Restoration!

THOSE of a certain age will still remember something called the “video store,” where a body had to “rent movies”—physical forms of them—for “VHS players” back at home. The way it was done, kids, was simple enough: You went to the rental store, picked a movie, then brought it home for the night and watched it after supper. Then you had to “rewind” the thing before taking it back. It was like a cassette and a cassette player for . . . Oh, never mind.

Those of a certain age will also remember renting—on more than one occasion—The Legend of Boggy Creek, a wonderful docudrama of the real-life happenings around Fouke, Ark., back in the early 1970s. (Fouke is near Texarkana, in Miller County.)

If anybody tries to convince you that Bigfoot isn’t real, let him observe The Legend of Boggy Creek, and then see if he ever goes into a bathroom with a large window in it again.

Oh, the nightmares that film brought to preteens back in the day. Some of us still won’t go get the newspaper until the sun is really up-up. Not that we’re scared, mind you, but because, well, it’s dark out there and nobody wants to stub a toe in the drive-way at 5 a.m. so might as well wait until you can see a good 50 yards in every direction.

The daughter of Charles B. Pierce— the late director, screenwriter and cinematographer—has gained copyright to Boggy Creek, and is having the movie restored for a future re-release. She said it’s being restored at the George Eastman Museum in New York and, for the first time since its initial release, it will appear in theaters as Mr. Pierce envisioned.

Oh, happy day! And the nation will once again remember that Ground Zero for Squatches isn’t Oregon or Georgia or Florida. And it certainly isn’t Canada where some Gollum-like creature was filmed the other day stalking a moose. (No, really.) Bigfoot lives, all right, and he’s just outside Fouke, Ark., along Highway 71, sorta near Miller County Road 7, where that bridge is near the creek. Back in the woods there aways.

A old but improved Boggy Creek movie?

We’ll be the first in line. For back-row tickets.