The title immediately filled me with dread ... but not the kind of dread you might think. Not having seen (or even heard of) Boggy Creek, I figured I'd be coming into Boggy Creek II with a lot of unanswerable questions and ignorance about the continuing relationships from the first film.

But there is no reason to entertain these kind of worries because, for better or worse, Boggy Creek II is a stand alone story ... if you're familiar at all with the folklore of beasties like Sasquatch, The Jersey Devil, or The Abominable Snowman you have pretty much all the backstory you need going into this film. And if you don't, the leisurely-paced prologue that starts out the film will get you up to speed.

Somewhere in the bayou country of Arkansas lives the legendary "Boggy Creek" monster, a kind of good-old southern boy cousin of that scrappy north woods Sasquatch. In fact, in the long shots of the beast that close out the film's opening sequence, the monster even looks like those old super-8 movies of "Bigfoot" that tv specials in the 1970's used to air when the mania surrounding the creatures was at its height. (Overall, for a low-budget horror film from the '80's, the creature work is pretty impressive -- only in a few close-ups of the creature in the dark does the monster suit look really fake ... for the most part it's pretty convincing, and there is one shot, early in the film, in which the monster stands in a barn doorway framed from behind by sunlight, that is genuinely awesome).

One gets the feeling that creature suit design took up a gigantic portion of the movie's budget, because they certainly didn't spend much on actors. Writer/director Charles B. Pierce headlines his cast as "Doc" Lockhart, a well-meaning, if a little buffoonish, university professor-cum monster hunter. The director's son, Chuck Pierce, co-stars as Tim, one of Doc's students, with Cindy Butler and Serene Hedin rounding out the main cast as Leslie and Tanya, another student and her close friend, who have all been rounded up to join Doc as he goes off in quest of evidence that will confirm or deny the existence of the Boggy Creek creature.

As they set off on their journey, I was impressed by Pierce's use of Arkansas locations -- his skill at using the country settings (and local actors) reminded me a little of Tobe Hooper's masterwork The Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- I grew up in rural settings like this and, I'm willing to guess that the director must have as well, because the pace of life, the attitudes of the locals, and the look of the interiors all felt authentic. An early scene in a country store is so pitch perfect in this regard that I began getting some real high hopes for the movie.

While leisurely (in, no doubt, a southern way), the film's pace doesn't lag too badly -- every few minutes something manages to come up to keep our interest, like an encounter with a rabid dog that shows just how well "Doc" is able to handle a crisis (not well at all), a couple of previous sightings of the monster related in flashbacks (perhaps these are scenes from the former film incorporated into the later one), and one scene involving motion-sensing computer software that had me wondering if James Cameron saw this film while he was writing Aliens (see the movie and you'll see what I mean).

Somewhere deep in the swamps lives a fellow named Crenshaw who has had run-ins with these creatures before, and Doc is hoping Crenshaw will provide the evidence needed to prove their existence. But Crenshaw has his own motives, and he harbors some secrets that are not in keeping with what the rest of the group has in mind. As Crenshaw, I found Jimmy Clem's performance to be the best in the film -- he hits just the right notes to keep from being too over the top in his portrayal, and he manages to be both threatening and pathetic at the same time.

But that leisurely pacing does begin to become a bit too leisurely by the film's third act, keeping us at arm's length for much of the film and undermining any effort to build up suspense or tension, and apart from a couple of "gotcha" scares (particularly in the rabid dog sequence) there isn't much to really freak you out in Boggy Creek II. And the plot of the film doesn't really start to cook until the last reel (and when the plot does start to really get going, it lifts an awful lot from the sixties monster classics Gorgo and Monster from a Prehistoric Planet), which can kind of test your patience after a while. This may not be the first horror film to be more of a series of strung-together set pieces than a real story, but the set pieces aren't quite memorable enough to leave you fully satisfied. It's more of a tasty snack than a full meal.

Still, if you see only one missing-link-backwoods-creature movie this year, you could do a whole lot worse than this film.

The disc is presented in a 1.85 anamorphic transfer that isn't really stunning but is serviceable enough to bring out the detail in some of the darker sequences with the lone extra being the film's theatrical trailer -- which does manage to explain why the film isn't as well known as some of other low-budget indie horror films of the same period. The trailer, to put it delicately, makes the film look lame, which it isn't. In its best moments, it's obvious that this is a monster movie that was assembled with love and good intentions. In it's worst moments, it's still good, goofy fun.