The Fouke Monster
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on June 4th, 2006
The Texarkana Gazette listed the Fouke Monster as one of the Top 100 things to love about Texarkana and the surrounding region.
To the Southeast of Texarkana, the little town of Fouke, Ark. is home to a very big legend, the Legend of the Boggy Creek Monster, aka the Fouke Monster.
People who claim to have seen it describe the creature as being close to 7 feet tall, with red eyes, black hair all over its body and a terrible stench that falls somewhere between that of a spewing skunk and a wet dog.
Though there were reported sightings as early as the 1940s, the legend of the Fouke Monster reached its heyday in the early 1970s.
A movie was shot about the monster in 1972 called “The Legend of Boggy Creek.” It spawned a sequel.
Regardless of what a person does or does not believe, the legend of the Fouke Monster has survived for more than 30 years. Is it because there is a grain of truth in the story?
There are memoirs of the monster all over the small town, from the hairy beast painted on the side wall of the “Monster Mart” to “the legend lives” T-shirts for sale inside. Or is it the monster silhouette that provides interested tourists the opportunity to stick their face in the hole and become, for a minute, the monster of Fouke?
The Legend of Boggy Creek was very influential on me as a teenager. It was one of my early influences that propelled my interest in Bigfoot. I have found this to be true for many people who have an interest in the subject, as well as for many of the people involved with Bigfoot research today.
Loren mentioned this in his book Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America.
What about the readers of Cryptomundo? Have you seen the Legend of Boggy Creek? Did it have an effect on you?
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
I haven’t seen any of them.
They are impossible to find and never on TV. 🙁
The Boggy Creek films are available on Amazon.com. As a matter of fact, click on either of the images of the DVD covers, and it will take you to Amazon where you can order the film.
hi craig woolheater good afternoon its wonderful to see that people of fouke,arkansas are still thinking about the fouke monster. maybe this article will help you all at tbrc get more people from fouke & other parts of arkansas forests etc to report sightings & footprints to the tbrc only time will tell and be very patient. i have all 3 boggy creek movies on vhs. they wonderful movies. i hope charles pierce or some other movie director does a new sequel to boggy creek. please keep me informed ok. by the way how can i contact charles pierce. thanks bill 🙂
As a kid in the 70’s I caught ‘Legend of Boggy Creek’ on Saturday afternoon TV and was immediately marked for life. Thanks to ‘Boggy Creek’ I will forever view wooded areas with a measure of dread. As far as Bigfoot docudramas go, ‘Boggy Creek’ is one of the best, despite its limitations. Despite the certain liberties the filmmaker took with the true accounts from eyewitnesses, the end result more than makes up for it in technique, mood and aesthetic.
Who could forget such thrilling moments as the cat being scared to death, Willie E. Smith unloading some buckshot off his front porch after his hound dawg is booted back from the woods, miscellanious re-enactments of first hand encounters, and best of all the surprisingly creepy ‘Ford Cabin’ sequence. Long, slow tracking shots of the swampy hollows and marshes punctuated by some interesting folk music (“Hey Travis Crabtree, wait a minute for me…”) all lend an air of authenticity to the proceedings.
Hen’s Tooth Video released a pan-and-scan DVD a few years back, which while not perfect is to date the best version available. I’m hoping someone will locate the original master and give us the widescreen version with extras at some point, but I doubt it’ll be anytime soon.
“I was only a boy when I heard him scream… it scared me then and it scares me now.” Indeed! 🙂
The first film I saw was the Abominable Snowman with Peter Cushing, black and white(showing my age here). I’ve just got a DVD of it…and it’s still pretty good. I presume Tom Friend in it is meant to be Tom Slick.
slightly off topic here ..I know what a wet dog smells like but what does a spewing skunk smell like? (it’s in the description of the bigfoot)
Think it is the smell of skunk as skunk is depositing it on some hapless creature that must then endure tomato baths,
If wrong I am happy to learn something today.
on boggey creek..good movie scared the hell out of all of us back in the day..
Good morning bigfoot folks…
Netflix has the original and sequel on DVD, Clawed….the Legend of Sasquatch was available a few weeks ago…..somewhere around here is ole bub’s beadyeyed face grinning in the Fouke monster silhouette…even bought a twinkie or two at the Monster mart…
seeing is believing…
ole bub and the dawgs
So, I do remember seeing the Legend of Boggy Creek as a kid (and in fact just rented it on Netflix about 2 weeks ago), but I’ve never seen the sequel.
Is it more of the documentary style dramatizations or what? Anybody here seen the sequel?
The sequels are not as good, and not done as a documentary. You do get to see the famous “Bigfoot Radar” in one. It is just hard to beat the grittiness of the first.
Oh, Tabitca…the skunk smell, you don’t want to experience. I had a beagle get sprayed one time rabbit hunting. *cough!* *Gag*.. took weeks to get rid of the smell.
Why does everyone forget about this one?
This was my favorite one! 😉
i got my copy on ebay, and it’s definitly the main reason i became interested in cryptozoology as a child, esp since i lived in an area surrounded on 3 sides by thick woods. my sister and i would stay up late in the 70’s to watch bigfoot documentaries on long hot summer nights and wish that we’d see one in our own back yard someday.
while the movie is now quite chuckle-worthy with it’s hokey-factor, it’s still a very monumental piece of film IMO.
Re: Boggy Creek 2, here’s a succinct, pitch perfect review I found by Malcolm Brass “Movie Fan” (Seattle, WA USA) on amazon.com that sums things up nicely:
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“Boggy Creek 2, or Put a Shirt on that Boy!”
Review Date: September 23, 2005
You can’t blame Charles Pierce for wanting to go back to that Boggy Creek well again after the first movie, but this time he pulls up a bucket full of fetid water. This movie is all sorts of wrong! From casting himself in the role of “Doc” to putting his own son in a large supporting role, sans shirt for a majority of the running time, Pierce misfires on almost every level. The flashback stories almost brought back the flavor of the original Boggy Creek (the outhouse scene alone is a hoot), but then he offsets that with the hilarious “mad dog!” scene. By the time Old Man Crenshaw shows up, the wheels totally fly off this shaky cart and promptly bursts into flames! Being a bigfoot sub-genre fanatic, I feel justified buying this title, but do not see spinning the DVD as often as the far superior The Legend of Boggy Creek. Where’s Travis Crabtree when you really need him?!
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And then there’s the OTHER sequel:
Return to Boggy Creek
1977
Directed by Tom Moore
Charles Pierce wasn’t affiliated with this one, which is both good and bad. Basically, RTBC is standard G-Rated kiddie fare not unlike the Disney stuff of the same era, though with a substantially lower budget. Featuring Dawn Wells (Gilligan’s Island) and Dana Plato (Diff’rent Strokes) and something called ‘catfish koolaid’. The tone of this movie is inconsistent with the previous Boggy Creek outings, so if you’re hoping for more of the stuff that made you a fan in the first place, yer better off looking elsewhere. Ding dang dumb! ;p
If you were 13 or under and saw this movie in the 70s and lived in a rural area – especially in the South – you can blame LOBC for numerous nightmares. Sure it’s low budget and a bit dated, but it still has a spooky atmosphere, and probably the only G rated movie that can give you the willies.
Where to start with this one…the scene with the kitten that was “scared to death?” The deer hunting kid turning and seeing the Monster lurking a few feet away? The trailer house slumber party interrupted by the Fouke Monster? The bathroom scene with the Monster knocking off the window screen and scaring the guy on the toilet? Speaking of which, my late grandfather always wondered how that scared guy got his pants pulled up so fast. My grandfather also knew people that lived in Fouke, making this movie even more real for me.
Look for a segment on the Fouke Monster in the forthcoming documentary, “Southern Fried Bigfoot.” Author Mitchel Whitington talks about what it was like to grow up in the shadow of this living legend, while Carl Finch, founder of the Grammy award-winning band Brave Combo, recounts his encounter on Highway 71 on a dark night in 1967.
Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues was lampooned on Sci Fi’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 several years ago (show #1006).
hey southernfriedbigfoot wow great reply posted above about the fouke monster. wow realy there is a new documentary about fouke monster comeing out soon in near future is it going to be on dvd. this is wonderful news please keep us definetly updated ok. thanks bill 🙂
Count me among the group that was scared witless by this film.
Good Times..
I also caught the crypto bug in part to the orig. movie. It is a classic I wish some of the new ones out and coming out could capture the magic of the first Boggy Creek.
Oddly enough, the movie “Baby” enspired me more than anything. I loved the idea of a living dinosaur like Mokele-mbembe deep in the jungles of Africa! I saw Boggy Creek, but never really liked it. The weird folk-music creeped me out. It became a good drinking game at parties in college. Oh well, to each his own right?
The Legend of Boggy Creek I actally saw in the theatre and it scared the tar out of me, as well as entrenching me into the lore of bigfoot, sasquatch, etc.
It did make me leery of going out into the backwoods:) Actually I live in Iowa, so I think I am fairly safe…not too many sightings of the big guy in my corner of the world…though in the 60’s-70’s there were rumors persisting nearby for a span of time about a “Bird Man” that supposedly walked the woods in our area. It was bipedal and its call was like the screeching of a large bird. I don’t have much in the way of facts on it, just stories passed around by friends and family.
Really enjoyed the movie. I seen it several times when it came out in the 70’s. Would love to see a second movie, current with these years. Been to Fouke, Ark., it didn’t look like it has changed much since the movie. Great Place!