I do not fit the mold of the classic skeptic. I admit that my mind is comfortably open to permit such pop oddities as UFO’s, Ghosts, telepathy, ESP and in some late night pseudo-intellectual discussions you might catch me giving a positive nod to the Loc Ness monster.

Sasquatch is another matter.

Not that I would give Bigfoot any less affirmation then Nessy but for me it all comes down to an issue of credibility. Judge for yourself but take note that the sort of people who claim to have seen Bigfoot “Dun seed it wit’tay own two eyes!”

There are just as many reasons, I suppose, to affirm the existence of Bigfoot as there are to deny it. The people of Fouke, Arkansas have been convinced for generations that a large, hairy, hulking beast walks around the backwoods, stumbling and howling at the moon (follow it around long enough and I bet you’ll catch it stumbling out of the bar late at night). Looking at the film, it isn’t difficult to understand where the legend was born. Fouke is densely populated and seems to be mostly made up of trees, swamp and eyewitness who were scared right out of their trailers. However, just once, I'd love to see an eyewitness who takes his shotgun into the woods to shoot the creature, not for the glory but because "that sumbitch made me miss my rasslin'!!"

One of Fouke's residents is director and fellow Arkansan, Charles B. Pierce who set off a generation of hokey, jokey sort-of documentaries about the legendary creature with this 1973 turkey. A folksy narrator informs us that for several years the creature has lived back in the woods and would surface to steal chickens and pigs and almost always to scare the pee-jingles out of some hapless local.

Those occurrences make up half of the film, as actual assaults are re-staged and we suffer half-cocked explainations from the actual eyewitnesses, one of whom informs us: "I reckon there's a lot of folks that won't believe nothing til they see it for they-selves. And if they're like me, they'll wish they hadn't seen what they did. You know, that thing is gonna up and kill someone one of these days, sure as the world".

The rest of the movie is made up of long shots of thick clusters of trees which occasionally contains glimpses of a hairy behemoth stumbling through the woods (actually it’s a guy in a suit, the movie assures us in a piece of scrolling text at the end - WHEW! That's a relief). The shots are so clumsy that you can almost see the wristwatch on the actor.

What makes the movie a gem are the reenactments. Pierce doesn’t spare a bit of detail and at one point, right before the creature drops in on a slumber party, we get such heart-tugging dialogue as “I wonder whur that thang is they tawk about, oh well I’m gunna go git a coke y’all want one?” This is followed by one of the girls heading off to use the bathroom. Pierce, ever the stickler for details, allows the camera to follow her in and we get a peeping tom view of her sitting on the can. When the creature comes banging on the window . . . well let’s just say the kid is lucky to have been sitting on the toilet.

Chuck Pierce, ever the hard-working craftsman, didn't even spare us a themesong:

*sniff*

Nor did he resist the temptation to make a sequel, two unfortunatly. The first Return to Boggy Creek, a fiction film featuring a pre-felony Dana Plato and the other Boggy Creek: The Legend Continues where one half of the movie was documentary and the other was just half-assed.

The Legend of Boggy Creek serves it's purpose. It's not more or less believeable than any other Bigfoot movie. Do you believe that a fur-bearing creature stumbles about the woods and swamps howling and screaming and scaring the locals. To me it all seems plausible because that's my uncle Ernie after a bender.