Dave Shirley's Spooky but Sceptical Blog: August 2012

“Fouke is a right pleasant place to live… until the sun goes down” or so says Vern Stierman, the silken voiced narrator of The Legend of Boggy Creek. His Southern American drawl reminds me of the stereotypical Southern gentleman as it weaves over the imagery of a quiet, under-populated Arkansas township surrounded by open fields, woodlands and swampland. Shots of calm rippling swamp surfaces are interjected by bull frogs croaking and the creaks of overhanging branches that occasionally dip into the murky waters of Boggy Creek as this low budget film opens.

We are introduced to woodsmen and hunters in a variety of backdrops early on in this docudrama ensuring the viewer is left with no uncertainty that we’re in Good Ole Boy country. The town of Fouke is home to just 350 folk, says Stierman in the 1972 film and the affection for the simple life of small town USA is present with each majestic roll of his voice. At the time The Legend of Boggy Creek was something of a labour of love for the producer and director Charles B. Pierce, yet from its original budget of just $66,000 it would go on to make a hefty $22 million in profit as movie goers flocked to drive-in movie theatres to gawk at this depicted folklore in glorious Technicolor.

I am unashamedly in love with this forty year old piece of drive-in fodder. Its grainy resolution and dated light musical accompaniment make it a whimsical piece and the wonderful rolling accents of the films human ‘stars’ make it strangely perfect Sunday morning viewing as the crisp frost of the night thaws slowly on my window in the light of a mid-winter sunrise. I take my first sip of fresh hot coffee and settle into the creaking leather of my favourite couch next to my still dozing cat as she takes in the billowing wash of dry heat of an electric fire in my conservatory. The early morning sun skims across the roof illuminating the space with a golden radiance which I take in briefly before tapping play on my laptop.

The opening montage of tranquil yet foreboding of scenes from Boggy Creek is somehow unsettling and reminiscent in feel to movies such as the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre as the rural isolation of that movie filmed on cheap 16mm is a visceral reminder how untouched and threatening parts of the United States can be perceived. It is a film made at a time when a finished movie could still be rough around the edges and ultimately more compelling than many modern slick HD offerings. Unlike the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the moments of ‘horror’ in Boggy Creek are barely what you would call perilous as Stierman narrates a string of re-enactments of sightings of the so-called Fouke Monster by hysterical women and rifle-toting men in dungarees with half burned self-rolled cigarettes dangling from their grimacing serious mouths. These depictions often featured actual witnesses recreating and voicing over their personal experiences for the film which it could be said adds to the realism but at the time simply served to lessen the pressure on the meagre budget.

The real star of the show is barely glimpsed in the movie, wisely being shown as a silhouette amongst the trees or a shadow cast upon the side of a trailer or house. The Fouke Monster, as it was dubbed with little subtlety is a legend local to the small town of Fouke (pronounced Fowk) akin to its Pacific North Western cousin Bigfoot or Sasquatch. In the Deep South, however, the creature is held in less familiar regard and almost every time one of the yokels sets eyes upon the creature they attempt to blow a hole in it with an ever handy high-powered hunting cannon. Like the ‘Skunk-Ape’ said to ramble through the Florida ever-glades it’s reputed to have a smell ranging from a bitter acrid scent to the pungent odour of wet dog and it’s long matted coat is a thick reddish brown colour much like that of an orang-utan. It is said to lollop along on two legs and even at a hunch its height is reported to be between 7 and 10 feet. Enormous 17-inch footprints allegedly emanating from the beast found in the soft mud of Boggy Creek and in the fields of a local farm suggest, unlike Bigfoot the animal has just three toes on each foot.

Sightings of the Fouke Monster reputedly date back over 100 years and its presence, even as a piece of wider folklore, is testament to the enduring idea that a primitive primate species tumbled down a different evolutionary path to our own and still tramps through the un-explored wildernesses of the world. Even today contemporary reports of the creature still persist though none eclipse the sheer terror of the most infamous encounter with the Fouke Monster reported by the Ford family in 1971.

The Ford family household was made up of two brothers, Bobby and Don, their wives and their children. The families had recently moved in to the rented single story wooden house so that Bobby and Don could take up work locally. The house was situated in a quiet isolated area, as was the norm for such a geographically wide-spread community such as Fouke and it was surrounded by trees which came close to the wooden porch which circled almost the entire structure. One evening, long after the sun had set and the sprawling darkness of a moonless night had smothered every inch of daylight, the young family had finally settled down for the evening to shoot the breeze before retiring for a restful sleep.

The brothers had been out hunting for squirrels and small game with a family friend for much of the day only setting off for home as dusk approached. Meanwhile Bobby’s wife Elizabeth had fallen into a restless sleep on the couch below an open sash window trying to enjoy the fresh untainted country air wafting in, dutifully awaiting her husband’s return. She was nervous in this place having only recently moved in and having heard sounds on a previous evening of breaking foliage in the pitch darkness around her new rural home and so yearned for the comfort and safety of Bobby’s presence. However, it wasn’t long after the brothers arrived home that night burdened with nothing more than two cold unused rifles and not even a squirrel to account for their hunt, that they began to encounter the first signs that they were not alone in this isolated corner of Fouke.

Settling down with frosty beers the men recounted how the Bottoms (as the woods were referred to locally) seemed eerily empty of life. Their hunt had become more of a country walk with guns as they stalked an apparently empty forest. As they relaxed in the sitting room they began posturing how they would next time fell a deer and hang its head upon the wall of their home the joviality was suddenly interrupted as heavy dull thuds began vibrating through the thin walls of their house as something prowled the creaking wooden porch of their home.

The Ford’s glanced to one another with held breaths unsure of what would be stalking their new home and ever aware that the wooden walls and rattling windows could surely offer little protection against a predator of any size. Bobby’s eyes widened as he listened intently to the beats of the intruders stride fearing perhaps a cougar or worse a bear. His brother and their friend were present but none dared move even to retrieve their hunting rifles from by the front door.

The quivering breaths became uncomfortable rasps as their throats dried. In between each voluminous thud the air would instantly empty of sound. Not even the hopeful croak of a bullfrog or the alarmed screech of an owl could be heard beyond this encroaching dread. Suddenly… the footsteps stopped leaving the tense unbroken silence.

Still lying on the couch, Elizabeth heard the creak of the boards on the porch outside as something heavy settled upon them. As she lay there motionless, her mind on the verge of all out abandonment through a fear, she felt a wisp of cool night air on her cheek tainted with a foul smell like that of a saturated dog. She was but inches below the window and she suddenly realised in horror that, although covered by a curtain, the window was still open and It was on the other side…

The 1971 Ford Attack

Before she could react to close the window the curtains lurched inward and parted and from between them a great leathery black hand appeared above her, silhouetted against the ceiling light. Speculatively grasping at Elizabeth it reached further in followed by an immense, strong arm tattered with fur. Once, twice it snagged her and each time she struggled free finally rolling off the couch and shuffling desperately away. The three men lunged forward toward their two rifles and their flashlights racing out on to the porch slamming the door behind them. The creature it seemed had started to flee but the men zeroed in on a great shape in the darkness and fired. The flashlights cast dim beams across the location but they could see nothing but broken branches and the endless black depths of the silent woods.

Inching forward into the thicket two of the men scanned along the hot barrels of their prone weapons for any signs of movement, ready again to let loose upon their assailant. Bobby was armed only with a flashlight but was the first to respond when he heard the screams of the women and freshly roused children back at the house. He raced back toward the porch, his heart rocking inside his chest and in his haste became suddenly initially confused as he found his path blocked by something large and so dark it simply appeared as if the night had suddenly taken on a physical form of its own. Dropping the flashlight he peered upward into what he would later describe as two red eyes the size of silver dollars. The creature wrapped its arms around his shoulders and for a moment he found himself lifted off the ground at the mercy of this towering form. Struggling and kicking for his life he was eventually flung free as a cacophony of gunshots rang out into the night and the creature screamed out in pain emitting a roar that many would claim to hear from within the swamps on dark cold nights around Fouke as the creature stalked the Creek. Bobby raced toward the door of the house simply shattering his way through the door without even attempting to open it.

Dazed and delirious he lay motionless on the floor as his wife tended to him as best she could whilst the others emptied their rifles into the darkness as if every shadow harboured the monster. Whilst they would swear they hit the creature several times no trace of blood or a carcass were found by the investigating authorities, although it is reported that they found deep scratches in the sill of the window through which it had reached for Elizabeth.

Bobby would later recover from his ordeal in St Michaels Hospital in Texacarna suffering no more than scratches and splinters from his dramatic crash through the wood and glass front door. As with most encounters with the Fouke Monster, the creature had come off worse yet it left little evidence behind other than witnesses who were nothing more than shaken up. Indeed the creature was never actually blamed for a human death or even injury despite it being portrayed as the dangerous villain of the piece in both the film and in local lore. The Fouke Monster death toll it is said includes a few farm animals and a domestic cat that had been scared to death by the mere presence of the Cryptid.

If you were to watch the movie The Legend of Boggy Creek, in the cool light of a winter Sunday morning you may feel as I did after having watched it over and over again. The hick hunters perhaps come across no better than their local monster. In fact, by the end I am always glad that the creature, be it a real animal or some sort of hoax, managed to escape the heat packing locals and I began to sympathise with America’s seeming distrust of its own Deep South seen through movies such as Deliverance and Southern Comfort. The fact is that the creature has every reason to hide from the ‘t’bacca chewin’ moonshiners in this film whose apparent intolerance and eagerness to hunt everything with a lynch mob mentality seen in a particular posse-esque sequence made me feel that, as wonderfully eerie and sumptuously atmospheric as the movie is, it is not the presence of an scarcely seen ape-man that unsettles me, more the people in it.

Maybe I am being unfair to a town that now has a population closer to a thousand and has developed seemingly beyond the hairy chinned hick town so sleepily portrayed in a forty year old film. Maybe Fouke is the little heavenly slice of small town Americana that the film’s director and Fouke local Charles B. Pierce, was looking to show off.

Pierce died in 2010 not quite living long enough to wish his creature feature a happy 40th birthday. But he did enjoy a varied but busy career in the TV and movie industry which included a starring role in a sequel to Boggy Creek entitled The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek which he once again directed. A 2011 movie simply entitled Boggy Creek was released on DVD just in time for the 40th anniversary but, despite its claim to be a remake of the original, it is instead a straight forward horror movie which sees the creature simply go ‘ape-shit’ and kill every screaming teenager it gets it’s great big hands on, nostalgically doing its best to reduce the human population of Fouke back to 1972 levels when times were more like the sleepy woven visions of Pierce’s original.

Yep, Fouke is a right pleasant place to live… unless you’re a ten foot hairy fella… then we’ll just shoot ya!

Saturday, 11 August 2012

Werewolves: A talk by yours truly!

Fouke Lore: The Legend of Boggy Creek 40 Years On!

The Bloop: Mystery Song of the Sea