So, sorry for the extremely long delay in posting this. I'm going to do my best to salvage the rest of the month, and to cover what I meant to cover in the weeks following. This was intended to go up the third and fourth of this month, but due to the convention I went to, plus an unexpected allergy, I was down for a little bit and then got sidetracked with other things, so everything got pushed back more and more. But, I'm ready to finish off the week!
So, this post finds us with a supernatural slasher, 1980's film The Boogeyman, and its 1994 sequel, Return of the Boogeyman. There was another sequel in there, The Boogeyman II, but I didn't get a chance to see that one. The Boogeyman took a bit of flack from critics for supposedly cribbing stuff from Halloween and The Exorcist. Were there similarities? Maybe a few.
The film begins with two kids, Willy and Lacey, as they watch their mom getting a bit intimate with her boyfriend, whose head she covers with the panty hose she's wearing. Seeing the kids watching through the window, she yells at them and the boyfriend grabs Willy and drags him to his room, tying him to his own bed and gagging him as Lacey watches on. Soon afterwards, Lacey brings a knife in and cuts Willy free. Willy and Lacey sneak up to the room where Mom and the boyfriend are still making out, him still wearing the panty hose on his head. As Lacey watches in the mirror, Willy creeps up and stabs the boyfriend in the bed.
Twenty years later, the children have grown up into not-so-adjusted adults. Willy hasn't spoken a word since that night (and has secretly been collecting sharp knives in his top drawer). Lacey is married, with a little boy, but her guilt over the incident is starting to carry over into her everyday life. Trying to find refuge in both religion and psychology, she freezes up during dinner when she spots a mirror. A later encounter with the original mirror unleashes a murderous force on anyone in its vicinity.
I'm sort of on the fence with this film. On the one hand, I was entertained by it, which is the goal of any movie out there, but I felt that it could have been more. The climax is exciting, but not a lot happens leading up to it. The rest of the film just felt like... buildup. Other than the boyfriend getting stabbed, there aren't a lot of killings leading up to the finale, which causes the film to sort of drag on. The film's villain felt less like a boogeyman and more like Death in Final Destination, except more outgoing and manipulative of events. Some may say it's just a product of its time, but many films before and after it gave a better feeling to me than this one did.
Adult Lacey was portrayed by Suzanna Love, the wife of the director, Ulli Lommel, at the time, and also co-wrote the script with him. She was also in The Devonsville Terror, BrainWaves and the original sequel, The Boogeyman II. Her brother, Nicholas Love, played her brother, Willy. He was also in Jennifer 8 and The Dead Pool. Probably the most famous actor in the film is the late, great John Carradine, playing psychiatrist Dr. Warren who Lacey turns to to try to exorcise her mental demons. His list of films is extremely long, with a few excerpts being The Monster Club (with Vincent Price), House of the Long Shadows (with Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), The Howling, and many more.
All in all, I give this film a 3 out of 5. It was alright, but it could've been a lot better. Now, the reason I decided to cover both of the films together is that they are extremely similar. So similar that the sequel uses a lot of footage from the first film! I figured I'd combine the film reviews like I did with Mystery of the Wax Museum and the original House of Wax last year.
So, The Return of the Boogeyman deals with a new woman, Annie, receiving psychic visions of the first film's events, along with flashes of current happenings. The psychic visions take the form of the footage from the original movie. In a way, it reminds me somewhat of the sequel to the original The Hills Have Eyes, which featured a LOT of flashbacks to the first film, as well. Even the dog flashed back in that one! Getting back to this film, Annie's been seeing what she calls the Faceless Man, really the Boogeyman from the first film still with the panty hose over his head. A psychiatrist, Dr. Love, is trying to help her sort out her visions. We only get one new kill in this film, with all the other deaths happening in footage from the first one.
There are some surface flaws that keep this movie down, most of which is the narration of the previous events. Lacey gets a new name, Natalie, from Annie as she looks to the past, and the aunt and uncle her and Willy were staying with are referred to as her parents (even though we see her mother in the flashbacks to the opening scenes of the film). A lot of this could be explained as Lacey considering her aunt and uncle as parents since they did raise her and her brother; also, the name change could be chalked up to what she thought Lacey's name was, like a miscommunication in how her psychic link works. However, these explanations are never given and that leaves a bit of confusion: one wonders if the original names were forbidden from use in this one, even though the same guy directed it.
All said, this is a rather mediocre effort. I hate to do it, but I give the film a 2 out of 5. The presentation of the original film again (something that was also done in The Boogeyman II, apparently) wrapped up in very little new footage just didn't work for me. So, that concludes my reviews of The Boogeyman films. If I get a chance to see The Boogeyman II (aka, Revenge of the Boogeyman), I'll be sure to add it to the site. Until next time, take care and this is Red Hawk signing out!
