The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) (USA)

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Docudrama concerning the legend of the Fouke Monster, a Sasquatch-type creature residing in Fouke, Arkansas and terrorizing a few local yokels. One of the first and best of its type, a solid employment of actual Fouke residents, folklore and locations allow the viewer to ignore the nonsensical and buy in to the creature shenanigans. Growing up in the area with a few run-ins of his own when he was a little kid, a young man narrates the “local color” footage, interviews and re-enactments concerning encounters with the hairy thing wandering the vast wilderness of the area. The howling beastie scares some women, confronts some dork thinking he’s about to bag a deer and eludes a hunting party. As someone who grew up reading books on cryptids and ingesting a steady diet of hilariously presumptuous pseudo-science documentaries, Boggy Creek is completely essential viewing. Hog snatchin’, spooked horses, plenty of hunting, a kitten who dies of fright, a gorilla-suited antagonist and a “down south” aesthetic that makes me feel like I’m back in Tennessee, dozing off on my grandparents’ couch lead me to believe I’ve died and gone to Bigfoot Heaven. Add in the completely ridiculous score (not one but two original tracks) and I really don’t have a bad thing to say about this little sojourn in psychotronic reality.