Although in recent years Arkansas has become associated with the films “Mud” and “Slingblade,” in the 70’s the state experienced a B movie renaissance.
In the days before movie studios realized they could package a film with a million dollar budget and label it independent, two Arkansas filmmakers — Charles Pierce and Jim Feazell — separately plied their trade in the Natural State and produced three movies that have since become cult classics.
The Legend of Boggy Creek
Fouke is in many ways the sort of town that’s common in South Arkansas.
It has a population of 859, a few gas stations and a school. However, residents of Fouke have something that sets their sleepy little town apart from many rural areas — a swamp monster.
Since the 1950s there have been documented reports of a large ape-like hominid prowling the runoff of the Sulphur River known as Boggy Creek. In 1972, Charles Pierce interviewed several townspeople and filmed dramatic reenactments of their brushes with the monster, with many of them playing themselves in the film. He compiled all of this into a faux-documentary called “The Legend of Boggy Creek.”
Pierce’s film went on to earn $20 million dollars in revenue, mainly from being widely shown in drive-in theatres and at midnight screenings. It was the 10th highest grossing film of 1972, a year in which movies like “The Godfather,” “The Poseidon Adventure” and “Deliverance” were also tearing up the box office.
Pierce’s film is remarkably authentic due to using the people of Fouke instead of hiring actors who would have had to force a Scarlet O’Hara/Rhett Butler southern accent. Several scenes were shot in Fouke and while the countryside lends itself to some incredible cinematic shots, the real eeriness of the swamp is hard to deny.
The monster is never fully shown — you get glimpses of it running off screen, and in a few scenes a large creature looms in the background. In many ways “The Legend of Boggy Creek” is a proto “Blair Witch Project,” and your mind has to fill in the gaps from what is presented onscreen. This was probably done out of necessity, rather than thematic choice — a guy in an ape costume just isn’t as scary as whatever horrors the human brain can conceive.
Although Tom Zorn Sr.’s story wasn’t in the film due to a pay dispute with Pierce, the Texarkana resident claims to have seen the Fouke monster a number of times throughout his life, starting in childhood.
“I grew up two miles out, I lived with my grandma,” said Zorn. “Mother wasn’t home at a certain day. I’m out at the barn getting potatoes, we kept things on the floor and had the onions hanging. I look over in the corner, and there’s a place flattened down. I said ‘Somethings sleeping in the barn.’”
Zorn’s mother told him to leave it alone so he never said anything else to his grandmother.
“She’s thinking possum, coon or dog,” Zorn said. A week or so went by and the county sent a gravel truck to repave their driveway.
“So they come out and put out gravel. We go to bed and she’s in the back of a six-room house. Mine is in the front corner,” Zorn said. “About nine or 10 that night something is coming up the drive. It’s 'crunch,' 'crunch.' Maybe two or three steps into the drive I say ‘Momma.’ She heard me and said ‘I hear it’. By then it’s come a couple of more steps and it’s grinding in the gravel. She’s thinking it might be Mr. Vanderberg, who weighed 300 pounds, just a big heavy set guy.”
“So as he come up they don’t clear their throat or speak, which is what you’re supposed to do…. He come up the drive. As he gets even with the porch he keeps going. When he steps into the yard, it’s no longer a crunch, it’s loud. He gets even with the window and I get this little pistol in my hand. As he gets even with the window, I hear the boom of his step and I fired three rounds. Everything got real quiet,” Zorn said. “Next morning I wake up with the gun still in my hand.”
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Pierce’s fifth film, “The town That Dreaded Sundown,” took more true life horror and displayed it on screen.
The film details the exploits of the Phantom Killer, a murderer that stalked the area of Texarkana in the late 40’s. In all, eight victims were attacked by the killer with five suffering fatal injuries. While “The legend of Boggy Creek” portrays a sympathetic creature protecting its home, “Sundown” focuses on a vicious sadist targeting the area of lover’s lane. Echoes of the Son of Sam and The Zodiac Killer can be seen as the masked man terrorizes unsuspecting couples throughout the film.
The same narration technique from Boggy Creek is employed in Sundown, with Vern Stierman providing narration for both films. In a rather Hitchcockian move, Pierce even cameos as a deputy.
Boggy Creek is a fairly innocent film, the only casualty is a kitten that is literally scared to death. Pierce ups the ante with Sundown and shows a sadistic killer that would later be emulated in Jason, Michael Myers and a host of other slashers. If not a direct influence on these movies, Pierce undoubtedly tapped into the same vein that later gave birth to these films.
“I think that’s why the infamous trombone scene, it’s what everyone talks about out of that film, at the time was so unnerving,” said Jim Yates, dean of Liberal Arts at South Arkansas Community College. ”Now it’s nothing, but back then, the idea of a hooded killer strapping the end of a knife onto a trombone slide and then using that to kill someone was definitely a bit off the norm. With the success of Boggy Creek I think that allowed him to experiment a bit more or push the envelope.”
Yates also mentioned a difference in the quality of acting. “Whereas Boggy Creek was unkown actors, ‘The Town That Dreaded Sundown’ had both unknown actors and several known actors like Ben Johnson, Don Wells and Andrew Prine. That gave another layer of legitimacy to what Pierce was doing.”
Though it lacked the box office drawing power of Boggy Creek, “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” remains very popular and even has an annual Halloween showing in Texarkana.
A meta-sequel of the same title was recently released, but it lacks the grindhouse feel of Pierce’s work.
Wheeler
Around the same time Pierce was showing his movies to drive-ins and midnight screenings, a former stuntman turned filmmaker was filming and producing his own independent movie in El Dorado. Jim Feazell’s “Wheeler” (also released under the titles “The Hurting,” “Momma’s Boy,” “Evil+Hate=Killer” or “Psycho from Texas”) never gathered as much attention as either of Pierce’s works.
However, Feazell wrote, directed and produced the film which involves the kidnapping of a local oil mogul and the subsequent unraveling of the scheme due to the psychotic tendencies of the titular character. “Wheeler” is also significant in that it marks the film debut of scream queen Linnea Quigley, known for “Return of the Living Dead” and “Deathsport” among other films.
In its final format, Wheeler is weirdly paced, strangely edited and generally an outright mess, but the son of the late Jim Feazell, Christian Feazell, said that is due to subsequent editing from a Canadian company that bought the rights to the film and only paid Feazell a down payment for his film.
“I don’t think they get the opportunity to know the film was actually a lot better at one point. Then he sold it to a company in Canada and they tore it all apart. They talk about how it doesn’t make any sense, but that was done after the real production. I wish he could get better credit for the editing, because he was a very good editor,” Feazell said.
Feazell also ran into more trouble when major studios tried to limit the release of independent films by threatening to pull first run major releases from theaters.
“The problem they ran into was the film industry, because a lot of people had started to do what my dad was doing and make their own films and sell them to theaters, started applying all these rules to the movie theatres so they couldn’t show these independent films without sanctions. So he ran into the problem when he was distributing it that a lot of people shut the door on him,” said Feazell.
Recently the term “shop local” has entered the common vernacular. The idea is to purchase locally produced goods in order to help small business owners.
This Halloween, instead of popping in (or streaming) a copy of “Friday the 13th” or “Nightmare on Elm Street,” you may want to consider “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” “The Town that Dreaded Sundown,” or “Wheeler” — and scare enjoy some local scares.icant in that it marks the film debut of scream queen Lieanna Quigley, known for “Return of the Living Dead” and “Deathsport” amongst other films.
In its final format, Wheeler is weirdly paced, strangely edited and generally an outright mess, but the son of the late Jim Feazell, Christian Feazell, says that is due subsequent editing from a Canadian company that bought the rights to the film and only paid Feazell a down payment for his film.
“I don’t think they get the opportunity to know the film was actually a lot better at one point. Then he sold it to a company in Canada and they tore it all apart. They talk about how it doesn’t make any sense, but that was done after the real production. I wish he could get better credit for the editing, because he was a very good editor,” Feazell says.
Feazell also ran into more trouble when major studios tried to limit the release of independent films by threatening to pull first run major releases from theaters.
“The problem they ran into was the film industry, because a lot of people had started to do what my dad was doing and make their own films and sell them to theaters, started applying all these rules to the movie theatres so they couldn’t show these independent films without sanctions. So he ran into the problem when he was distributing it that a lot of people shut the door on him,” said Feazell.
Recently the term “shop local” has entered the common vernacular.The idea being to purchase locally produced goods in order to help small business owners.
This Halloween, instead of popping in (or streaming) a copy of “Friday the 13th” or “Nightmare on Elm Street,” you may want to consider “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” “The Town that Dreaded Sundown,” or “Wheeler” — and scare enjoy some local scares.