By Tristan Bishop
31 years after the Video Recordings Act came in to being in the UK, horror fans are still hungry for the films which made up the ‘Video Nasties’ list – Let’s not forget that the vast majority of these films never had a theatrical release in the UK, and a lot of us over a certain age first saw these on awful quality, washed-out, fullscreen and quite often cut duplicates of the original UK VHS releases, so it’s still with a slight sense of wonder at the progress we’ve made that I can watch these films in HD and they’ll look as close as damnit to how they would originally have looked on the big screen, often with grain and all. I’ll admit to never having actually seen The Boogeyman (or Bogey Man as it’s ever so slightly retitled in the UK) before – which actually surprises me, as I’ve seen some truly awful crap whilst working my way through the nasties list (Forest Of Fear, anyone?), and it has a reputation for being among the better items on the list, so I was quite excited when I settled into an armchair ready for some early 80’s splatter.
It has to be said – the first (and second, and third) thing that came to mind as the story of The Boogeyman unfolded was ‘someone’s seen Halloween.’ The opening static shot of a house which, although it turns out to be in a rural area, brings to mind the iconic buildings of John Carpenter’s Haddonfield, the brilliantly-of-its-time synth score (by Tim Krog, who seems to have released nothing else of note) and the set-up, as a small child stabs to death his mother’s lover (who, to be fair, has just strapped him up to a bed in a fairly uneasy scene after catching him peeping in on their sexy games) are also both straight outta Halloween. Even the title seems to call back to Carpenter’s classic – witness the amount of times Michael Myers is referred to as ‘The Boogeyman’ in that film. However, this is where the similarities end – and anyone expecting some straightforward 80’s slasher action might be left disappointed (especially as 88 Films have put this out under the ‘Slasher Classics Collection’ banner – would ‘Video Nasties Collection’ not have been better/more correct?), as it turns out that The Boogeyman is less a slasher film and more a supernatural thriller.
Our story begins ’20 years ago’ (so about 1960) as young children Willy and Lacey (stop sniggering at the back) witness the aforementioned sex play between their mother and an unnamed stranger. Whilst Lacey escapes punishment, Willy is painfully bound up to his bed and left there. Lacey decides to get a big knife from the kitchen to free Willy (heh) but proceeds to stab his mother’s lover to death with it as well.
Flash forward to the ‘present day’, and the now grown-up children live with their aunt and uncle on a farm, along with Lacey’s husband Jake and their young son. Willy, it transpires, has not spoken a word since he killed the stranger (interesting to note that this doesn’t stop pretty much every character in the film constantly questioning him as if they’ve forgotten), and has a habit of stashing various knives in his room. A letter from their mother arrives at the farm – in it, she tells them she is seriously ill and feels that it is her right as their mother to see them one more time. Lacey and Willy understandably are made very uncomfortable by this. Jake decides he will take Lacey to a psychiatrist (played by trash veteran John Carradine, who obviously filmed all his scenes in an afternoon) and they agree it would be a good idea to revisit her childhood home in order for her to see that the place has changed and attempt to exorcise some of her demons. Unfortunately it transpires that the stranger is still haunting the house, only his spirit is somehow haunting a mirror! When she sees his reflection, Lacey smashes the mirror into hundreds of pieces. Jake takes the mirror away to repair it, but one piece remains in the house, and now the mirror is shattered, the stranger’s spirit has gained the power to move objects around and force people to kill themselves.
Well, as you can probably work out from the plot description, The Boogeyman is pretty silly stuff, and extremely difficult to take seriously. Although the film did very well commercially on its original release, it’s sort of hard to believe that people were genuinely scared of a glowing haunted mirror back in 1980 – The Exorcist/Rosemary’s Baby ‘devil film’ cycle had run its course a few years previously and we were now firmly in the era of the slashers and the Italian zombie/cannibal films, which offered much more visceral thrills. In an attempt to fit better into in the era in which it was released, The Boogeyman does amp up the gore quotient quite considerably – although the effects vary from rather weak (the opening stabbing is extremely unconvincing) to the genuinely impressive – I must admit to laughing out loud over one scene which warns us of the dangers of French kissing. It has to be said that director Ulli Lommel (who has had a fascinating career, ranging from acting in Russ Meyer flicks, to being a protégé of arthouse enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder, to creating endless low budget serial killer films in recent years) doesn’t particularly impress here, with a number of odd directorial choices that make you wonder what he was aiming for. The acting doesn’t fair much better either – it’s always nice to see Carradine but he doesn’t get to do a great deal here, and Suzanna Love in the lead role as Lacey is appealing but a little wooden (incidentally her mute brother Willy is played by her real life brother Nicholas), and as for the choice of villain, well, those expecting a fearsome Boogeyman as hinted at in the films title will be disappointed by the invisible mirror-dwelling spirit.
But still, I can’t totally dismiss this film. That generic-but-awesome synth score, the over-the-top gore, the numerous parallels with Halloween, and, well the whole early eighties ambience (which I’ve always found totally irresistible) are here in force, and make for enjoyable viewing despite the many flaws on show. The picture quality on this release is top notch too – which, as with many films of the era being released now, serves to highlight how low-budget the thing looked, but that’s not really a criticism when dealing with fans of this sort of thing. The extras are disappointingly light however – there’s a bunch of trailers here for other 88 Films releases, although most of them Charles Band productions (again, not necessarily a bad thing), a long on-camera interview with Ulli Lommel, which contains some interesting tidbits but seems to be a few years old (he mentions working recently with David Carradine, who tragically passed away in 2009), and a booklet written by Callum Waddell, which I can’t comment on as it wasn’t present with the review copy. However, if silly early 80’s horror is your thing (and, let’s face it, it probably is), this release is certainly worth a look.
The Bogey Man is available now on Blu-ray – order direct from 88 Films here.