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| Images courtesy of Kino Lorber |
Companies like Blue Underground and Kino Lorber Studio
Classics and more recently their Kino Cult sublabel have had a funny habit of
doing 4K UHD restorations replete with Dolby Vision and HDR passthroughs for
movies that really don’t have much business looking this good or having such
loving attention shown upon them. While
a good number of classics old and new are still making their way to
high-definition let alone 4K UHD, it is remarkable how many little regional
exploitation horror flicks get a new gold sheen not even its makers could’ve
foreseen. In the case of Kino Lorber
Studio Classics, their latest 4K UHD licensed from Paramount Pictures comes in
the form of Hangar 18 director James L. Conway’s 1981 monster movie The
Boogens, a taut little wintry Denver set mining thriller predating such
backyard produced fare as The Strangeness best remembered for getting
Stephen King’s endorsement on the poster art.
A small team of miners descend upon an abandoned Denver,
Colorado based silver mine originally closed up a century ago after a deadly cave-in
dubbed the Black Friday Mine Disaster came to pass with instructions by
company men to reopen the mine. After hiring
sleazeball Roger (Jeff Harlan) and his buddy Mark (Fred McCarren) to blow a
hole into the mine wall, the unassuming duo inadvertently unearth a hidden
underground lake alive with strange spider-like creatures with turtle heads
called The Boogens with a particular thirst for human flesh. After a long hard day’s work, Roger and Mark
rent a cabin before inviting Roger’s girlfriend Jessica (Anne-Marie Martin) and
her bookworm friend in tow Trish (Rebecca Balding) who recently took up a job
at the local newspaper. Unbeknownst to
the younglings save for Trish who starts doing her own investigation, the
creatures have come out while a strange elder (Jon Lormer from Creepshow)
tries with any means necessary to ward off the creatures while sealing the mine
back shut.
Coasting on the then-budding craze for mining horror movies
ala the aforementioned The Strangeness and My Bloody Valentine with
a little bit of monster movie creature feature madness afoot with one of the most
unusual tentacled spider monsters not from a Shinya Tsukamoto film, The
Boogens though R rated and aimed at the teen horror crowd feels like
something borne out of the 1950s drive-in heyday. Regional and on a tight budget while taking
full advantage of the winter setting and mining locations, the film emerged
from an ordinarily family friendly company in their first feature aimed at
adult audiences. Co-written by eventual Fatal
Instinct author David O’Malley and Hangar 18 author Tom Chapman, it
is a loving throwback to drive-in monster movies of the 1950s despite having nudity,
blood and gore as needed. Even when the
monster finally reveals itself as a prosthetic creation with hasty
puppeteering, invoking perhaps unintentional snickers, the charm of this lean
mean little monster movie is infectious.
Released independently by Jensen Farley Pictures, the
$600,000 little monster movie took in a staggering $3 million, making it a bona
fide drive-in hit. Reviews in general
were negative but that didn’t stop horror fans and longtime followers of 50s
monster movies from flocking in droves. Curiously
however, the film never received an official home video release until 1997 when
Republic Pictures put it out on VHS. After
languishing in videotape Hell for decades, Paramount Pictures subsidy Olive
Films took up the charge in 2012 with a DVD and blu-ray disc release. Prompting today’s review, Kino Lorber went
several steps further by giving the film a 4K scan from the original 35mm
camera negative and pressing it to a UHD disc replete with newly recorded audio
commentaries and a video featurette with creature designer William Munns.
Stephen King’s endorsement of The Boogens is fitting
considering the kind of silly quirky, playfully spooky attitude of Creepshow
which on the one hand is determined to scare but on the other has its
tongue firmly planted in cheek. Director
James L. Conway later in his career would blossom into a prolific television
director including but not limited to Smallville, Star Trek: The Next
Generation and Beverly Hills 90210.
Most of the amateurish cast has gone on to other horror features
including scream queen Rebecca Balding from Silent Scream, but this is
far from being a career launcher. While
the mining or cave horror premise seems to have hit its apex a few years ago
with The Descent and further with As Above So Below, it is fun to
reel back to a time when horror filmmakers were just finding out the
claustrophobic possibilities of the concept.
Yes it is a regional beer and pizza monster movie but you could do much
worse with two hours.
--Andrew Kotwicki
