{"id":13857,"date":"2026-01-19T21:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T02:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13857"},"modified":"2026-01-19T21:16:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T02:16:28","slug":"the-boogeyman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/01\/19\/the-boogeyman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Boogeyman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Boogeyman <\/strong>(1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Jerry Gross Organization\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 82 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, nudity, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ulli Lommel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ulli Lommel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tim Krog\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jochen Breitenstein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 7, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $4.5M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let me start by setting the record straight, the 1980 horror flick The Boogeyman<\/strong> has NOTHING to do with the terrible PG-13 rated 2005 movie Boogeyman (there\u2019s no \u201cThe\u201d 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As usual, I didn\u2019t see it at the movies, but I do remember seeing clips of it on an episode of \u201cSneak Previews\u201d. 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 \u201987 (February, I think) and returned it without watching the whole thing. At the time, it just didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s a low budget piece about a brother and sister still being haunted by a horrible childhood tragedy. I guess you could call The Boogeyman<\/strong> a ghost story in that the evil manifests itself as a malevolent and murderous spirit. As far as this kind of movie goes, it\u2019s not the worst I\u2019ve ever seen. It\u2019s cheap, cheesy and silly. The acting is pretty bad and the dialogue even worse. It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t simply dismiss it as unwatchable garbage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like any other horror movie, The Boogeyman<\/strong> 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\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019s lover (the \u201cboogeyman\u201d 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\u2019s just a mirror. That\u2019s 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\u2019s pretty much it as far as the storyline goes. It\u2019s your basic retread of the countless evil spirit horror flicks that came before it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One of the first things that I\u2019d like to say about The Boogeyman<\/strong> 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\u2019s character. You see, I told you this movie is cheap. The filmmakers probably couldn\u2019t afford reshoots and hoped audience members wouldn\u2019t notice the microphone dangling in the frame. Wrong! How can you miss it? It\u2019s stuff like this that cracks me up about cheap exploitation flicks like The Boogeyman<\/strong>. On the upside, it gives the most convincing performance in the movie. Is it any wonder that you\u2019ve 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).<\/p>\n

\u00a0The highlight of The Boogeyman<\/strong> (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\u2019s more! His girlfriend gets forced to \u201ckiss\u201d him and also gets impaled by the knife. Their friends see them and think that they\u2019re 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\u2019t for gory moments like this, there would be no point in watching it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s no question that The Boogeyman<\/strong> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s much better than its immediate sequel which consists mainly of footage from the first movie. That\u2019s faint praise indeed, but still praise nonetheless. Sometimes you just have to take what you can get.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Boogeyman (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Jerry Gross Organization\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 82 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, nudity, some sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ulli Lommel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ulli Lommel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tim Krog\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jochen Breitenstein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 7, 1980 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Suzanna Love, Ron James, John Carradine, Nicholas Love, Raymond Boyden, Felicite Morgan, Bill Rayburn, Llewelyn Thomas, Jay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/The-Boogeyman-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13857"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13899,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13857\/revisions\/13899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}