THE BEAST OF BOGGY CREEK: The True Story of the Fouke Monster by Lyle Blackburn Page A

stories or helping out with the film. One man offered to take Pierce down to his barn where he told of a startling encounter with the beast. The man had apparently surprised it one morning as he stepped outside to start his daily chores. He had a long look at the thing as it headed back out across a pasture toward the cover of the trees. Like other witnesses, he described it as a hairy, man-like creature that walked upright on two legs. Pierce was enthralled with the story and wanted to include the scene in his movie, but the witness wanted no part of the film, whether reenacting the encounter or simply mentioning his name. Pierce agreed to the anonymity, knowing that it wouldn’t matter whether it was the actual storyteller or someone else who re-enacted the scene in the movie.
    After more research and story-gathering, Pierce felt he had enough compelling source material to move to the next step, which was to find a competent writer to pen the screenplay. For the job, he hired an advertising associate by the name of Earl E. Smith, who also lived in Texarkana. Smith had never written a movie script, but like Pierce, he would prove to be just the right man for the job.
    Using the working title “Tracking the Fouke Monster,” Pierce went ahead with filming despite the fact that a script had yet to be drafted. Since they planned to use a documentary-style approach with narration overdubs, it would not require much in the way of rehearsed dialog, which was perfect since he had no real actors on board to even deliver the lines. Instead, he planned to film actual Fouke residents as they acted out the monster encounters, which had appeared in the news or he had learned about through personal interviews. One such local was Smokey Crabtree, whose son (Lynn) had come face-to-face with the monster six years earlier. While seeking information about that encounter, Pierce and Smith also talked Smokey into acting as sort of a tour guide around town and in the swamps. This was a fortunate move, as Smokey’s lifelong experience in the bottoms proved to be invaluable when it came to accessing the remote regions for filming.
     

    Pierce signals the crane operator to raise the camera platform while filming a high angle shot. (Courtesy of the Texarkana Gazette)
     
    In exchange for a nominal fee, Smokey agreed to guide Pierce through the waterways of Mercer Bayou so that he could shoot the scenery. Each morning, Smokey would launch his handmade canoe into the bayou, rowing Pierce around until the director got the shots he needed. Pierce also shot footage of Travis, Smokey’s other son, who stood in for Lynn since he did not want to participate in the movie.
    In some cases, Smokey also acted as an informal liaison between the movie makers and the townsfolk, convincing locals to participate in the movie, especially those who claimed to have seen the monster and had firsthand stories to tell. Pierce also resorted to some crafty low-budget ingenuity to cast the rest of the parts: he simply hung out at a local gas station and waited for people to drop by. When he spotted someone that fit the description of a person he needed, he would ask them if they wanted to be in a movie. Pierce described the process in the interview with Fangoria :
     
When someone pulled in, we’d say, ‘Now she’d be a good Peggy Sue.’ And we’d walk out there to the gas pumps and say, ‘Ma’am, we’re shootin’ a little movie. Would you like to be in it?’
She’d say, ‘Well, what do I have to do?’ And I’d say, ‘Oh, you just run across this field out here.’ We’d get out there in the field and she’d say, ‘What do I do?’ and I’d say, ‘I want you to come across over there screamin’, and run real fast. We never did makeup or any of that, unless the creature got on ‘em and then we’d put on a little ketchup for blood.
     
    Eventually Pierce had enough Fouke residents on board to make a go at it. Some were even eager to participate in the