I saw the little creature!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 10th 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.
Additional Links:
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