"Boggy Creek II"

Review by Giggles (1/8/03)

OVERALL SCORE:8/10

This little gem begins with a long wistful retelling of a legend by Prof. Lockart. This narration, which is dull and sedating, does nothing for the movie to establish it as a horror movie. “The legend continues that nobody knows about.” The story is essentially about the professor and three adult kids that venture into the creek to find a big foot creature, two girls and a shirtless Aryan boy (Pierce’s son). One girl is supposed to be the demure girlie-girl and the other is supposed to be the wild one--- neither are convincing. Peppered throughout the movie are stories recounted by the professor that involve sightings of the creature, and one story that comes straight from the mouth of an eyewitness!

The Bigfoot creature is laboriously described as non-threatening, but whether that is true or not remains a mystery that nobody will ever want to solve. I think that the maker of this film, Pierce part I, was trying to make a horror film and then decided that the horror of this creature was too intense for an audience. After moments of fright, he tries to lighten the film with corny jokes and an awful anecdote about the creature pawing at a man in an outhouse (if you’re intrigued, don’t be--- the creature departs and the man also departs, on the cuff of his blue jeans, looking as though he stuck his foot in baby puke all the way to the shin).

The suspense of the movie is supposed to be achieved through a COMPUTER that basically describes creatures weighing over one hundred pounds in the vicinity of the group’s base camp (on the computer indicated as BAS). The most successful of these attempts at suspense is one where the generator at the camp goes out and all the lights in the trailer switch off. I admit that I wasn’t ready for this, as the green dot approached the BAS quickly. Well, quickly for the painfully obvious 80s home computer.

The finale is forgettable. Some hillbilly they encounter has Boggy’s child locked up and incurs the creature’s wrath. I will not give away the ending, but let’s say that everything falls exactly where it is supposed to and nothing happens unexpectedly.

PLOT GRADE: 3/6

Note: the movie can receive a 6 and still have a lackluster plot. This is a rating system designed for bad movies in relation to other bad movies.

One might think that a sequel to the first Boggy creek movie would have been a bad idea. I haven’t seen the film, but I’ll make an educated assumption based on this movie. To my surprise, my research has led me to discover that this is the third installment to the Boggy creek saga.

The first movie, Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) had a tagline that reads: A True Story. From viewer comments, it is a documentary. Pierce doesn’t star or write in this one but plays the part as the director. This film has a following for Bigfoot lovers, but I’m guessing that the novelty wore off for the next movie.

Return to Boggy Creek (1977) stars Dana Plato and from what I gather, resembles the third movie more than the first, or, reversed, whatever. This film includes squealing teenage girls like its successor and doesn’t attempt to be a documentary. Pierce wasn’t involved in this one, possibly doing other, more important films (he didn’t want to be the guy known just for the hugely successful Bigfoot movie!).

With the movie that Mike and Bots tear up, Pierce returns to star, direct, and write. I think he was capitalizing on the success of the second film and wanted to make sure everyone knew he was still able to do a Boggy movie.

The grain of film looks on par with “Time Chasers,” and for an 80s movie this is the standard grain of the cheesy film. The cinematography is lame; Pierce’s crew doesn’t realize that the camera can do more than just SHOW everything. I think he tries a few complicated overhead shots in a barn (probably duck taped the camera to the rafters) and one time there is a zoom-in of a girl’s face, yet the choice is redundant because nothing she is saying at the moment is of any significance. But, then, I guess that goes for the rest of the dialogue.

CHEESINESS:

(3 outta 4)

This episode has lots of laughs and is worth watching. The jokes do not seem to slow at all during the course of the movie, and Tom has an especially funny interest in seeing the two girls mud-wrestle that goes on just for the right amount of time. There is also a terrible musical score that Tom improvises over, “Well we’re driving down the road, looking for a waffle house, drinking a lot of Wild Turkey!”