Boggy Creek 2: The
Legend Continues aka The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek part II
You know who is one of
the most famous of all the worlds monsters, but is hardly ever in any movies?
Bigfoot. Sure he had a starring role in Harry and the Hendersons (also in its
spin off tv series, which I personally see as little more than an ALF rip-off),
but apart from that every movie he features in seems to be as low budget as a
blurry film of a giant ape like creature taken in the American wilds. It makes
me wonder if there’s a reason why Bigfoot is one of Hollywood’s most elusive
creatures, or do people just really not want to see him?
Cryptozoology professor
Dr Brant Lockhart (Charles B. Pierce), who with a name like that could have
become a 80s soap opera oil tycoon, takes a pair of students, Tim (Chuck Pierce
jr) and Tanya (Serene Hedin) and one of the students friends, Leslie (Cindy
Butler) on a trip into the Arkansas swamps to look for a Bigfoot-like creature
that has been seen by several local residents. After meeting with some
unwelcoming locals, the quartet go to camp in Boggy Creek. Here they seek out
a hillbilly called Old Man Crenshaw (Jimmy Clem) who is just as evasive on the
subject as the townsfolk, but allows the group to stay the night when a storm
closes in. During the storm Old Man Crenshaw asks Lockhart to help tend to an
animal which he’s captured. When Lockhart looks he realises it’s an adolescent
Bigfoot, whose capture causes the adult Bigfoot to attack the cabin. Will
everyone survive the night? Will anyone get any footage of the creatures on
film that isn’t from a distance so great that nothing clear can be seen anyway, so could easily just be a man in a Chewbacca costume?
Will Bigfoot finally discover that there are several sires on the internet that
sell shoes up to a size 20, meaning that just maybe it wont struggle to find
comfortable footwear any longer?
Like Troll 2 (see here) this movie has a strangely misleading title. Boggy Creek 2 is actually
the THIRD movie in the Boggy Creek series. Which does bring up my earlier line
of thought, if this is the third movie, then why haven’t I heard of the first
two? Is there really a shady underground of bigfoot movies that exist only for
those willing to traipse through the Arkansas swamps to find a lost Blockbuster
Video, that is still running unaware either of the creation of the DVD or that
Blockbuster went under?
The fact that The
Legend of Boggy Creek and more importantly it’s first sequel Return to Boggy
Creek both seem to be overlooked/forgotten/ignored does give a lot of backing
to my theory that a good portion of the IMDB Bottom 100 list is only on there
because of the notoriety they’ve gained by featuring on Mystery Science Theatre
3000. Return to Boggy Creek has at the time of writing an equally low rating
(2.2), but it doesn’t appear on the same list. I won’t even pretend to
understand the algorithms as to how the list is constructed (I don’t even
understand how Colin put together our list), all I know is that films have to
have at least 1500 votes to qualify. This does make me wonder what films we’re
missing out on due to them being so unheard of.
But what about the
movie itself? Well taking inspiration from the real life Bigfoot, the
filmmakers decided that being elusive was an important aspect this movie needed
to include. Unfortunately the things they decided to make the most elusive were
any sight of a gripping plot or a convincing monster. This movie’s most
entertaining scene is when the group run across a rabid dog that attacks them
forcing them into an abandoned house. I’m not saying that it’s a good scene,
but Tim opening a closet to find something to cover a hole in the floor only to
find the rabid dog inside (due to the closet wall being missing) did make me
laugh whilst imagining this to be the episode of Scooby Doo where Scooby gets
scratched on the nose by a rabid bat…
The Bigfoot costumes
look as though they were monkey costumes left over from previous Halloween
parties, and patched up with excess hair from Jimmy Clem’s chest and beard (the
man is so hairy he could have laid on the floor of his cabin whilst Bigfoot
attacked and disguised himself as a bear skin rug). I’ve seen so many films
with disappointing monsters in them, but if the cabin door was smashed in by
Sal Minella from The Muppets it would have been scarier.
The acting in most of
the movies by this point really isn’t worth mentioning most of the time
anymore, as there usually is very little to none present. However I have to say
that it would have been nice if maybe Chuck Pierce Jr. had at least attended
the acting class where he was supposed to learn to act like someone who knows
how to put a bloody shirt on. Still at least Charles Pierce (who not only
acted, but directed, produced and wrote this movie too. Reports that he did the
catering are unconfirmed) didn’t try to get his son to sing like our last
father/son duo in Eegah! (see here), so there is that to be thankful for.
Boggy Creek 2 really
is one of the dullest movies we’ve had to endure. I think it has answered my
earlier questioning about a lack of Bigfoot movies though. Movies about
creatures who shy away from humans and never show signs of aggression end up
being movies about people going camping and the only times I want to watch
films like that are when they involve psychopaths in hockey masks, snotty nosed
students being terrorised by a ghost witch or Barbara Windsor’s bra flying into
Kenneth William’s face…
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