Boogeyman

The Boogeyman (1980)

I go thru these phases where I feel the need to track down slasher movies that I haven’t either seen in a long time, haven’t ever seen, or just want to watch again to review for the site. You see it is my long-term goal to have watched and reviewed every slasher movie that was made during the late 70s and thru the 80s. So in spite of my better judgment I decided to sit thru Ulli Lommel directed movie The Boogeyman.

So the movie starts off with a very Halloweenesque sounding musical score and as the camera sweeps up to a house. Inside the house a woman and a man are getting frisky, while her children watch from a window outside. They get caught and the older brother is smacked around a bit and tied to a bed. His little sister gets a really big knife and sets him free. Then we get the POV shot of the kid carrying the knife to his mother’s bed where he dispatches her lover. The action then moves years later where the brother and sister are living with relatives. They haven’t seen their mother since that night and don’t wish to. But when the sister starts having bad dreams her therapist (John Carradine in a bit of stunt casting) he recommends she return to the house. Thru a convoluted series of events she breaks a mirror and unleashes the spirit of the man her brother killed. A bunch of bodies pile up until they figure out that water will kill the evil. Toss in a twist at the end and you have the plot of The Boogeyman.

I have yet to watch an Ulli Lommel movie that I like, but I had some hope for the Boogeyman. This does have the most cohesive plot of any of his movies that I’ve sat through, thought that doesn’t really say much. The movie had potential to be both an okay slasher movie and an okay possession/haunted house movie. But it starts off as a slasher flick then inexplicably changes gears into the possession thing. It even does this after establishing that the brother isn’t terribly stable and could be a killer. Why it abandons one plot line to pick another up just doesn’t make any sense. Then for the big climax you have the evil being defeated by dousing it in water. While that doesn’t really bother me that much the fact that there isn’t anything in the movie to explain why that is true, or how the characters come up with it does sort of bother me. These plot issues make the movie really tough to sit thru and I found myself watching the clock and struggling to stay awake.

There are a couple of cool kills, including a couple getting taken out by the evil in the front seat of a Mustang that I rather enjoyed. The gore is decent and you get to see some blood on the screen. Lommel also delivers some nice nudity when some sisters living in the sibling’s old house are done in by the newly unleashed evil.

The Boogeyman had some potential, which makes it even more frustrating than the normally terrible efforts from the director. He sort of got my hopes up a bit before I came to my senses, slapped myself on the forehead (really did this) and said out loud, “what was I thinking”. This movie is not recommended.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer