Illustration by Jesse Kuhn
You may know Missouri’s state bird is the bluebird. You may know that Missouri’s state flower is the hawthorn blossom. But did you know that Missouri’s state monster is Momo?
Momo the Monster was a mysterious hairy biped spotted near the town of Louisiana in 1972. “It looked like a Bigfoot-type creature with a pumpkin-shaped head,” explains Johnno Zee, the writer/producer/director of Momo: The Missouri Monster (momo-movie.com), a horror-spoof film shot in Pulaski and Greene counties and scheduled for completion this month.
Zee pays tribute to the monster’s enduring mystery with what he’s calling a “small-budget, B-movie grindhouse type of movie” featuring “Momo being pursued by a cryptozoologist Elvis impersonator.” (Zee has made our particular brand of Missouri horror his specialty: His first film was a zombie spectacular called Redneck Carnage.)
Hayden Hewes of Sasquatch Investigations of Mid-America was the lead investigator on the actual Momo case in ’72. “I’ve been to eight states investigating Bigfoot reports since the early ’60s,” says Hewes, who has discussed UFOs and sasquatches on the History Channel. “There was more interest in the Momo case than I’ve experienced in any other.”
Hewes, who lives in Oklahoma City, says he was impressed by “the sincerity of the witnesses” in Missouri. “We never got any inkling they were trying to make up a story or sell a book.” A movie, though? Well, seeing is believing.
