1006 - Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues

 I saw the little creature!

In Search Of...

I’ve said before that Season 9 of MST3K isn’t my favorite, that it feels like the Best Brains going through the motions of making the show. But looking back on it, it has some great episodes. In fact, I’d say it has better episodes than Season 10. Then, looking back on that thought, I realize I’m just holding both to the show’s, and Season 8’s, high standard. So, I set myself up for disappointment by being so overly critical and expecting the show to adhere to my expectations. But when those unrealistic standards are met? Then you get why I’ve seen Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues so many times that I can recite most of the jokes like I’m singing an favorite old song.

The movie is a sequel to The Legend of Boggy Creek, a faux-docudrama directed by local advertising agent Charles B. Pierce about the sightings of the “Fouke Monster”, a Bigfoot-like creature supposedly seen around Fouke County and Boggy Creek in the early 70s, using dramatic reenactments and interviews with locals who claimed to have seen the creature. The first film was a smash hit, grossing $20 million on a $160,000 budget. This movie (which, as Mike points out in the DVD intro, is in fact the third Boggy Creek flick) is a more traditional monster film, following “Doc” Lockhart (Pierce), a professor of anthropology at the U of Arkansas as he searches for the mysterious creature with three students: cute coed Tanya, her friend Leslie, and the rail-thin, eternally-shirtless, totally-not-his-son Tim (played by Chuck Pierce Jr.) They walk around the swamps of southern Arkansas, interact with locals, and Doc flashbacks to melodramatic reenactments of reported sightings and encounters with the creature. Eventually they have a brief encounter with the creature, and eventually they end up at the upriver shack of Crenshaw, a giant heap of a man who is probably the most authentic thing about this movie. 

This reminds me way, way too much of many of my family reunions.

 

This is a monster movie, made in the 80s, shot in the south, with amateur acting actual locals, condescending characters, dumb characters, cute characters, weird characters, terrifying characters, toilet humor, and Bigfoot. It evokes pain, bemusement, disgust, and laughter. In other words, the only thing missing to make it more perfect for MST3K is a musical number. It’s dumb and goofy, without being too painful or repulsive, relatively quick paced, and has a guy in a monster suit. All this results in one of my favorite MST3K episodes. They get to make Southern jokes, like when a character is buying something at the store and Servo asks if they want it on their Klan account. There’s jokes about the monster, ranging from quoting Dr. Zaius when they see it to wondering if it’s Slash, Rob Zombie, or Cher when shown in silhouette. Hell, about an hour in, as the two college coeds get the jeep stuck in the mud, you’ve got Crow saying, “hey, they’re using their jeep to do things. I thought you just drove them to Starbuck’s,” Servo saying, “Checking on the land they bought from the Clintons,” back to Crow with, “Sunday! We turn a giant mud pit into a giant mud pit.” Three vastly different jokes from one single scene. And that’s just with the jeep stuck in the mud. They get in running gags at the eternally shirtless and skinny Tim, Charles B. Pierce’s superior attitude, the coed girls, the many flashbacks, and especially once Crenshaw shows up. The movie makes Mike and the Bots laugh in derision at the monster, howl in pain at the toilet humor, and sing along as the movie’s soundtrack switches to the refrain from, “Wings of a Dove.” They have just about every reaction to the movie that I love to see from them.

Pictured: pure disgust.

That investment in the movie carries over into the host segments. They parody the flashback as the three of them make progressively more inaccurate and Vaseline-lensed  flashbacks to a petty fight between Crow and Tom seconds before, and in the best segment, Pearl decides to use Bobo to make a tourist trap-friendly local legend, complete with Hank Brain Guy Jr. singing a catching theme song for him.

 

To me, there are only two downsides to this episode: the five minute segment when the girls try to use the Jeep to leave the swamp, where the riffs dip ever so slightly; and that the movie doesn’t have anything singularly memorable or especially painful or fun to make it a legendary episode. There’s no character as memorably painful as Mr. B. Natural or anything as catchy as “I Sin Whenever I Sing.” But it speaks to this one’s quality that I’m comparing it to classic episodes like that.

Bottom line, this is a nigh-perfect episode and a hilarious one I feel not enough people remember. If you haven’t seen this one or haven’t seen it in a while, give it a shot of southern hospitality and check it out.

Favorite Moments by Auritone

Episode in a Riff:

“Later, that dull story….” -Mike

Random Asides

-The Legend of Boggy Creek was a big hit, the 10^th highest grossing movie of 1972, earning $20 million with a budgets of $160,000. #9 was Fritz the Cat. #1 was The Godfather. Not bad for first time director Charles B. Pierce. That movie was featured on Monstervision. He calls it, “the best movie in the history of Texarkana”.

-Best quotes from Bill Corbett on his episode guide entry to this one: “To Mr. Pierce: Bite every single inch of me! And do it now, and then do it again!”

-also according to Corbett, they severely edited the outhouse attack scene down. I do not have the courage to see it unedited.

-Wait, if they can cut off the world’s power, why don’t they just ransom it? why don’t they just ransom the power back to the world?! And how is the monkey talking, huh?

-They have a Northerner’s old fashioned hatred of the South.

-when going out into the wet, dirty, chigger and mosquito infested swamp, always wear the shortest shorts possible

-Some of the jokes show their age: Y2K survivalists, Natalie Imbruglia, AOL…ah, the late 90s.

-“Hey Crow, permit me to ask what may be a stupid question. Why are you, yet again, setting fire to the bridge?”

-Of the accents they love to do for riffs, I think Southern is in the top 5.

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315 - Teenage Cave Man

It is the law!

Robert Vaughn, center, the titular teenage cave man, was 26 at the time.

 

This one has been stuck in my mind for years. Not that I’ve seen the episode or even the original movie before. But that seeing the title and reading the synopsis in the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide had my curiosity piqued. How bad could this movie be? How good would the episode from it be?  I got the answer in the introductory host segment, as Joel and the Bots watch the rain, bored, not wanting to do. This is a rainy day MST3K. And actually, for when I watched it, it’s what I needed.

But I’ll get to that later. What’s the movie about? It’s a Roger Corman production, so made on a shoe-string budget, was probably shot in about half a week, and probably made more that its budget back. It follows teenage cave man Robert Vaught (none of the characters have names. So we’ll go with actors here) who is going through the usual teenage problems. He’s asserting his independence while trying to follow the teachings of his father Leslie Bradley. He’s rebelling against the strict rules of his tribe, forbidden from exploring their tiny valley, and facing retribution from  the fearful and bullying Frank De Kova. He’s even met a nice girl, Darah Marshall that he’s trying to impress. His biggest problem, though? The movie is a mess, both boring and creative, pretentious and stupid. You’ve got a young, intelligent caveman questioning the superstitious rules of his tribe done with endless conversations about “the law” and “it’s forbidden.” 75% of the conversations go like this: “It is forbidden!” “Why?” “The law!” “But why, the law?” It’s got cleanly shaven and bathed twenty and thirty year olds pretending to be teenage cave men next to cheap men-in-suit dinosaurs and stock footage of lizards with fins pretending to be dinosaurs from another movie featured on MST. It’s got things to say said poorly and jumbled up with a cheap budget. It’s got a lot of things that are cheesy about it, but also things that are boring and just plain bad, and not in the entertaining or really painful way.

In other words, it’s actually a challenge to make an episode out of. Well, not quite a challenge, but a challenge to make a great episode out of. And Joel and the Bots do a serviceable, but not superb, job. There are some great uses of the setting like “I just invented another torch!” from Servo or, when seeing young Robert being tried for his crimes of curiosity, Crow chirps, “It’s like Inherit the Wind, only backwards.”, but overall they mostly feel bored by this one. It’s shown in the host segments as well, where only two focus on the movie, and even then they’re more interested by the ideas put forth by it than by the actual content of the movie itself. It’s a fine distinction but a noticeable one. The riffs aren’t bad, but they’re not as good as if they were more engaged with the movie, be it by hating it, being disgusted by it, or being tortured by it. They make some choice zingers, but it’s not a laugh-a-minute time in the caves.

The shorts are a different matter. The first, Aquatic Wizards, is a showcase about waterskiing sports and stunts. It’s mindless 50s filler, and some of the stunts are cool. The second short, though, its Catching Trouble, is about  Ross Allen, a naturalist catches wild animals for zoos in the most inhumane and PETA-panic-attack-inducing manner possible. Want some rattle snakes? Set fire to the brush to drive them out! Want some baby bears? Just snatch them up and ignore their ear piercing and heart rending screams! Look, I’m not gonna fool myself into thinking even the best zoos in the world (like the world-class one in Fort Worth; visit today!) are close approximations for life in the wild for these animals, nor that the animals got there under the best conditions. But goddamn, is this stuff hard to watch. Needless to say, Joel and the Bots milk it for all it’s worth. “You’ll never clean away the sin,” and “I’d like to apologize to everyone, everywhere,” are just a few examples. Aquatic Wizards has some good moments,, but its Catching Trouble that makes this episode memorable. But, it doesn’t quite measure up to classic shorts like Mr. B. Natural or A Case of Spring Fever.

Even though this episode ranks merely among the average at best, there’s something about it that touches me. Part of that is because when I watched it. I lost a very close family member a few weeks ago, and the day after, to take my mind off things, I watched this one for the first time. Seeing the episode start w Joel and the Bots in a bad mood, stuck inside on a rainy day, made me feel like they were with me on a bad day of my own. It’s that weird commradery aspect of the show I find so moving. I know I’ve gone on at length about that before, but I needed it and the show brought it. 

...

So, even though this episode isn’t a stand out, though its far from bad, it echoed what I felt at a bad time, and alleviated those depths a little. When the episode began, and the doors closed on the MST3K logo, I got the feeling that things would be okay, even if just for an hour and a half, and I did just relax.

Episode in a Riff:

Joel: “This script is like a telephone directory.”

Crow: “But not as interesting.”

Random Asides:

-In the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, Mary Jo Pehl goes off on Roger Corman, saying it’s a load that he’s regarded as a great director. I’ll mostly agree, though I haven’t seen much of the better of his oeuvre like The Raven or Pit and the Pendulum. But, I’m glad he was around, his passion for filmmaking, or maybe just his passion for the film business, giving people work, keeping the lights on, and giving lots of up and comers a shot.

-God, Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Albert Glasser…. how many MST regulars are involved in this?!

-Stock footage scene from other episodes includes She-Creature and King Dinosaur.

-Gypsy: “What’s ‘poker’?” Joel and the Bots: “Alright, let’s play!”

-Of the Invention Exchange epicacs, the circus peanuts with lukewarm Strawberry Qwik is by far the best/worst of the bunch.

-I love how the camera starts shaking when Frank pulls the knife on Dr. F and things get real. They are also obviously trying not to laugh.  

-The guy barefoot skiing in the Aquatic Wizards short is badass!

-16 minutes in, Joel utters, “When the cat’s away, ha ha,” just a small joke mostly said to himself, but  a moment I love a lot. Not sure why. Maybe it’s just them entertaining themselves instead of trying to entertain us, something for them, showing their relationship, I dunno.

-The framing of the SOL bridge here tells me what’s off about Season 11. S11 is too far off and eye level w the desk. Classic seasons seem to usually be eye level with Joel or mike, looking down a little at the desk. Minor complaints.

-I mainly know Emo Phillips from UHF, where he plays the only person in the world weird enough to make “Weird Al” Yankovic look normal.

- Tom and Crow make a great Felix and Oscar. I’d pay to see them perform The Odd Couple.

-There’s a little bit of early, dumb Gypsy in how she behaves in this one. Weird to see, considering she soon solidifies herself as the most sane and intelligent crew member.

-Man they’re having too much fun torturing Ross in the second host segment. The short and this skit would make a good anti-zoo/PETA argument.

- Servo: “We leave you with this question: if you enjoy Catching Trouble in any way, there’s something wrong with you.” That’s not a question, Tom

                                                              

-Not sure if the short animated intro to the movie works better than stock footage would’ve for the movie’s intro

-With this and episode 402 The Giant Gila Monster, there’s a ton of F-Troop jokes to go around.

-No, that's not a giant dinosaur, that's an armadillo. My limit is lizards with fins taped to their back, and this is several levels past it. No.

-There's a scene where a mysterious creature approaches the cavemen's tribe, and they're not sure what it is. They discuss for a few minutes in fear about what it is and what to do about it. IT’S A GUY RIDING A HORSE YOU GODDAMN MORONS! Eesh, this movie.

-As the movie revealed it's great twist, my first thought was, "Well, at least they did it in a subtle way, without a voice over or some obvious explanation." Five minutes later, just that happens.

According the extra ‘I was a teenage caveman’ the screenwriter got an Oscar nom for man of 1000 faces

funny all the talented, doing well people in this movie. Corman seemed like a strange crossroads for people.

-I must agree with Roger Corman that "Teenage Cave Man" is a worse movie title than "Prehistoric World"


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