Hi, Burl here with a bigfoot picture to review for you!
There are a lot of bigfoot pictures out there of course, and many of them are –
ha ha, how do I put this delicately – not very good! And yet most of them have
their coterie of devoted fans! Ha ha, except this one, Return to Boggy Creek! Absolutely nobody likes this one!
As a bigfoot completest, I knew this was a movie I’d have to
watch sooner or later! I was always kind of dreading it though, for every review
takes care to mention how Return to Boggy
Creek is a) a kiddie movie, and b) a mind-crushingly boring one! Yikes! And
in the bargain, it’s not actually a part of the Boggy Creek series of movies,
even though it shares a location (the swampy “bottoms” of Louisiana) with those
movies, and a star (Miss Dawn Wells) with the work of original Boggy Creek
auteur Charles Pierce! But it's certainly no Boggy Creek II... and the Legend Continues! Then again, what is? Ha ha!
The story places us in the middle of a swamp, where three
kids, Evvie Joe, John Paul and mute little T-Fish, are pulling cod from the
creek like nobody’s business! Turns out it’s part of a weekly competition, and
at the fish market later that day the kids give a hearty ha ha to their nearest
competitor, Bruno! Bruno is played by someone who is at once the worst and the
greatest actor in the movie, and his line readings are one of the picture’s
great pleasures! It makes me sad that all the other reviews of this movie, even
that of my pal Bleeding Skull, characterize Bruno as simply bad! He’s so, so
much more, ha ha!
As in that fine bigfoot picture Creature From Black Lake, there are also two grumpy old coots, who
spend much of the film telling stories, making up the mysterious “catfish
kool-ade” the kids use as bait, or getting bonked on the head! They also spend
many minutes worrying about something called “Big Bay Ti,” who is the local
apeman creature, and who one of the elderlies blames for the death of his son, which is to say Evvie Joe and John Paul’s father! A portly big-city shutterbug who
becomes obsessed with photographing Big Bay Ti convinces Bruno to take him deep
down the Boggy Creek just as a hurricane is about to hit, and for some
mysterious reason the kids, previously characterized as sensible, decide to
follow along!
The rest of the film takes place during the hurricane,
which means a constant wash of double-exposed wind and rain over the image!
Bruno and the shutterbug are clobbered by lightning and falling branches, and then they and the kids
are all saved by Big Bay Ti, who also conveniently provides proof that he
didn’t kill the dad after all! Then there’s a happy ending and Big Bay Ti disappears off
into the swamplands! Ha ha!
Well, there’s plenty of swampy atmosphere here, though not
as authentic as we find in genuine backwoods productions like Terror in the Swamp! T-Fish has a wide array
of hilarious scared faces, busting out a new one whenever the monster shows up;
and there’s also some pretty nice swamp photography in the picture! On the
other hand there are plenty of longueurs, a marvelously literal song that
outstays its welcome, and not nearly enough Big Bay Ti action! But I’ll tell
you this: I’m not sorry I watched the movie! I enjoyed its unhurried pace and
its country-fried jocularity, and if you’re in the mood to hang out with some
rural kids and their bigfoot pal, you may feel the same! I give Return to Boggy
Creek two bottles of catfish kool-ade!
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