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#1006: Boggy Creek II: And The Legend Continues
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...And continues, and continues, and continues, until there is no joy or love left
in the world. But I get ahead of myself. Here's the story:
Doc Lockhart, a professor at the University of Arkansas (which is full of "insane
hog callers," according to the movie -- and they mean that as a good thing) is a
specialist in what one might call Boggy Creek Monster Studies. For years he's
been tracking the legend of a large sasquatch-like creature that inhabits the
bottom lands of Arkansas. (Yeah, kiss my bottom lands, one is
tempted to say. But doesn't. Sorry, I digress again in my eagerness
to get to the hating of this movie.)
Anyway -- multiple sightings of this beast have been reported
over the years by many Arkansans, including a bland deputy sheriff, an old guy
who doesn't know how to change a tire, and an intestinally active hick lawyer.
After fresh reports come in, Doc (a nickname which connotes an affection that
this crabby, self-important bastard does not earn) gathers a team to go down
there to investigate. His crack research staff includes his prize pupil Tanya,
whose prized-ness seems to be based mostly on her penchant for not wearing a
bra;
her friend Leslie, who applies makeup with a trowel and whines incessantly; and
Tim, a nearly mute, constantly shirtless boy who is in real life Chuck Pierce,
the son of writer/ director/ producer Charles B. Pierce, who plays the loathsome
Doc. Tim's state of shirtlessness might be explainable as something for the
ladies if he were not basically a series of pipe cleaners connected at the
top by
a blonde wig -- but Dad probably had a hand in the casting, I'm guessing.
 As the four get deeper into Boggy Creek country, they meet progressively smellier
people and have small and unthrilling encounters with the creature. Until they
meet the real creature -- a big, fleshy, bearded mountain man named Crenshaw, who
wears nothing but stained overalls (one strap unfastened, to titillate, I
suppose) and a thick, tight broccoli rubber band around his head which looks very
painful. Crenshaw supposedly has some knowledge of the creature. The creepy,
dyspeptic Doc finally discovers that Crenshaw is hiding a baby Boggy Creek
creature in his shack, and is setting fires nightly to ward off its mother.
Why? This is a subject for further studies by the Boggy Creek Monster Studies
Department at that insane hog-callin' school.
And oh yeah, Doc tells a lot of stories in flashback. One is about a guy who
gets so scared by the Creature he falls into the hole in his outhouse and gets
his own feces all over him. Yay!
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Prologue:
The SOL starts a Cub Scout den. Crow has made a macaroni replica of
Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Servo turns up in a Brownie
uniform which he got out of a discount bin. He says the uniform is much less
constricting, what with his hoverskirt and all.
Segment One:
On the SOL, Mike and Crow admire the noodle-based Van Gogh. Servo
has now changed into his Flemish glassblower costume, which he also grabbed out
of the discount bin. That Servo!
Down in Castle Forrester, Pearl has come up with an ingenious way to rule the
world: have Brain Guy cut off power to all the world's major cities, while Bobo
simultaneously buys up the world's supply of potatoes -- since, as many grade
school science fair projects will tell you, potatoes can conduct electricity.
But Bobo gets distracted from the latter task, simply buying a potato smoothie
for himself at the co-op. Pearl's plans are thwarted.
Segment Two:
Crow and Servo are caught in the middle of a tussle. Mike comes in,
wants to know what's going on. To find out, they deploy the technique of
flashbacks used to such great effect in the movie. But as Crow, then Servo, then
Mike, each in turn flashes back to the fight, the memory gets hazier and more
Vaseline-covered. Crow does promise, however, that his next flashback will
contain a cool car chase.
Segment Three:
Down in the Castle, Pearl announces that she's going to start
trolling for lumpy, disposable income-disposing tourists by spreading word of the
Legend of Forrester's Swamp. The guys on the SOL immediately conclude that it
is Bobo. She plays coy but employs Hank Brain Guy, Jr. to sing his haunting
folk song about the Legend. It's long on intro and short on actual song.
Segment Four:
Inspired for some reason by a quick shot of an old man whittling in
the movie, Servo starts a whittling business, WHITLtech. But it's updated for
our times: a huge factory, run efficiently and with the bottom line in mind,
mass-producing small slightly pointed sticks. He also has a bunch of WHITLtech
plants "overseas." Mike voices some opposition, but Servo has to leave in the
middle of their talk to brutally suppress some union organizers on the factory
floor.
Segment Five:
Crow imitates Crenshaw from the movie, starting fires on the SOL
bridge. He and Servo are playing Captive Baby Boggy Creek Creature and Big Smelly
Mountain Man. But they get tired of this and go off to play Wounded Baby Unicorn
and Skinny Sociopathic Janitor instead, leaving Mike with the spreading fires.
Presumably, poor Mike burns to death. But it's just a show, I should really
just relax.
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First, an open letter to Arkansas: For someone from Brooklyn, N.Y., I
have known a disproportionate number of your native sons and daughters, in
college and elsewhere. To a person they have been intelligent, creative,
and unfailingly friendly and polite. I will not open the question of that
randy fellow occupying the Oral Office right now. But let me say this in
no uncertain terms: YOU DO YOURSELF GRAVE HARM IN LETTING CHARLES B.
PIERCE MAKE MOVIES ABOUT YOU. After seeing Boggy Creek II, I not
only never want to visit Arkansas, I want it wiped off the map with extremely
extreme prejudice. This is way over the top, but neither is it fair or decent of
you to support Mr. Pierce's poisonous moviemaking IN ANY WAY. Please
desist before you do irreparable damage to your fine state, if you haven't
already. Thank you.
Now. My reflections:
God, this one was painful! It's the kind of movie that seems to hate you; to
wish you active harm; to kick sand in your eyes and make you cry. And for me,
this was personified by Mr. Charles B. Pierce, who is apparently responsible for
every single aspect, every nano-second of this cruel and unusual bit of
celluloid. He chose to write and play a grim, hostile, condescending,
know-it-all of a man, a character who is proven superior to
everyone else in the story again and again, who drills his lousy stinking voice-over
narrative into our heads every freaking minute of this film, and who then has the
temerity to wrap his movie up suggesting his sour Nazi of a character is really
an ecological servant of God. To Mr. Pierce: bite every single inch of me!
And do it now, and then do it again! By comparison to the pain caused by
Doc/Pierce, Crenshaw the mountain man was an urbane delight. And the poop
flashback was an utterly charming Noel Coward romp.
 A note about this outhouse classic, though: we
had to cut a lot of it. Really. Imagine what was not there in that scene. It
was there. I'm talking sound effects, grunting, and everything. the first time
we saw it we had to race each other out of the room to vomit.
I enjoyed singing and playing the gee-tar to Mary Jo's Legend of
Forrester Swamp lyrics, which were quite hilarious and very Mary
Jo-ian. And I was pleased to share the stage with editing wizard Brad
Keeley as a cute little country boy, in his first appearance since playing
the cute little Amish boy in Agent for HARM. I regret our show was
cancelled (don't let them tell you otherwise, it's all spin) for many reasons,
but one is that I never got to work with Brad
playing other than a cute little tyke. He might have made a good
psychopathic, shiv-wielding villain or something. Albeit a cute one.
Brain Guy was fully clothed throughout this show, and that was good for everyone.
- Bill Corbett
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