you’re already dirty!) Well, that, and everybody still needs to put some @*&#ing regular pants on.
Okay. Stop. Take a breath. You good? We’re good. Aaaand continue.
After consulting the owners manual, the girls decide to use the front mounted winch to get the jeep unstuck. Spooling out the cable, they even manage to get it hooked onto a tree and start winching the vehicle out when Citified Leslie spots the monster watching them! Terrified, the girls quickly abandon the jeep and flee on foot.
Back at the camp, Lockhart spies a familiar blip on the radar headed their way. Idiot Tim thinks it might be the creature, but Lockhart has other ideas and tells Tim to just play it cool and wait. Sure enough, the girls, caked in mud and debris, drag themselves into camp; and after relating their encounter with the creature, Lockhart starts to fire up his indignant death-glare again -- but then reels it back in for once, concluding the girls had been through enough today.
The next morning, after recovering the jeep, the expedition heads to a small resort area along the river to rent a boat to go and see old man Crenshaw. And while they negotiate for a rental (-- and we linger just long enough to officially meet the standards of a shameless plug for the venue), we watch a bunch of swimmers frolicking in the water. But what's that in the background there? Uh-oh ... A familiar, bubbling wake is heading right toward the swimmers. (I wonder if they're tethered by the neck, too?)
Delightfully unaware that something is lurking underneath them, one of the swimmers finally spots the bubbling trail. And then, what's causing it finally breaks the surface -- but it turns out to only be a young hooligan in a fright mask.
With that shameless plug interlude safely tucked away, Lockhart and his crew putter down the river, where they are harassed by some clown on a jet-ski. As he circles them, Tanya encourages him on until he finally peels off and heads back. However, we spot another bubbling wake crossing his path; and when the jet-ski hits something below the surface, the rider falls off.
And frankly, I'm not sure what happens next. Either the monster is closing in on him as he desperately tries to get back to the jet-ski, or this moron just isn't a very good swimmer. I don't know. You be the judge. Regardless, he gets away.
Eventually, Lockhart finds Crenshaw's shack but no one's home. As they look around, a big, hairy and surly looking brute lumbers into view; and since he's wearing a pair of one-strap overalls, I'm gonna assume this is Crenshaw and not another swamp monster. But he proves just as dangerous.
Thinking they're revenue men from the government, Crenshaw (Clem) holds a shotgun on the group, promising that if they are G-Men, he'll shoot them all on the spot and bury the bodies in the swamp where no one will ever find them.
After Lockhart assures they're from the university, out on a field trip, the brutish bumpkin apologizes and promises everyone that his bark is much worse than his bite.
He then invites them all to sit a spell, and offers everyone a plug of chewing tobacco and a drag off his moonshine jug. Only Tanya accepts because of course she does. Thus, Crenshaw is immediately smitten with her, but she soon turns green and runs off to hurl her cookies after consuming the noxious concoction.
While she barfs, Lockhart starts asking questions about the Fouke Monster. Here, a forthcoming Crenshaw claims they're regular visitors around his place, and he can't get no sleep because of the racket they make.
But Crenshaw is obviously preoccupied with something, and Lockhart can't quite figure out what or why. The others want to head back but a bad storm is brewing on the horizon, and Crenshaw warns it won't be safe on the river when it hits. He then offers his house for shelter. But after herding the others inside, he remains outside, saying he must tend to his fires as the man starts stacking huge piles of wood around his homestead.
Meanwhile, inside, Lockhart airs his suspicions. There's plenty of evidence that this isn't the first night for these huge bonfires, but Crenshaw won't reveal what he's so afraid of as he douses the gathered wood with gasoline.
Then, as the sky grows black and thunder and lightning start to rumble and flash overhead, Crenshaw asks Lockhart if he's a real doctor that can patch people up? After explaining that he isn't that kind of doctor, Crenshaw takes Lockhart away from the others anyway and makes a sales pitch, saying they can make it rich because he knows how to catch the creature. Intrigued, Lockhart asks him to explain.
Crenshaw answers by opening the door to a side room, revealing the mini-creature described by Deputy Williams lying in a heap on the floor. As Lockhart is allowed to examine it, Crenshaw confesses that he accidentally caught the critter in one of his traps a few days ago and now wants to cash in.
Only then does Lockhart realize what the bonfires are for: they're to keep the bigger creature away from its offspring. The little creature before him appears all but dead, but Crenshaw orders Lockhart to fix it -- or else.
Told they need to get it to a real doctor (-- or at least a vet), Crenshaw says there's no time because the sun's gone down, and then leaves to tend the fires.
When the fires are lit, Crenshaw takes up his shotgun and stands vigil by the tree line. And it isn't long before everyone spots the bigger creature lurking about.
When the storm breaks, the torrential rain quickly douses the fires. Now unhindered, the monster closes in.
As Crenshaw retreats toward the house, Lockhart greets him with his pistol and forces the man to hand over the shotgun. He then orders everyone back inside the house, where he gives Tim the pistol with orders to watch Crenshaw.
Outside, the big creature starts to pound on the front door, which quickly splinters apart. Here, Lockhart retreats to the other room and cradles the little creature in his arms just as the bigger creature finishes off the door.
Hoping the beast understands what he's doing, Lockhart gives the juvenile back. (No harm, no foul, right, Big Fella? Besides, it was Hillbilly Jim over there. Rip his head off. You can rip Tim's head off, too, if you want. And that stupid city girl, too.)
Accepting its offspring, the creature then quickly retreats back through what's left of the door and disappears into the storm.
The next morning, while the others pile into the boat, Lockhart has a final chat with Crenshaw. Apparently, the big galoot has seen the error of his ways and admits Lockhart was right all along -- the creature needs to be left alone out in the wild.
The two shake hands before parting ways. And while the intrepid Lockhart Expedition putters back up the river, their fearless leader has a few ponderings of his own to leave us with:
He has no intention of ever telling anyone about their encounter with the creature and its offspring; and it's not because he fears no one would ever believe them; he fears those who would believe and come out here like they did, looking for proof. Dead or alive. So, no. He wants to help keep these creatures a mystery. And they aren't monsters, really, says Lockhart. They're just another part of nature, and are meant to be left in the wild just like God intended.
Amen, you self-righteous turd.
And as the end credits roll, we see the two creatures, fully recovered and frolicking around the woods, to maim and kill all unsuspecting motorists who were just trying to change their flat tires, which bring us mercifully to the end.
After burning a few bridges back in Arkansas, Pierce and his current wife, Cindy Butler, pulled up stakes and moved to California around 1981, hoping to advance both of their film careers in Hollywood.
Butler was an actress who had appeared in two of Pierce’s previous films, most notably as the victim of the trombone attack in The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976). She would also have a small role in Grayeagle (1977), which was Pierce’s tribute to John Ford and The Searchers (1956), where a fur trapper tracks down the natives who kidnapped his daughter.
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During filming of The Town that Dreaded Sundown, Pierce and Butler had an affair that was hardly a secret, which officially ended his previous marriage to Florence Lyons-Pierce, who had been his wife for 10 years (-- other sources say they were married 17 years). The couple had three children but the divorce was amicable and they would remain friends, and Pierce would help raise their three children, Pamela, Susan and Charles Jr.
Pierce and Butler, meanwhile, got married and wound up settling in Carmel, California, where they serendipitously wound up being neighbors with Clint Eastwood. A friendship soon cemented itself. And here, as the legend goes, Pierce shared a script treatment with Eastwood, which was co-written by his old Boggy Creek pal, Earl Smith. It was a vehicle for Eastwood’s current companion and frequent co-star, Sondra Locke, called The Killing Ground.
Apparently, Eastwood liked the rape / revenge story so much he optioned the spec-script, which would serve as the basis for the forthcoming Dirty Harry sequel, Sudden Impact (1983) that would star both Eastwood and Locke. Pierce and Smith would receive a story credit for Sudden Impact, but the actual screenplay was credited to Joseph Stinson -- with John Milius cited for some last minute ghost-doctoring to punch-up the dialogue.
Now, it has always been Pierce’s contention that he was the one who came up with Harry Callahan's most famous catchphrase, “Go ahead, make my day,” as the lethal cop threatened to blow someone’s head clean off to save himself some paperwork. Said Pierce (The Houston Times, August 27, 1986), “When my father used to want me to mow the yard or do my chores, and I didn’t want to, he’d stroke his belt and say, ‘Go ahead, make my day.’ That’s where that line came from.”
But this attribution has been in dispute ever since the film came out, as others have also laid claim to it. “Every time somebody says that line, John Milius should get a royalty check,” said Gregg Segal (Los Angeles, March, 2000). “He wrote it, along with entire scripts for other do-or-die Americana like Red Dawn (1984), Magnum Force (1973) and Conan the Barbarian (1982).” But Elizabeth Knowles credits the line to Stinson in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999).
Lest we forget, the whole thing might’ve been plagiarized in the first place, stolen and paraphrased from Gary Sherman’s delightfully scummy Vice Squad (1982), which premiered a year before Sudden Impact. In the Sherman film, the hero of the piece, a vice cop played by Gary Swanson, puts a gun to a vicious pimp’s head and says, "Come on scumbag, make your move, and make my day!"
To me, Vice Squad is an underappreciated film with a tour de force performance by Wings Hauser as that vile, scumbag pimp Ramrod, who also sang the film’s theme song, “Neon Slime.” Martin Scorcese also defended it, telling Paramount’s top marketing executive Dawn Steel it was the best picture of the year but the Academy didn’t have the guts to nominate it. (I wouldn’t go THAT far, but it is a fun little sleaze revelry.)
Now, I bring all of this up because it will help get you all into the proper mind-frame of where Pierce’s head was at for this particular moment in time, and show the huge impact of him palling around with Eastwood and working on a Dirty Harry movie had on his next film, The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek, Part 2.
Now, the exact circumstances that led Pierce to finally relent and do the Boggy Creek sequel he never really wanted to do are a bit murky. But as usual, it always came down to money. Said Pierce (Fangoria, 1997), “[People] had been after me for years to make one more Boggy Creek, and I wanted to see if I could make more money out of it.”
It looks like the money for the film came from two sources. First was Arista Films Inc., an independent outfit who backed films like Angels Revenge (alias Angels’ Brigade, 1979) and Mortuary (1982), a second wave Slasher movie. Later, they would back the Joe Don Baker vehicle Final Justice (1984), a supernatural Slasher set at Alcatraz called Slaughterhouse Rock (1987), and a couple of decent post-Vietnam action thrillers, Crackdown (1988) and The Violent Zone (1989).
Meanwhile, Pierce would team up with his old friends at Howco International, too, as Joy Houck Jr. would serve as co-producer on Boggy Creek 2. Junior, of course, was the son of Joy Houck Sr., one of the founders of Howco back in the 1950s, who wound up distributing The Legend of Boggy Creek after Pierce’s successful four-walling campaign back in ‘72.
Like Pierce, Houck Jr. was a triple threat: a producer, a director, and a screenwriter. His first feature was Night of Bloody Horror (1969), an early starring vehicle for Gerald McCraney, who goes on a killing spree while under the influence of his dead brother. (At least I think he did. That movie is a bit of a trip.)
This was followed by Women and Bloody Terror (alias His Wife’s Habit, 1970), where a serial philanderer is stalked by a murderous deviant. Both films were later released together on a double-bill that touted one of the greatest vox-populi trailers to ever exist.
This was followed by The Night Strangler (1972). Not to be confused with the second Kolchak telefilm, here, an inter-racial relationship leads to serial murder as ex-Monkee Mickey Dolenz goes off his nut. The younger Houck was also responsible for Creature from Black Lake (1976), which was a direct rip-off of the original Boggy Creek, where another bayou Bigfoot goes on a rampage, which I liked quite a bit.
In fact, one could almost consider Boggy Creek 2 as a sort of stealth remake of Creature from Black Lake, where a couple of grad students head into the Louisiana swamps to prove the existence of another legendary creature, document the recent sightings, which are shown in flashback, run afoul of some locals, and suffer through several violent close encounters with the beast themselves.
Pierce would be the sole credited screenwriter for Boggy Creek 2, and for some unfathomable reason, he decided to abandon everything that made the first film work and made it a hit; and instead, made it an all-out monster movie. And not only that, but turned it into a personal vanity project for himself that pushes it from being just a bad film and into the strata of being one of the worst films ever made.
Said Bill Corbett, who helped lampoon the film on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (S10.E06, 1999), “Boggy Creek 2 is the kind of movie that seems to hate you; to wish you active harm; to kick sand in your eyes and make you cry. And for me, this was personified by Mr. Charles B. Pierce, who is apparently responsible for every single aspect, every nano-second of this cruel and unusual bit of celluloid.”
Now, when I called the film a vanity project, I didn’t mean that this was Pierce’s personal vision that he wanted to get forever ingrained on film. No. This was a personal piece of vanity for Pierce himself.
“He chose to write and play a grim, hostile, condescending, know-it-all of a man; a character who is proven superior to everyone else in the story again and again,” said Corbett. “He drills his lousy stinking voice-over narrative into our heads every freaking minute of this film, and who then has the temerity to wrap his movie up suggesting his sour Nazi of a character is really an ecological servant of God.”
Yeah. Here is where we see that Eastwood influence I was talking about, as Pierce struts around the swamp in form fitting short shorts, waving his big pistol around with a macho swagger that doesn’t befit his stature, flashing his fiery, self-righteous glare or death scowl of indignance against those who would dare question his means or motives.
I mean, take a look at the scene where Pierce as Lockhart takes an absolute shit on the people of Fouke when he’s buying bullets at the country store, where they’re all played as toothless bumpkins to his, well, gift to everything. Was this because some of them dared to sue him? Was this payback? Who can say.
But Pierce and his character just projects this vibe that says his shit doesn't stink, he knows it, and he'll gladly tell you why. And since he's in it, this turd-burger of a movie is suddenly gold-plated. A self-fulfilling fallacy that ultimately sinks the whole picture. And those shorts! Man, those things should be reserved for little Japanese boys named Kenny, who befriend giant fire-breathing turtles -- not middle-aged men who should've known better.
He honestly thought he could carry a picture acting like that, but not even an actor of Eastwood’s weight and caliber could’ve pulled that asshole off. And as the designated hero, Pierce gets away with it. Why? Because he wrote it that way. To borrow another quote from Dirty Harry, this time from Magnum Force, "A man has got to know his limitations."
His supporting cast isn’t much better, not helped by the fact that they were written to make the main character seem smarter than he really was, and so, offer little help in staunching the free-flowing badness permeating from the screen.
Most of Pierce’s regulars were present and accounted for. This would be Butler’s biggest role to date, and she would get top-billed; but she is pretty one note as the Citified Leslie, who fails as the voice of reason -- well, citified reason. (Git the rope!) This would be her third and final feature for Pierce, and the couple would divorce not long after the film’s release.
Aside from the eye candy Pierce intended them to be, neither Butler or Serene Hedin brought much to the table. And for a while, as I mentioned in Part One of our retrospective, I feared we might be getting dangerously close to Nights with Sasquatch territory with Hedin’s “Hot to Trot” Tanya Yazzie.
For those unaware, Nights with Sasquatch was a notorious adult novel written by Jack Couffer. First published back in 1977, it told the tale of a zoology professor named John and one of his grad students named Judy, who are out backpacking in the woods. When they bed down for the night and make love, this draws the interest of a horny Sasquatch, who makes off with Judy, hoping to have sex with her, too.
Now, I've never actually read this (-- copies of the book are rare and very expensive), but I have read a few synopsis by those who have; and what happened next, well, at first blush, it sounded a lot like Ray Nadeu's The Beast and the Vixens (alias The Beauties and the Beast, 1974), which Brian Barnes of Mondopiece Theater (September 29, 2021) summed up as "this is what happens when you slam Bigfoot Exploitation, Hippie Exploitation, Drug Exploitation, a Nudie Cutie, and a big steaming pile of garbage into an industrial blender and hit 'Suck'."
And he's not wrong. For while I haven't read the Couffer book, I have seen the Nadeu film because of course I have, and it is terrible. The plot, such as it is, sees a Sasquatch kidnap a series of topless women out in the woods. There's a subplot of two baddies searching for some rare coins in the same woods, who take a group of hippies hostage that is also resolved by some timely cryptid intervention. Lots of gratuitous nudity, lots of sex, a dash of rape, a bizarre dream sequence, a shitty costume, and there ya go.
But what Nights with Sasquatch really reminded me of was an X-Rated version of EEGAH! (1962), where Eegah the caveman and Roxy the ditzy dame have sex, a lot, which is why I was so worried when Tanya first announced that she found the idea of a hairy wild man rather sexy. *shudder*
Speaking of Arch Hall Sr. and Arch Hall Jr., the dynamic duo behind EEGAH, Charles “Chuck” Pierce Junior would appear in all of Charles “Sparkplug” Pierce Senior’s films, too. His biggest role was in The Winds of Autumn (1976), where an 11-year old Chuck played the sole survivor of a pioneer massacre, who sets out on a quest to find and kill those that killed his family. And when his dad stopped making films, so did Chuck. Coincidence? Judging by his performance as Idiot Tim in Boggy Creek 2, probably not.
A lone bright spot on the acting front was Jimmy Clem’s performance as Crenshaw, the surly backwoods bumpkin who caught the juvenile creature in one of his traps. Again, one has to ask if Crenshaw was a potshot at Smokey Crabtree as he (as Crenshaw) and Pierce (as Lockhart) fight over the destiny of the monster and its offspring. Who the hell knows for sure, and odds are good I am reading way too much into all of this.
Ironically enough, the one thing the sequel did improve on was the monster suit. “This time, I spent almost as much [money] on the creature suit as I did on the film itself,” said Pierce (Fangoria, 1997). “I brought in somebody who did the face and the hands, so it looked fantastic from that viewpoint.”
That somebody was Bill Khopler -- credited for “special effects costume.” Boggy Creek 2 appears to be Khopler’s only credit, which is too bad because the suits were really quite good. James Fabus Griffin played the adult creature, while Victor Williams played the juvenile.
And while there were a lot of familiar faces and names in the cast, there were plenty of names that were noticeably missing behind the scenes, and their absence is obvious and their presence sorely missed.
After Pierce served as his own cinematographer on Legend of Boggy Creek, James Roberson took over the role from Winterhawk through Greyeagle. And I don’t say this lightly, but I don’t think anybody except Dean Cundey filled a 1:85:1 frame better than Roberson. Boggy Creek 2 was filmed in a tighter aspect ratio by Shirak Kojayan, who failed to capture the beauty and mystery of the swamp the way Pierce did and the whole thing comes off rather flat.
Pierce seemed obsessed with shooting all the outdoor scenes during the golden hour, in the gloaming, before the sunset. And the less said about the Vaseline smeared over the camera’s lens during the flashbacks the better.
But missed most of all was the music of Jaime Mendoza-Nava, whose haunting melodies really helped glue Pierce’s previous films together.
I’m not really sure what Frank and Lori McKelvey were shooting for with their synth score for Boggy Creek 2, but the attempts at musical cues with ominous portent sounded like the efforts of Don Music, an old regular muppet character from Sesame Street, who tended to bang his head onto his keyboard whenever he couldn’t find the melody. That, and there were several occasions where it sounded like someone got their finger stuck between two keys on the old Casio and they just left it in. I wish I was making that up.
I know all of this is sounding kind of harsh and mean, but for some reason, this movie just rubbed me the wrong way on nearly every front. Which is strange, because I seem to remember liking Boggy Creek 2 a lot more when I first saw it back in the 1990s.
When the film was finished and ready for release, the decision was made to tame the title down a bit. And so, Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues... rolled into theaters in March of 1984. But it had been over ten years since The Legend of Boggy Creek had been released. Would people still even remember the Booger? Let alone which creek he inhabited? The answer came quick, and it was painful.
Chris Gladden of the Roanoke Times (February 2, 1985) called the film "too bad to miss." And Patrice Smith of the Evansville Courier (September 9, 1984) said Boggy Creek II was “the murkiest glop you’ll see on the screen this year” in her Medved-tinged review. And “though hardly as interesting as Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978), so awful they’re funny, Boggy Creek II ranks right down there with The Worst Movies Ever to Slither Onto an Indoor Screen. With any luck, it will make the lampooners sequel to It Came from Hollywood (1982)." Regardless, "It shouldn’t make any money, and it won’t earn much respect for its makers, that's for certain.”
And for his column in The New York Daily News (December 19, 1985) as the Phantom of the Movies, Joe Kane pulled no punches. “It all began with Charles B. Pierce’s Legend of Boggy Creek, a no-budget Bigfoot docudrama that, though bald on chills and professionalism, exhibited a certain cinema veritacky charm,” Kane said. “Now the man who started it all is back with a new Bigfoot tall tale titled Boggy Creek II. [And] if nothing else, Pierce’s down-home-fried movie ranks high in the running for Dullest Junk Flick of the Year honors. Its pedestrian dialogue and droning narration, and thespian techniques lifted from the Living Dead school of acting, left the Phantom checking for vital signs before the end of reel one.”
And as I feared, by 1984, most critics had no idea what the film was a sequel to. Roxanne Mueller of The Cleveland Plain Dealer (September 10, 1984) sure didn’t, saying, “After sitting through Boggy Creek II, I could just kick myself for missing Boggy Creek I. Actually, I don’t recall there even being an original, but it must have come out at a time that conflicted with my rushing to see things like In Search of Noah’s Ark (1976) or The Shame of In-Grown Toenails. A terrible oversight, but fate can be cruel.”
And neither did Bob Dyer of The Akron Beacon Journal (September 12, 1984). “The advertisements would have us believe that ever since Boggy Creek, moviegoers throughout the land have been waiting breathlessly for Boggy Creek II.” said Dyer. “If you don’t remember Boggy Creek I, you're not alone. Even the manager of the six-screen area theater that’s showing Boggy Creek II doesn’t recall a Boggy Creek I. If the original was anything like the sequel, our collective amnesia is justified. Boggy Creek II is quite possibly the worst film of 1984.”
The film would see a limited release in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Florida. It had an extremely short test run in Akron, Ohio, and Evansville, Indiana, in September, and an even shorter run in New York City in February, 1985. (It did so badly, its box office take is practically non-existent. At least I could find no record of the actual amount.) After that, the film was yanked from theaters and was shelved for nearly five years before finally being sold off to home video in 1990, which should come as a surprise to no one. Audiences had moved on. No one remembered the Fouke Monster. Not even the people of Fouke.
The News Star (January 1, 1984).
Even long before the official sequel came out, from what I dug up, the people of Fouke were pretty much over all that monster business, too. By 1986, the only real remnants of its heyday were Crabtree’s book and an item on the menu of a Fouke Cafe, where you could order a Boggy Creek Legend pizza. Even the old Crank house where the Fords were attacked had long since been torn down.
Thus, whatever money generated locally had long since dried up, and the denizens seemed to be efforting to distance themselves from the whole thing. They were never embarrassed by the notoriety, good or bad, they were just ready to move on.
“We haven’t taken a monster call in years,” said H.L. Phillips, now the Chief Deputy of the Miller County Sheriff’s department. “I don’t even recall the last one we got.” Phillips, you may remember, was the deputy who saw the black panther crossing the road back in ‘71, thinking he’d solve the identity of the monster. “We don’t even keep a file on it anymore.”
Phillips revealed this to Scott Charton (The Baxter Bulletin, July 26, 1986) to mark the 15th Anniversary of the release of The Legend of Boggy Creek. “A few years ago, someone called and said they’d found a cave along the Sulphur River where the monster was supposedly living. Nothing there,” said Phillips. “I don’t believe in it. But I’d say don’t argue with people who say they’ve seen it. Many were respectable and responsible folks.”
Leslie Greer, the former Sheriff of Miller county, now retired, who had led posses into the swamps back in 1971 to find the monster, felt it was a hoax all along, too -- especially those soybean tracks.
“It was just, I think, a rigged deal all the way through,” said Greer (ibid). “I don’t know why anybody would want to do it, unless it was to put Fouke on the map.” And on that front, I’d say they definitely succeeded. But as Greer said, “I don’t think it did any harm. It created a lot of interest in Fouke, and nobody got hurt, but a lot got excited.”
With fifteen years of hindsight, (then) current Fouke mayor James Larey told Charton, “I don’t think the people believed there was a monster as such, but there were always people who believed.” But now, “Most people who have claimed to see the monster have quieted down, some have passed away, faded out. There’s no advertising or anything anymore.”
A former mayor of Fouke agreed. “I never did believe it from the day I first heard it,” said Virgil Roberts -- whose wife made all those miniature plaster cast footprints sold back in ‘71; 5000 miniature casts in total, sold for 50-cents each to a distributor. “I’ve lived here 65 years and traveled just about every spot in south Miller County. I’ve never seen anything.”
And Frank Schambagh, remember him? The archeologist from Southern Arkansas University (-- if not, go read our review of Legend of Boggy Creek), who had worked tirelessly to debunk the monster ever since those three-toed tracks were found back in June, 1971? Well, he was still at it, too, telling Charton, “There’s never been any question in my mind that it was always a hoax.”
Roberts always felt those prints were a hoax, too. “I’m convinced beyond any reasonable doubt it was a man-made track,” he said. “I feel like someone walked out there with stilts on. I think they were trying to get attention here. Maybe they thought they could make a little money on it.”
Even Pierce questioned their validity back in the day, telling Charton he was never sold on the footprints either. “I believe that there were some hoaxes set up for my benefit, to create some sensation,” said Pierce. “I believe [the footprints] were a hoax, and somebody worked long and hard at it.”
When Charton reached out to Crabtree for comment, he declined and referred the reporter to his book.
“There are no higher primates other than man in the Americas,” said Schambagh (ibid). “Scientific evidence is totally against [the existence of the Fouke Monster]. I don’t think that many people actually believed in it. People see things when their imaginations are excited. They see things, coincidences come together. It’s just mass hysteria.”
And by 1986, this mass hysteria had pretty much petered out. Thus, the running joke around Fouke was, when asked, Where did you see the monster? The answer was to point at the nearest empty liquor bottle.
But strangely enough, less than a year later, things kinda turned around and Fouke started openly embracing their notoriety and celebrated their most famous citizen by hosting an annual Boggy Creek Monster Day. And by 2013, it was rebranded as The Fouke Monster Festival. From the website foukemonster.net:
“The Fouke Monster Festival is an annual event held in Fouke, Arkansas. The purpose of the event is to bring together the local community and to share information about the Sasquatch-like creature that has been sighted in the area for over a century. The festival features guided bus tours, food, vendors, and presentations by some of the top Bigfoot researchers in the field.”
And in 1993, Denny Roberts opened up the Monster Mart. “I’ve owned the place since 1983, and we opened up as a restaurant,” said Roberts (The Fouke Monster Mart, 2020). “We had tourists coming through all the time looking for something to do and all I had was a bunch of old clippings falling off the walls. There was nothing to see and they were always disappointed.”
The refurbished Monster Mart acts as a convenience store, souvenir shop, and museum that traces the history of the Fouke Monster. Said Roberts, “I decided to invest my money back into my business to enhance the monster [aspects].” And as of 2024 it was still open and apparently thriving.
Even Smokey Crabtree finally broke his silence and got his chance to tell the truth in another documentary -- though a rather dubious one called The Hunt for Bigfoot (1995). Coming in the era of The X-Files (1993-2001) and in the wake of the Alien Autopsy video (1995), the program was hosted by Clu Gulager and purported to show the recovered skeletal remains of the Fouke Monster, which is then examined by psychics, scientists, and taxidermists to judge its veracity and authenticity.
The format seems to be a riff on In Search of… (1977-1982), with Gulager subbing in for Leonard Nimoy, teasing possible future episodes involving the existence of UFOs, Vampires, Voodoo, and Angels. In the only known extant episode, it features testimonials of eye-witnesses, including Crabtree, and analysis by experts for the first two-acts, and then the third focuses on the human-like skeleton of abnormal size that was lacking a head / skull -- more mummified remains than skeletal, really.
It was written, produced and directed by Jim McCullough, another regional movie entrepreneur based out of Texas, who had written and produced Creature from Black Lake, Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1983), Crazy Fat Ethel (1975), and The Aurora Encounter (1986), a riff on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
But the program is a bit of a ghost because I failed to dig up any real info on it (-- it’s not listed on the IMDB), and could only follow the breadcrumbs gleaned from the video’s on screen credits (-- at the time of publishing, it was streaming on YouTube), which has me leaning toward the whole thing being a failed TV pilot or an aborted attempt at a syndicated program.
And then, in 1999, the country was once again taken by storm by an independently produced feature, purporting to be a real life documentary, where three college students ventured into the woods of Maryland to shoot a doc based on a local legend about a witch -- only to never be seen or heard from again; with the only clue to their fate being their recovered film footage, which was found under bizarre circumstances.
Thanks to a brilliant marketing campaign and a few camera tricks, The Blair Witch Project (1999) was a huge hit, and its creators, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, claimed Pierce’s first film was a huge influence on their found-footage wonder.
“We just wanted to make a movie that tapped into the primal fear generated by the fact-or-fiction format, like Legend of Boggy Creek,” said Myrick in an interview with John Wooley (Tulsa World, August 3, 1999). "That was one of my favorites; freaked me out when I was a little kid. I was beside myself with fear for weeks after seeing that thing.”
Said Wooley, “The makers of these quasi-documentaries didn’t have the money for big special effects, and often shot on 16mm film, which looked grainy when it was blown up to 35mm in order to be projected onto a theater screen. It was this very cheapness that, Myrick feels, enhanced the creepiness of the picture and made them so memorable.”
“There was that grainy look to everything, it was done amateurishly, and it was all this implied stuff,” Myrick explained. “It was inconclusive. You never really saw Bigfoot. You saw a blurry photo of Bigfoot, or a UFO, or whatever. The rest was left up to your imagination. That’s what we did with Blair Witch. We created an urban legend, a boogeyman for people to identify with.”
Sanchez would do it again, this time with Bigfoot, in the underappreciated found-footage thriller, Exists (2014), where a knot of extreme stunt YouTubers run afoul of a grieving Sasquatch. In that film, Sanchez resolved two fundamental problems folks had with The Blair Witch Project: one, we liked these protagonists better; and two, the threat they faced was physical and something we could see and quantify.
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But all of this love and reverence was for The Legend of Boggy Creek, not for Boggy Creek II.
No. It’s bad, it's plodding, and it's horribly padded, and the only thing more atrocious than the dialogue was the ability of the actors executing those lines, making for plenty of laughs to be had at the film's expense.
Admittedly, the film does overachieve in a few spots -- about three in total: the effect used to make the underwater creature's wake, the shock reveal of the juvenile behind the door, and ... uh, gimmie a second!
Regardless, he even manages a few suspenseful turns as Pierce tries to recapture the magic of the first film with those flashback sequences. But the Vaseline occluded lenses kinda ruins it, and when they end we're still left with the lame framing device of Lockhart and his merry band of dunderheads.
As a filmmaker, Pierce has always fascinated me. And though I feel he had some real talent behind the camera as a producer, a director, a cinematographer, and a storyteller in general, he had no business being in front of it as an action hero. (Or the odious comedy relief for that matter.)
In that Fangoria interview, Pierce would admit mistakes were made on Boggy Creek II and offered a bit of a mea culpa.
He admitted that his heart wasn’t really in it, and it resulted in a half-assed effort. “I really didn’t want to do Boggy Creek II,” said Pierce. “I think it's probably my worst picture. I played too big a role, and I had too many of my friends in it. It’s all right, but it’s not one of my favorites.”
So what’s the lesson here?
With Pierce, well, it’s hard to tell where the story ends and the truth begins. But! Basically, when Pierce made The Legend of Boggy Creek, he had no idea what he was doing but accidentally produced a spectacularly earnest film that made him rich and famous. But for Boggy Creek II, Pierce knew exactly what he was doing, and purposefully produced a horrible film that failed on every front that flopped hard and made him look the fool and rightfully so.
Thus endeth the lesson, I guess?
Originally posted on December 13, 2002, at 3B Theater.
Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues (1985) Aquarius Releasing :: Howco International Pictures / P: Joy N. Houck Jr., Charles B. Pierce / D: Charles B. Pierce / W: Charles B. Pierce / C: Shirak Kojayan / E: Shirak Kojayan / M: Frank McKelvey, Lori McKelvey / S: Charles B. Pierce, Cindy Butler, Serene Hedin, Chuck Pierce Jr., Jimmy Clem
