User reviews

This is a fairly suspenseful and horrifying story with simple special effects. It starts when through the reflection in a mirror, a little girl witnesses her brother kills their mother's lover . The weird mirror is possessed by strange spirit. Several years later, one time grown-up, this records still haunt her. She(Suzanne Love, director wife who starred many his films) is assisted by therapist Dr. Warren(John Carradine). Then, the mirror is now broken revealing again its ominous powers. Caught in a series of otherwordly events, she becomes inextricably involved in creepy murders .

This spooky movie packs terror, tight pacing, bone-chilling scenes, tension, grisly killings and numerous images have you on the edge of your seat.It's a very average little horror movie and has some cool death scenes. The film emphasizes the bloody, cruel and disgustful killings. The script stretches plausibility to the breakpoint point for a massacre final. Frightening musical score imitating partially to Mike Oldfield's Tubular bells from 'The exorcist'. It's followed by 'Boogeyman 2' continuing the plot, similar footage and new director; Ulli Lommel acted and co-written this follow-up. Furthermore recent version, very different to original : 'Boogeyman, 2005' by Stephen T. Kay with Barry Watson and Emily Deschanel and 'Boogeyman 2,' by Jeff Betancourt with Rene O'Connor and Tobin Bell.

The film is middling directed by Ulli Lommel, he's a German born actor and director with a long career in both US and Europe and known by his collaboration with Rainer W. Fassbinder and Andy Warhol(who produced him two movies : Blank generation and Cocaine cowboys). In 1988 he changed to Hollywood and directed 'Boogey man', that became in Box office success, grossing millions of dollars worldwide. Later , made 'Olivia, Brainwaves, Devonsville terror' and several movies with little budget, such as 'Black Dahlia and curse of the Zodiac', among them.

surprising because Ulli Lommel was involved in writing directing and producing this thing.i didn't realise Lommel was behind it until i got it home.by then figured what the hey.i mean how bad could it be,right.after all,i managed to see at least some of Lommel's other travesties,B.T.K and Black Dalia.those were putrid.The Boogeyman however,is not.it has interesting story,some decent performances,and some unusual music/sound effects.it is readily apparent a low budget production,but i could watch it all,without having to pause to vomit,so that's something.no classic by any means,but still...for me The Boogeyman is a 5/10

Dealing with a childhood trauma, Lacey and Willy must overcome their fears and survive the wrath of The Boogey Man

The movie opens up to a woman seducing a man while her two young children watch from the window, unbeknownst to them. When the kids get caught, the man ties up the male child to his bed. Lacey lets Willy loose with a large butcher knife which he uses to then kill the man who is having sex with his mother all while Lacey watches. Fast forward 20 years and we see that Lacey and Willy are all grown up, with Willie being mute from the traumatic events of that night. Lacey is also dealing with trauma of her own as she freaks out each time she sees a knife.

Her boyfriend Jake thinks it might be a good idea if she sees a hypnotist and goes back to the house where it all happened in order to move beyond the trauma. While visiting the house, Lacey sees the man from 20 years ago that was killed. After Lacey destroys the mirror, Jake decides to take it back home with them and use it in order to have Lacey face her fears. The spirit of the dead man appears to be in the mirror as it causes people to either kill themselves or get killed whenever they look into a piece of it's glass.

The Boogeyman is an odd early 80's horror flick that falls into both the slasher and supernatural horror sub genres. A lot of the movie doesn't make sense or isn't explained well enough at least. I get the angle Ulli Lommell was going for with the haunted mirror, but it fails to make a lot of sense in the film. Boogeyman takes a lot of elements from horror movies like Halloween, The Exorcist and Amityville Horror which is obvious. But blending all of those themes/sub genres together like they did in this movie left me feeling like it was a bit of a mess.

The acting was forgettable except for Suzanna Love who played the main character Lacey. She was actually not too bad in this low budget slasher. I also give The Boogeyman credit for it's overall gore and death scenes. There were some super effective killings including some neck stabbings and bloody eyes. I just expected so much more from an 80's movie with this terrific title. So much more could have been done to make this an actual scary movie.

Overall, The Boogeyman is a watchable 80's horror flick that takes many ideas from successful scary movies before it's time. I'd watch it at least once and make your own conclusions.

5/10

After a flashback opening, complete with child abuse and brutal murder (in blatant HALLOWEEN fashion), THE BOOGEY MAN shifts to 20 years later. Willy (Nicholas Love) and his sister, Lacey (Suzanna Love) are now adults. Willy is unable to speak, but Lacey seems just fine. Having left their ordeal behind them, they live a seemingly idyllic life on their uncle's farm.

However, Lacey suffers from nightmares, causing her husband to take her back to her childhood home to face her fears. This isn't a good idea. A supernatural event takes place involving an old mirror. The creep factor skyrockets from this point, as a great eeevil is unleashed to cause death and destruction! A priest is called in, and the paranormal $h!t hits the fan!

Made almost entirely of grade-A cheeeze-corn, TBM is still very enjoyable, in spite of sub-par acting, dreadful dialogue, and a laughable plot. Several "scary" scenes evoke more giggles than chills. To be fair, it does have a semi-macabre atmosphere, and the story is original.

Co-stars John Carradine in an extended cameo role as Dr. What's-his-name...

Just plain ridiculous film that opens with a three-year old girl and her slightly older brother being asked to stay outside while mom and boyfriend have some fun. Children spy on lovers and then boyfriend ties boy up. Sister gets huge knife to untie him and brother does the next most natural thing...he stabs the lover repeatedly whilst in bed with his mother. Guess what happens next? Yep, the movie goes forward 20 years. Haven't we seen something like this before? Yep, John Carpenter did it in Halloween and a parade of cheap imitators followed. No different here. But what is different is that this film is at least unique in what it asks its viewers to believe. We just don't have some psychopathic killer from the past...in this film, the young girl is grown up with a child living with husband, some of his family, and the brother who is now mute due to his terrible past. She begins to have recurring nightmares when a letter is received by her mother asking to visit. We never see the mother in the film. The heroine goes with husband to the old house. She sees the man her brother killed in a mirror, smashes the mirror, and releases him to the world as some bloody, crazed, asthmatic killer. When you see a sliver of the mirror, he is there. When you see a shiny bit of mirror focused in your direction, you cannot escape him. He, now after just being a guy killed in an exposition piece, is "the Boogeyman." Why? Anyway, this is where the film really gets bad, and though I could rant for hours about what's wrong, I will confess that this film had me in stitches for some of its bloody awful scenes. The first time we see a sliver we hear this loud heart beating and very heavy breathing. Director Ulli Lommel doesn't want any chance that we might not know that sliver means this invisible predator is about. A girl sticks scissors in her throat and a young boy, not knowing his sister is dead, puts his head in window and yells "watch out for the Boogeyman" and then the asthmatic sound track comes on and the window shuts down hard on the kid's neck. It was such a poor, ludicrous scene that I just broke out laughing. Other scenes were just as humorous. The fishing scene has a sliver somehow miraculously jammed on the kid's boot, and while he is fishing it goes all over the place(the reflection that is)including an abandoned house and a car a goodly distance from the house in a wooded lot. What was the kid doing on the dock...Riverdance? The ending scenes are equally bad, and this film, for me, just had no credibility. It has an interesting premise, a deadly mirror, but there are obvious cheap elements stolen from Halloween, Amityville Horror(there is a priest in this too), and other like films. Suzanna Love "stars" as Lacey the young girl. She is the director's wife. Horror veteran John Carradine plays a brief role as a psychiatrist and gives one of his more restrained performances.

While it isn't a masterpiece, this movie really doesn't deserve such a low rating. It's clearly made with love and style and even has some passable acting and effects for it's low budget. Sadly, it's nothing groundbreaking and would be quickly discarded by casuals, so that's the reason I recommend it to horror movie fans. Don't expect a masterpiece. Expect a low budget passion work that clearly has it's flaws, but can serve as a nice afternoon entertainment. 5.8/10!

Young Lacey (Natasha Schiano) is forced to watch as her brother Willy (Jay Wright) stabs their mothers' lover to death with a big, sharp kitchen knife. Also witness to the killing is a bedroom mirror. 20 years later, the now-grown-up Lacey (Suzanna Love) and Willy (Nicholas Love, Suzanna's real-life brother) are living with an aunt & uncle on their farm. Willy, although mute, seems to be dealing with this dark past better than her; in desperation, her husband Jake (Ron James) tries to make her face her fears, but he only makes things worse. Now, Lacey is afraid that the lovers' vengeful spirit has been released from the mirror and is out for blood.

Overall, the script (by producer & director Ulli Lommel, Suzanna Love (his real-life wife at the time), and David Herschel is pretty slight, and sloppy. But Lommel, who had a background in art films, still creates a funky and amusing supernatural slasher that plays like a mash-up of "The Exorcist" and "Halloween". (Not for nothing is the fact that the farmhouse is very "Amityville"-esque.) The pacing is actually pretty good, and the film is over before the viewer knows it. Once the story really kicks into gear, "The Boogey Man" is quite fun, and colourful, with some very enjoyable splatter effects (and a sense of humour). Eventually, it can't help but get rather cheesy, but the finale is a genuine hoot regardless.

The gorgeous Suzanna acts her little heart out in the lead. The supporting cast is variable; most of these no-names are obvious amateurs. Token "name" cast member John Carradine, one of those old-time veterans who said "yes" to a lot of scripts in order to keep earning a living, is kind of wasted as a psychiatrist. Nicholas L. does an okay job as the unsmiling sibling.

One point of interest is the sometimes offbeat and sometimes catchy electronic soundtrack composed by Tim Krog. It's very reminiscent, at times, of the legendary "Tubular Bells".

Lightly amusing horror fare, with some entertaining special effects. It was followed three years later by "Boogeyman II".

Seven out of 10.

Other than "THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR" (which I didn't particularly care for). I'm fairly new to Ulli Lommel's work, but I gotta say the shoe-string budgeted "THE BOOGEYMAN" was rather a nice surprise. In spite of its stilted nature (especially the scenes involving John Carradine's psychobabble), there's something rather interesting, creative, visually enticing and uncanny around its process of a supernatural slasher. Maybe even a pioneer for the sub-genre, as what felt like a thematic blueprint, still with some slasher influences, eventually goes down its own path. How the plot goes about it early, I thought it was going to be more traditional, where we get a psychological based psychopathic breakdown (the brother), and one's attempt (the sister) to overcome their demons, but once the mirror (the evil entity's source of power) comes into the picture. There begins the supernatural interference, and it doesn't hold back.

An invisible force, POV shots, heavy breathing, floating objects, glowing neon special effects and a growing death toll, as one by one people's fates end in a rather horrific, and jolting demise. These victims just seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's nothing out of the ordinary, can come across as crude, and at this point the story does begin to get sloppy in the details, yet it manages to pack a sting. Lommel's low-scale aesthetics do construct some stylish usage from its leering camerawork, moody lighting, stately rural backdrop (with a farmhouse resembling "AMITYVILLE HORROR") and minimal set-pieces. But the real talking point is that screwy electronic music score. It perfectly adds to the strange, traumatic vibe of the escalating insanity of the situations. Something that once it starts definitely won't leave your head. The acting is quite sound, and Suzanna Love shows she has quite a set of lungs on her.

"The Boogey Man" won't change your life, but if you've got eighty minutes to fill on a lazy summer evening, you could do a lot worse. The story revolves around pretty, charismatic Suzanna Love and her brother, who suddenly find themselves tormented by memories of a traumatic past. When they were children, the brother killed their mother's abusive lover...who comes back to haunt the siblings in just about the oddest conceivable manner. Derivative in spots, with a few subpar performances, but Love ably carries this relentlessly eerie film; horror icon John Carradine has a cameo as a psychiatrist who tries to convince our heroine that there is a rational explanation for the increasingly strange events in her life. Not the stuff of classics, but pretty good of its type.

Ulli Lommel's "The Boogeyman" is a reasonably creepy and atmospheric 80's horror effort, but ultimately lacking since it expects you to believe nonsense about supernaturally possessed mirrors and trapped murderous spirits homing inside them. As a downbeat and gruesome shocker, however, the film is much more efficient than most of its colleagues on the notorious "video-nasty" list. Personally, I didn't really care who or what was responsible for the slaughters, since they were all extremely graphic and slowly built up with detailed tension. By the way, any horror movie that has the courage to feature a cold-blooded child's murder is a winner in my book. The story, as mentioned before, is very inane and actually even a bit too overly pretentious for its own good. Lacey and her mute brother William (well, he's not really a mute, he just decided to stop talking at one point) are living on their relatives' farm ever since Willy killed his mother's crazed lover at young age. Lacey witnessed the murder in a mirror and never really recovered from the trauma. When she returns to her parental house and breaks the mirror, the dead bloke's vengeful spirit is set free and most anxious to go on a wild killing spree. As difficult as it may sound, you should pay as less attention to the illogical plot as possible and fully enjoy the well-crafted gory moments & grim ambiance. The acting's far above average, with also a memorable guest appearance of horror veteran John Carradine as Lacey's not-so-helpful psychiatrist. With a slightly more plausible script, or maybe just a good old-fashioned killer of flesh & blood, "The Boogeyman" could have been a genuine 80's classic. Now it's more like a guilty pleasure.

Ulli Lommel directed this rancid little horror film about a couple of kids who kill their neglectful mother's abusive boyfriend. Years later the now grown kids, the boy now a mute man, the girl now a somewhat hot woman, return to their childhood house to find that the bedroom mirror has become possessed by the evil that it witnessed all those years ago. Poor poor Ulli, he's to horror films as Uwe Boll is to video game adaptations and while this film is miles above the utter drivel he'd later churn out, that's a sad testament to how awful he's gotten at writing rather than a praise of this one. As apart from one bizarre yet amusing death sequence, this movie is simply unwatchable.

My Grade: D-

Where I saw it: Fearnet on Demand

Like many horror films back in the 1980's (and even today), The Boogeyman takes its influence from John Carpenter's landmark in horror, Halloween (1978). While Michael Myers was the physical embodiment of the 'boogeyman' legend (I say legend, but it is more a term given to whatever scares little children at night), Ulli Lommel's shockingly s**t video nasty goes the extra mile and adds a supernatural spin to the story in the shape of a haunted mirror.

The quite effective opening has a young girl and boy spying on their slutty mother as she seduces a man with a stocking on his head. They are spotted, and the man ties the boy to a bed while they have sex in another room. The girl cuts him loose with a large knife, and the boy then uses it to murder the man. Years later, the boy Willy (Nicholas Love) is mute, and the girl, Lacey (Suzanna Love), is psychologically troubled by the events of her childhood. Her psychiatrist Dr. Warren (John Carradine, looking like he's hoping nobody will notice his presence in the film) advises her husband Jake (Ron James) that she should go back to her childhood home to confront her demons. She does, and while there she sees the man wearing the stocking in the bedroom mirror, which she smashes. Jake pieces together the mirror and takes it home, when strange deaths start occurring.

Yes, this is as daft as it sounds. Horror movies have long made killers out of strange things (tomatoes, clowns, a house), but a mirror that influences suicides? Mmm. It's one of the strangest choices for a killer 'bad guy' I've come across in horror since the strangely likable Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977). If anything, this at least separates it from other mundane entries into the slasher genre, but the film struggles along trying to juggle a story a sibling connection, psychological torment, and standard stalk-and-slash. There is a half- decent death involving a 'long kiss', but apart from this, it is instantly forgettable.

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More like a languid summer day dream. Boring story, limp film making, bad acting...just not much to brag about here.

A young girl witnesses a murder and gets traumatized and her brother goes nuts and an evil spirit has possessed a mirror and...ah who cares? Most viewers won't even finish it anyways.

Cheap production values do nothing to help a story in dire need of an interesting event...any interesting event. Nothing about the script is put together well; from the dialogue to the plot "twists" it is all amateur stuff.

Acting is on par with the script (ie: it sucks). It is clear why none of these thespians ever moved onto bigger better things. The only noteworthy player is the lead actress, who while not even remotely a good actor is at least quite attractive.

The only positive element in the film (or the opposite if you are a moralist) are the murder scenes. Cheesy though they may be, they are packed with plenty of running crimson and have an unpleasant kind of sadism to them, even including some pointless sexual tones.

What we have here is a bad film that gained notoriety by being black listed in England as a video nasty and would have (should have) disappeared long ago if moral purists would have just left it alone.

4/10

After the surprise success of Carpenter's HALLOWEEN, about a hundred imitations quickly followed between 1979 and 1982. Some of these, like Friday THE 13TH, even spawned their own imitations. However, one of these slashers took events in a slightly different direction; it still had the same gruesome murders, but this time the killer was trapped inside a mirror. This film was THE BOGEY MAN.

In the opening scenes, the HALLOWEEN influence is clear, with a young boy murdering his mother's lover. The murders are all staged with relish, and most of them are absurd enough to be funny. The acting is substandard (what do you expect from an '80s slasher?) and the music is ripped straight off HALLOWEEN, with the familiar tinkling tune and point of view killer shots. A character is killed with kitchen cutlery in a scene ripped from CARRIE, while a girl speaks in a demonic voice, just like in THE EXORCIST. These are just two of the scenes you'll spot from other films.

It's good to see John Carradine in another role, but like most of his latter day films, he's only in it for a few minutes. It's enough. THE BOGEY MAN enjoys the notorious reputation of having been banned as a 'video nasty' in this enlightened country of ours, and therefore there is a kind of dirty, gritty feel to be had while watching it. It's not in the least bit disturbing as the video cover would have you believe though ("However, some may still consider the content to be unsuitable viewing material, and find certain scenes to be disturbing or offensive. IF IN DOUBT, DO NOT VIEW"). Vipco certainly made their films sound interesting, it's just a shame that the version they released is the cut one. Still, THE BOGEY MAN is a slasher with a slightly more inventive premise than most, and it passes the time quite amiably. Just don't expect it to be another HALLOWEEN when watching...

I first saw this in the late 80s on a vhs n found it to be pretty disturbing and creepy.

Of course as a kid i didn't notice the blatant plagiarism but simply enjoyed the movie.

Revisited it recently n was kinda wtf man. It has shades of Amityville Horror, Halloween n a bit of The Exorcist regarding the exorcism.

The movie is still creepy n atmospheric but it has too many silly n wtf moments.

I always found Susanna Love beautiful but her filmography is too short.

Now lets talk bah some wtf stuff.

The mother's lover aint some voodoo specialist or some satanic cultist serial killer but his spirit gets trapped inside some ordinary mirror. Why n how, its never shown.

Lacey's husband Jake took the broken mirror n placed it in his home n tried fixing the broken pieces? Weird fella. Now who wud do that?

How come the mirror stayed intact for twenty years n none of the new owners tried to get rid of an old stuff?

Lacey's brother does the act from Of Mice and Men, he tries to kill a girl who seduces him in the barn. Now whether he gets possessed or he is simply a psycho is never shown.

In the end its never shown whether the priest survived or not?

What happened to the injured Jake?

And why wud they show Lacey visiting just a single grave when both her uncle n aunt died?

Why Jake didn't accompany her?

Till the end they never showed what happened to the mother and its just assumed that she is on her deathbed via the letter.