Movie Info
Movie Name: The Boogey Man
Studio: The Jerry Gross Organization
Genre(s): Horror/B-Movie
Release Date(s): November 7, 1980
MPAA Rating: R
This guy is actually a bit creepy…now if he’d do something…
Lacey and Willy find their mother dating an abusive man. When Lacey frees Willy, he brutally kills the man which scars him for life. Now, Lacey (Suzanna Love) is trying to make a life for herself with her son and husband, and Willy (Nicholas Love) remains mute since the incident. When Lacey’s psychiatrist (John Carradine) recommends visiting the house of the murder to get through her problems, Lacey sees the killer in a mirror. Breaking the mirror, Lacey accidentally unleashes the evil. Now, the Boogeyman is coming for Lacey, Jake, and her family.
Directed by Ulli Lommel, The Boogey Man (also seen as The Boogeyman) was a low budget horror film and combined a slasher film with a supernatural film. The film gained a small cult following.
I remember the poster for The Boogey Man more than the actual film. I don’t recall ever seeing it, but the fun image of someone watching from outside the window was a perfect ’80s horror look (plus that is a big fear of mine)…unfortunately like most movie posters like this, the movie doesn’t quite reach that horror. With a movie with a title The Boogey Man, you need a good boogeyman…not a guy in pantyhose that does not do anything.
I’m sorry, but you blew the budget on me…now you have no cool Boogey Man!
The Boogey Man can’t find a direction. The start of the movie has the characters killing “the Boogeyman” and it essentially seems like it is going to turn into a horror stalker movie along the lines of Silent Night, Deadly Night with Willy taking up after the crazed man. Then it turns into a supernatural movie where the cursed mirror holds the boogeyman and pieces of the mirror arbitrarily fall off and arbitrarily make people go mad or psychically attack them…It doesn’t make much sense since the abilities of the boogeyman seem rather arbitrary.
The acting is pretty poor. The movie brought in a big gun in John Carradine and apparently blew their budget on his short appearance. Both Suzanna Love and Nicholas Love struggle (they are actually brother and sister) with the horror and the sequences that aren’t horrific. The casting of Suzanna Love actually is more due to Suzanne’s financing her husband (the director Ulli Lommel) with her money as an heir to the Dupont fortune.
Mirror Eye!!! The ultimate in terror!
The special effects for The Boogey Man shouldn’t have been an issue. The idea of a boogeyman is scary in its nature…but the movie didn’t decide to utilize this fear. Instead, they decided to go with this magic mirror thing and had scenes like “the killer eye” which apparently is magic. It doesn’t make much sense and it doesn’t look good…the makers should have gone a different direction.
The Boogey Man wasn’t what it needed to be and wasn’t scary. I love a monster movie that uses basic fears to scare, and The Boogey Man failed to deliver. If you are a fan of bad movies, you might want to check it out, for the fun of early ’80s horror. The Boogey Man was followed-up by a semi sequel in The Boogeyman II in 1983.
