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Sunday, December 17, 2017

1006-Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues...


Film Year:  1985
Genre:  Adventure, Horror
Director:  Charles B. Pierce
Starring:  Charles B. Pierce, Cindy Butler, Chuck Pierce Jr., Serene Hedin, Jimmy Clem, James Faubus Griffith
MST Season:  10

The Movie

Legend tells of a mysterious incident that once happened.  It seems at some point in the 70’s, someone had an encounter with something so heinous they never recovered.  That person paid to see Return to Boggy Creek, a movie that appeared one day and was never heard from again.  Supposedly the film starred Gilligan’s Island’s Dawn Wells and Diff'rent Strokes’ Dana Plato, but we can’t attest to that because nobody has ever dared to journey through the film again to make sure.

As such, Charles B. Pierce, director of the original Legend of Boggy Creek, felt no guilt when he claimed his own Boggy Creek II is the real sequel to his classic.  And when I call Legend of Boggy Creek a “classic” I mean it in relation to the use of the term in comparison to how Pierce felt about it.  Kind of like when you own a really old car that breaks down a lot, but you justify keeping it because “It’s a classic.”

I have to admit though that if the original Boggy Creek is truly a “classic,” I’d probably be the wrong person to ask.  I’ve only seen bits and pieces of it, which made it feel like a string of the flashback sequences in this sequel only featuring worse acting.  I’m not exactly pushing myself to watch the rest.  I have no idea if Boggy Creek II will scratch the sequel itch any fan of the original might have, though it does feel like it shares some DNA with it, though at the same time trying to tell a more beginning to end narrative.

Boggy Creek II’s story is of a college professor (played by Pierce himself) taking a trio of students (one of which is played by Pierce’s son Chuck) out into the woods to seek evidence of the Fouke Monster (AKA a more specific legend of Bigfoot that’s ENTIRELY DIFFERENT even though they’re the same thing).  They listen to random tales of the legend before finding themselves trapped in their own story of coming face to face with the creature.  Is the beast real?  Or is it just a hairy guy named Crenshaw?

Actors are largely just there to give looks of “uh-oh” and “wow!”  Some of them give this small exorcise of acting everything they can and others botch it completely.  While the low-pay non-actors don’t do the film much of any favors, the low budget actually works in the film’s favor, giving it a rougher, docudrama feel.  The effects for the monster itself look fairly good, though most of that might be attributed to that it’s mostly seen at a distance or in the dark.

The movie is very casual, almost to a fault.  The pacing grows slow, which features our heroes sitting around doing very little for long periods of time, and the admittedly admirable restraint of the creature itself fails to generate any sort of adrenaline to the picture.  We are forced to look to the flashbacks for our intrigue for the first hour or so, small short stories about the creature that have more going on than our main storyline.  But none of them really stand on their own two legs as very interesting.  Occasionally there will be a laugh in the lapse in logic, such as a story that is told that ends with the main character never regaining consciousness and never being able to tell anyone what happened to him, leaving to viewer to wonder how Pierce’s professor character knows the story and it’s relation to the Boggy Creek beast at all.  And the less said about the outhouse flashback the better.

Boggy Creek II is a painless watch, but is not a film that’s worth the time it takes to watch it.  There is nothing that generates any real disdain to fault it as an awful movie though.


The Episode

The movie is southern fried and Mike and the bots seem to be enjoying their sumptuous smorgasbord of a feast.  There are lots of hillbillies and rednecks around these parts, which gives the trio a natural direction to go in for their jokes.  If one likes variety and sometimes a less obvious curve ball of a riff, Boggy Creek II isn’t the episode for you.  To an extent it’s a “safe” episode, but luckily it’s a funny one.  What it lacks in creativity it makes up by doing its one type of joke pretty well.

Host segments help get the juices flowing, with the flashback segment being my favorite.  For the most part they keep to spoofing the movie, like Pearl making Bobo a “legend,” Crow playing Crenshaw, and Servo starting a whittling business.  The only segments that don’t really reference the film in much of any way are the openings which play with Boy Scouts vs. Girl Scouts and Pearl trying to take over the world with the electricity from a potato.  At any rate, I don’t really feel there is a bad one in the bunch.

Those who aren’t really feeling up to hearing much white trash and redneck riffs best skip Boggy Creek II for the time being.  Wait until the mood strikes you just right and you’ll laugh your one-side-buttoned overalls off.  It’s true that the episode doesn’t really soar due to its simplicity, but one can’t ignore the laughs that are there.

Good


The DVD

Boggy Creek II was released by Rhino Home Video on their Volume 5 set.  Video and audio were terrific, while the only extra is an intro by Mike, who recalls the confusion of it being called “Part Two” while being the third film, and even gives props to the effectiveness of the monster (and Crenshaw).

Shout Factory re-released the episode in their own Volume 5.  Mike's intro was retained.

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