Me, Elvis, and the Monster of Boggy Creek!

One chilly October night in 1973, I found myself in an Arkansas swamp with the King of Rock & Roll and the legendary Fouke Monster!

Yesterday morning I sat down and watched The Legend of Boggy Creek. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen it and, since it’s Halloween season, I thought I’d rummage through my DVD collection of horror flicks and dig it out. I’ve been focusing on a lot of haunted house movies this year — the original 1963 The Haunting, 1973’s The Legend of Hell House (scripted by Richard Matheson from his novel, Hell House), and The Conjuring (I know how some you folks feel about the Warrens and their “true” cases of ghost-hunting and exorcism, but you have to admit that was a danged scary movie!). So, I thought it would be a nice change of pace returning to a favorite movie from my younger days. One that I actually saw in the movie theater. One that I have a very interesting and nostalgic history with.

If you haven’t had the privilege of experiencing the low-budget marvel that is The Legend of Boggy Creek, here’s a little information. The movie was directed by producer/director Charles B. Pierce on a shoestring budget of $160,000 (he eventually directed The Town that Dreaded Sundown and one of my favorite low-budget westerns, Winter Hawk starring Dawn “Mary Ann” Wells). The film plays out as a true-life docudrama about the Fouke Monster, a Bigfoot-type creature that has stalked the forests and swamps around Fouke, Arkansas since the 1940s. The film mixes staged interviews with local residents who claim to have encountered the creature, along with some genuinely unnerving reenactments of Fouke Monster encounters. It’s cheaply filmed and contains a couple of goofy songs in the middle (one about the lonely plight of the Monster and another about Travis Crabtree, a teenage boy who fishes and hunts along Boggy Creek). But it has a certain creepy “found footage” atmosphere about it that draws you into the story and makes you wonder about what might be roaming through the woods out back of your house.

I was thirteen years old when I first saw The Legend of Boggy Creek. I was a dyed-in-the-wool monster lover at that age and totally into UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, and, especially, Bigfoot. It was a chilly Friday night in October of 1973 when my cousins Rickey and Jeff called, wanting to know if I wanted to join them for a movie and then sleep over at their house afterward. Nashville’s Plaza Cinema on Charlotte Pike was featuring a return showing of Boggy Creek (we had missed it during its premiere in the summer of 1972). Of course, I jumped at the chance. Due to my mother’s great love for horror movies around that time, she had already taken me to some scary flicks like Frogs, House of Dark Shadows, and one of my all-time personal favorites, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death. So, going to see a movie about a real Bigfoot that dwelled in the swamp of a Southern state right next door to mine… well, that was a no-brainer. Around five-thirty that evening, my Uncle Zollie picked me up and Rickey, Jeff, and I rode in the back seat to Nashville.

The film was everything I hoped it was (at thirteen, I wasn’t much of a scathing critic as far as horror movies were concerned) and there were several times during the viewing when we screamed like frightened little girls, spilled our soft drinks, or jumped so violently that we were showered with our own buttered popcorn. Afterward, we fled the theater into the Tennessee night, laughing and discussing our favorite scenes. But our jaunt to Nashville didn’t end there. Soon, we were at Krystals, dining on those little square hamburgers in their individual cardboard boxes. Now, back in 1973, eating out wasn’t the major expense that it is now (at least not in current monetary terms). You could feed a whole family on those little hamburgers (everyone had to devour at least three or more), along with fries and drinks, for five or six bucks. One thing you need to know about those little Krystal hamburgers with their slathering of mustard, pickles, and generous heaping of grilled onions (and they’re exactly the same today as they were in the early 70s) — they don’t call them “gut-bombs” for nothing.

After that Uncle Zollie took Rickey to the now defunct Big K (the 70s Southern version of Walmart), where my cousin bought his first stereo. I can’t recall what brand it was, but it was the standard stereo of that time with two speakers and a combination AM/FM radio, turntable, and 8-Track tape player. After choosing his stereo, he perused Big K’s music section until he picked out two albums. They were Three Dog Night’s Cyan and Elvis Presley’s Burning Love and Hits From His Movies, Volume 2. Of course, he got them in 8-Track format because that’s what everyone preferred at the time. You could let the tape play over and over again on a continuous cycling loop (fade out, ca-click, fade in) and car 8-Track players were just becoming popular, so you could use the bulky cartridges for both home and car use.

My cousins lived in the rural town of White Bluff, thirty-one miles from Nashville, so by the time we got back to their house it was ten-thirty or later. Of course, Rickey had to set up his stereo and we hung out and listened to Three Dog Night first. We must have listened to “Shambala” two dozen times! Then, we put on the Elvis album and rocked to “Burning Love”. Soon, the late hours overcame my cousins and they fell asleep on the sectional in the living room. Being someone who found it virtually impossible to sleep anywhere but my own bed at home, I lay restlessly in an armchair across the room, while Burning Love and Hits From His Movies, Volume 2 played over and over and over again. I knew absolutely nothing about 8-track players at that time, so I had no idea how to turn it off. Every time I was on the verge of snoozing off, that pulsing bass beat would start up once again with Elvis belting out “Lord Almighty, feel my temperature rising!” and “I’m just a hunka, hunka burning love!”

Eventually, I feel asleep and, suffering from a bad case of indigestion from the five Krystal gut-bombs I’d ingested, found myself in the midst of a disturbing and disjointed nightmare. I was lost in the swampy backwoods near Fouke, Arkansas, stumbling blindly through the dark wilderness. With me was Elvis in one of his karate-style jumpsuits with a long scarf wrapped around his throat. He was toting a bag of Krystal hamburgers in one hand and a microphone in the other. As we made our way through the tangle of bramble and waterlogged cypress, we could hear the creature letting loose with that bellowing hoarse scream of his. Eventually, we could see the big hairy fella loping through the trees toward us. I expected the King to turn and face the Bigfoot with a roundhouse Kung Fu kick, but he was running as fast and hard as I was.

Before I knew what was to become of us, the dream ended and I awoke, sore and stiff, and feeling the nasty aftereffects of last night’s supper. Hastily I fled to the bathroom, feeling like I was on the verge of the green apple splatters (and if you don’t know what that is, give it a Google.)

So, all in all, my Legend of Boggy Creek evening was a memorable one (at least for a thirteen-year-old). It’s funny how an old movie or a certain song can bring back memories from fifty years ago. For those of you who haven’t watched The Legend of Boggy Creek, I recommend that you give it a try. If you do, however, watch the new remastered version and not the cheap grainy one I’ve had on my DVD shelf for several years. Even then, don’t expect stunning cinematography and Academy Awards-caliber acting. It was just some ol’ country folks making a little movie about a local cryptid, but it does have its share of creepy atmosphere and unexpected jump-scares.