The '80s horror flick, The Boogeyman finally comes home in a bluray package.
A vintage slasher flick from the height of the genre's first
bloody wave, The Boogeyman was a staple of the 1980s home video horror
boom. Anyone who browsed video store shelves in the '80s or early-'90s will
likely remember its eye-grabbing big-box release from Wizard Video, which was
one of the iconic label's most prominent and widely-distributed titles. Yet
that time-capsule-ish remembrance is about where The Boogeyman's
pop-cultural impact ends: for some reason it never quite developed the lasting
cult following that some of the other second-tier slashers like The Burning
and Sleepaway Camp managed to, and has largely been forgotten. Perhaps
this is because of its indifferent – and often out-of-print – DVD releases, or
perhaps it just gets lost in the sea of similar films that came out around the
same time. But now The Boogeyman has arrived on Blu-ray for the first
time, thanks to an all-region release from the UK's 88 Films (under its British
title, The Bogeyman – with the American title included on a reversible
sleeve). With an impressive transfer and a new retrospective interview with
writer/director Ulli Lommel, this forgotten slasher deserves another look; but
will it hold up as a worthy entry in the genre, or is it best remembered as a
cool oversized VHS box?
At a glance, what stands out most about The Boogeyman
is the pedigree of its writer/director. Ulli Lommel began his career as a
colleague and friend of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Andy Warhol, directing
minor cult classics like Tenderness of the Wolves, Blank Generation, and
Cocaine Cowboys, and acting in several of Fassbinder's films. Based on
that, one could easily expect from him a more unique vision or higher level of
artistry than most '80s low-budget horror directors; or at least a bit more
ambition. But a quick look at his more recent filmography – stuff like Zombie
Nation and B.T.K. Killer – should tip you off to the fact that this
guy is no Fassbinder. While The Boogeyman is a perfectly well-made
early slasher flick, Lommel seemed to have very little ambition to go beyond
the conventions of drive-in-style horror. While his early career may have made
him a pretty interesting guy, it didn't do much to make him a better director.
But that said, he didn't make a bad film; just not one that would redefine the
genre as we know it.
There is one thing about The Boogeyman that makes it
pretty unique for this first wave of slasher flicks: it has a supernatural
premise, with some sort of evil force filling in for the usual masked killer.
Weapons float around on their own searching for a victim, creepy telekinetic
stuff happens, disembodied voices say ominous things... the threat is definitely
a bit more interesting than your garden-variety deformed forest dweller with a
chip on his shoulder. But beyond that nifty twist on the formula, this is
by-the-books all the way, with particular reliance on tropes from Halloween.
Prologue in which something horrible happens involving one of the key players
as a child? Check. Horny teens who turn up for no reason except to be Boogeyman
fodder? Check. Oblivious protagonists who take an insanely long time to realize
that murders are happening all around them? Check. The supernatural twist
largely just means that The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror
are also fair game to borrow heavily from. The primary setting is a house that
looks suspiciously like the one from Amityville, and the musical score –
while pretty cool and classic early-80s – is clearly a hybrid of John Carpenter
and Tubular Bells.
But honestly, so what? Unoriginality was pretty much the name
of the game for the plot of any post-Friday the 13th slasher
flick, so that's hardly a crime or a deal-breaker. The question is: is it a fun
movie, and does it deliver in the slashings department? And for the most part,
the answer is yes. It's a bit slow to start, since none of the characters are
particularly strong, interesting, or well-acted (star Suzanna Love is no Jamie
Lee Curtis), but a guest appearance by John Carradine and a couple decent
nightmare sequences keep things moving until the Boogeyman shows up. From that
point onward, the movie basically doesn't care about anything except the
supernatural slasher sequences; it knows why viewers are watching, and isn't
concerned about narrative logic as long as it can get from one gore sequence to
the next. The typical stock teen victims are transparently unnecessary to the
plot, and only show up soon enough to die. Story-wise, this is a big weakness;
there just isn't any reason for us to care about them, like we do about the
much better-developed teen leads in films like Halloween. But the
sequences themselves are pretty strong, with decent suspense, creative kills,
and practical gore effects that – while not Tom Savini quality – are pretty
good for a low-budget genre entry. And a few of the sequences do make pretty
effective use of the supernatural killer's telekinetic abilities. One memorable
kill in particular offers a darkly comic twist on a famous moment from Friday
the 13th that genre fans should get a kick out of.
Visually the film is equally uneven, delivering the goods in
some parts while seeming totally ambivalent in others. The portions of the film
that are shot in the daytime look decent but unspectacular; again, Lommel had
no art-house aspirations here, and the cinematography is strictly utilitarian.
But the scenes that are set at night look pretty cool, with lots of the
stylized colored light that '80s horror films used so well. When the Boogeyman
comes, intense blues, pinks, reds, and greens are sure to follow. The film also
has a pretty nifty visual motif involving mirrors and reflections, which have
something to do with the killer's supernatural powers. The most interesting
shots in the film are the ones that use mirrors in their compositions, and give
the household objects a sense of foreboding.
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| "Mommy. Check this new knife out!! |
Watching the film after the release of 2013's Oculus,
I was struck by how that film's writer/director appears to have been influenced
by The Boogeyman. Oculus is a very different sort of film, in
both plot and style, but the stories start from a fairly similar jumping-off
point, involving childhood tragedy and horrors involving mirrors. It seems like
writer/director Mike Flanagan saw The Boogeyman on VHS as a kid, and it
made a big impression that remained in the back of his mind until he started
writing his own scripts as an adult.
Which just goes back to The Boogeyman as an artifact
of nostalgia from the days of renting horror movies on tape at the local video
store. It's probably best appreciated in that context, paired with its
once-ubiquitous oversized box from Wizard. It isn't a great movie – it's very
uneven, with its harmful apathy towards narrative logic – and 35 more years of
the same slasher tropes repeated over and over haven't done it any favors.
While the supernatural angle does help set it apart, what you will get is
pretty much a by-the-books early-80s slasher; no more, no less. For fans of the
genre, it's certainly worth a look, but it is hardly essential viewing.
However, it's great that 88 Films has finally given us this typically-neglected
title in high def, with a decently long interview with Ulli Lommel to put it
into perspective. And while it is a UK release, 88 Films should be thanked for
making it an all-region disc, so we Americans can enjoy it too (although we do
have to buy it direct from the 88 films web site, as Amazon annoyingly doesn't
carry it here). At the very least, it's good to know that companies like this
are so dedicated to giving lesser-known '80s cult horror films a home in the
high def age, showing such love and care to even more obscure, less unique
flicks like this one.
-Christopher S. Jordan