The Boogeyman (1980) The Jerry Gross Organization/Horror RT: 82 minutes Rated R (language, graphic violence, nudity, some sexual content) Director: Ulli Lommel Screenplay: Ulli Lommel Music: Tim Krog Cinematography: Jochen Breitenstein Release date: November 7, 1980 (US) Cast: Suzanna Love, Ron James, John Carradine, Nicholas Love, Raymond Boyden, Felicite Morgan, Bill Rayburn, Llewelyn Thomas, Jay Wright, Natasha Schiano, Gillian Gordon, Howard Grant, Jane Pratt, Lucinda Ziesing, David Swim, Katie Casey, Ernest Meier, Stony Richards, Claudia Porcelli, Catherine Tambini. Box Office: $4.5M (US)
Rating: ** ½
Let me start by setting the record straight, the 1980 horror flick The Boogeyman has NOTHING to do with the terrible PG-13 rated 2005 movie Boogeyman (there’s no “The” in the title). The latter is NOT a remake in any way, shape or form. That being said, I will now proceed with my take on The Boogeyman.
As usual, I didn’t see it at the movies, but I do remember seeing clips of it on an episode of “Sneak Previews”. It looked pretty cool to my 12YO eyes, especially the scene with the priest holding a crucifix in front of him. I rented it (along with the 1983 sequel) from my local video store in early ’87 (February, I think) and returned it without watching the whole thing. At the time, it just didn’t hold my interest. I watched the whole thing about 15 years later and liked it. Or maybe I should say I tolerated it enough to watch it all the way through.
It’s a low budget piece about a brother and sister still being haunted by a horrible childhood tragedy. I guess you could call The Boogeyman a ghost story in that the evil manifests itself as a malevolent and murderous spirit. As far as this kind of movie goes, it’s not the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s cheap, cheesy and silly. The acting is pretty bad and the dialogue even worse. It’s poorly written and directed. Yet it has that certain charm only possessed by low budget horror flicks designed to play the grindhouse circuit. It has some pretty cool murders and a sufficient amount of gore. The movie’s overall poor quality makes it laughable at times. Plus, it features B-movie stalwart John Carradine (Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, The Ice Pirates) in a supporting role. Hence, I find that I can’t simply dismiss it as unwatchable garbage.
Like any other horror movie, The Boogeyman opens with some terrible past event that comes back to haunt the central characters in the present. In this instance, young Willy (Wright) stabs his slutty mother’s abusive lover (Grant) to death with a huge kitchen knife while his little sister Lacey (Schiano) looks on. Twenty years later, they live on a farm with their Uncle Ernest (Rayburn) and Aunt Helen (Morgan). Lacey (S. Love) has a husband (James) and young son (Boyden). Willy (N. Love) hasn’t spoken a word since that fateful night. The memories of that night come back to haunt them with a vengeance upon receiving a letter from their mother. Lacey sees a psychiatrist (Carradine) who suggests that she visit her childhood home as a way of putting the bad memories to rest once and for all. She follows his advice and visits the house with her husband. Lacey freaks out after seeing a vision of her mother’s lover (the “boogeyman” of the title) in a mirror. She shatters it in a panic and her husband brings it home so he can repair it and prove to her that it’s just a mirror. That’s when all bloody hell really breaks loose. They leave behind a single shard of the mirror and the three children living in the house get slaughtered by an unseen force. Several people back at the farm also end up dead. Lacey ultimately gets possessed by the evil spirit which is why the aforementioned priest (Thomas) ends up wielding a crucifix. That’s pretty much it as far as the storyline goes. It’s your basic retread of the countless evil spirit horror flicks that came before it.
One of the first things that I’d like to say about The Boogeyman has to do with cast credits. I strongly believe that the boom should have been listed as the microphone appears in many shots, especially the scenes featuring Carradine’s character. You see, I told you this movie is cheap. The filmmakers probably couldn’t afford reshoots and hoped audience members wouldn’t notice the microphone dangling in the frame. Wrong! How can you miss it? It’s stuff like this that cracks me up about cheap exploitation flicks like The Boogeyman. On the upside, it gives the most convincing performance in the movie. Is it any wonder that you’ve never heard of most of the actors in the cast? In fact, leading lady Suzanna Love was married to writer/director Lommel at the time (Nicholas Love is her brother).
The highlight of The Boogeyman (and most other early 80s horror flicks) is the gory effects. There are some pretty cool killings. My personal favorite is when a teenage boy gets a knife rammed through the back of his head and the tip exits through his mouth. Wait, there’s more! His girlfriend gets forced to “kiss” him and also gets impaled by the knife. Their friends see them and think that they’re just making out. Other highlights include a young woman stabbing herself in the throat with scissors and a boy getting his head crushed by a window. If it weren’t for gory moments like this, there would be no point in watching it.
There’s no question that The Boogeyman is a fairly bad movie. It was made for the meager sum of $300,000 and totally looks it. I was surprised to learn that this movie grossed about $35 million worldwide, making it one of the more successful independent horror flicks of the 80s. It’s largely forgotten now even though it spawned two sequels (1983 and 1994) and Lommel has talked of making a fourth movie (entitled Boogeyman 4D). In its defense, it’s much better than its immediate sequel which consists mainly of footage from the first movie. That’s faint praise indeed, but still praise nonetheless. Sometimes you just have to take what you can get.
