This “doc” comes from a production company out of Ohio called, Small Town Monsters. Every so often I see their posts pop-up in my newsfeed on Facebook; that’s pretty much how I know them, and they specialize in doing cryptozoological documentaries. This one caught my attention because they decided to film a fake creature feature and insert it into their new doc about the Missouri monster known as Momo.
The fake film is supposed to homage those killer Bigfoot flicks from the 70s, and they filmed it to look like it was filmed during then too. The host of this doc, and I assume the host of all their other docs too, is cryptozoologist, Lyle Blackburn. The documentary portion plays out at various intervals between the supposed lost-until-now 1975 creature feature, Momo, The Missouri Monster.
Being an “armchair ghost hunter/cryptozoologist” most of my life, I’m familiar with who Blackburn is, but only somewhat familiar with the Momo legend. I’ve heard of it, come across it mention of it in various books, but I never knew the details until now.
The “movie” focuses on the Harrison family and their first (and subsequent) encounters with a“bigfoot-type creature their kids first happened to encounter near their property called, Marzolf Hill (aka Star Hill). The monster portrayed in the fake film looks like someone wearing a glorified ghillie suit with funky three-fingered claws and glowing eyes just barely discernible behind all the stringy “ghillie.” Drawings of it shown in the documentary are extremely creepy with eyes that reminded me of what witnesses seem to describe of the Mothman.
Since the father of the family, Edgar, died in 2008, most of the documentary is from the perspective of other people who were around in 1972 when this flap (cryptozoological term for a pattern of encounters that spring up in an area) occurred. The movie basically dramatizes certain events the doc talk about, and not being in the know about this particular cryptid I thought most of the movie was purely fiction, and then it switched to doc mode and some of those scenes, like the Harrison family seeing glowing objects in the skies one afternoon, and a scene where a band of townsfolk went onto Marzolf Hill one night to find the beast encountered lights and a disembodied voice, apparently were real. In the film the disembodied voice told them to get out of its woods, in the doc it’s never revealed what exactly the people heard.
I found this cryptid to be very fascinating since its encounters were sometimes accompanied by UFO sightings, but to know a disembodied voice was involved too . . . that’s just creepy as hell. I’ve heard UFO phenomena do sometimes occur with monster sightings, but this is the first time I’ve heard tell tale of a “disembodied voice” being associated with it.
As with most docs of this nature the doc portion starts out setting the mood by describing the small town of Louisiana, it’s folk, life in general, and so forth. I’ve always enjoyed that aspect of these documentaries. How the beast got its Momo name is never explained, but I’m guessing it’s an abbreviation of ‘Missouri Monster.’
This documentary is short, about 80-minutes, but it’s a good one. I highly recommend it. I would love to see Small Town Monsters get into the full fledged creature feature business too, would love to see a full length movie based on one of these cryptids.
Before the movie/doc begin, Blackburn briefly mentions some of the killer Bigfoot movies that were prevalent in the 70s, like Curse Of Bigfoot (1975), Snowbeast (1977 TV movie), Legend Of Boggy Creek (1972) and Creature From Black Lake (1976). Blackburn doesn’t seem to be fans of them, at least not in his introduction, but most of them are serious “memory movies” of mine of which I need to review at some point for my Memory Movies blog. For those not aware, Snowbeast got blued; Charles B. Pierce’s daughter, Pamula Pierce Barcelou has restored her father’s Boggy Creek film in high definition, soon to be available on blu-ray, and Synapse Films is in the process of remastering Creature From Black Lake.
Momo, The Missouri Monster is available on DVD, you can also buy it digitally on Amazon or get the DVD directly from Small Town Monsters’ site!
Video/Audio/Subtitles: 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen—2.0 English Dolby Digital—no subtitles
Extras included . . .
- Making Momo (50:34)
PHYSICAL MEDIA LIVES AT . . . 