This week and going forward to cover anything else put up on the Laughing Reindeer, I decided to initiate a couple of small changes in the page design or details on what inspired the page at hand.
First of all, perhaps most obviously, the story in this portion of the origins specifically mentions "Bigfoot, " so you can probably guess what you might be seeing ahead, though you would probably be wrong.
Perhaps you've seen the ultimate Bigfoot film that served to set off a craze in early 70s America for these mythic creatures. That film was The Legend of Boggy Creek, which told the "real life" story of a Bigfoot type creature dwelling in swamps around a small town in Arkansas. Creator Charles Pierce did a great job with very little money filming the strange story like a documentary, including some of the actual witnesses in the film. The movie made loads of money.
I can tell you exactly what my reaction to the movie was. It scared the hell out of me. When I got home that night, I closed every window in the house. We lived in a house out in the country with woods behind it. No way was I going to let Bigfoot reach in through an open window. My little sister
and brother were confused and amused.
The success of Boggy Creek inspired a whole bunch of other Bigfoot films. Two of my favorites from this era were Mysterious Monsters, a Sun Classic "documentary" hosted and narrated by Peter Graves and the fictional Creature From Black Lake which is not only creepy, but had a pretty good cast of actors to make it feel real.
It should be noted here that there was one other piece of film that inspired Boggy Creek. Mysterious Monsters included it in its mostly Bigfoot menu. This was the controversial film shot by Roger Patterson who claimed he had come upon a real Bigfoot. The first panel here has my own homage to the
Patterson film. Over the years, it has remained a subject of much debate, with some naturalists believing that no human being could walk that way while others, particularly Hollywood make-up and monster men, claim it was a suit built by legendary monster maker John Chambers. I'll have more to say about Chambers next week.
Until then, stay out of the woods at night... or bring your squirrel gun.
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