It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

UK VHS title - Revenge of the Bogey Man. I acknowledge that The Bogey Man was no classic but I have a soft spot for it. So back in the 1980's when I saw it's sequel on the shelf in my local video store I was over the moon. Boy, was I in for a disappointment! At least half of Revenge's running time is footage from the original. John Carradine's name appears in the opening credits yet only delivers a few words (stock footage). The new footage consists mainly of a group of people chatting around a Hollywood home. When they do start getting bumped off we get such pathetic treats such as death by toothbrush, by car exhaust, etc. As for the promised "Carrie" style ending, what a load of rubbish. How this made the "Video Nasty" list in the UK I just don't know. Just shows what a farce the whole affair was.

Writer/director Ulli Lommel is nowadays a very notorious and even quite hated individual because he unleashes multiple downright insufferable straight-to-video horror stinkers on the market every single year, but there once was a time when he was a promising filmmaker. In the very earliest phase of his career he made the near-brilliant "The Tenderness of Wolves" and throughout the early eighties he made a handful of inferior but highly amusing horror movies, like "Brain Waves", "The Devonsville Terror" and "The Boogeyman". That last one is definitely a minor 80's classic. The story is pure hokum, but the film is full of absurdly grotesque murder sequences and extreme gore. Ulli Lommel and his buddies must have been so proud on their accomplishment that they decided to re-use all the best footage to fill up almost three quarters of the sequel. Yes, you read that right: "Boogeyman II" is stuffed like a Christmas turkey with key footage of the original, and that's the main reason why it receives so many negative reviews around here. Personally I didn't mind all that much, because it's been a couple of years since I watched it. This way, I get to re-watch all the fun parts (like that awesome mouth-to-mouth impalement sequence) without having to sit through the dull parts. Part two takes place in Hollywood, where survivor Lacey is staying with friends to recover from her trauma. Through long and extremely detailed flashbacks, Lacey tells the story about the murderous spirit in the little piece of mirror to befriended actress and her husband director (played by Ulli Lommel himself, with his atrocious German accent). Naturally they want to exploit Lacey's bizarre thriller story and turn it into a horror movie, but then the Boogeyman returns to kill them all during a typical Hollywood pool party. "Boogeyman II" is 50 minutes of stock footage and 25 minutes of non-stop new murders. The new massacres are very lame in comparison with those of the original, though. Death by electric toothbrush and suffocation in shaving gel, for example. The film still got included in the infamous list of video nasties, but only because of the stock footage of the original and not because of the ridiculous new murder set pieces.

The version of Boogeyman II I will be commenting on is the 'Director's Cut' entitled Boogeyman Redux on screen & released on DVD which has newly shot on video footage inserted into a an absolute mess of clips form the first two Boogeyman films. Boogeyman Redux starts with some footage from Boogeyman (1980) & then cuts to Mickey Lombard (Ulli Lommel) in shades & a baseball cap sitting at a table being filmed presumably by the police as he is read his rights after being charged with murder. Art film director Lombard begins to tell his story, a story that began 22 years ago when a woman came to him & told him a strange story about some killing committed by the boogeyman & that he should make a film about them. Boogeyman Redux is then just sequence after sequence of footage from the original Boogeyman, huge chunks of it are used & probably account for 90% of Boogeyman Redux's running time. The remaining 10% is interview footage with Lombard as he bridges the chunks together & annoyingly there is footage taken from Boogeyman II (1983) which for some reason Lommel has decided to speed up & replace the soundtrack with an awful electronic score, once all the good scenes from the original Boogeyman are used Boogeyman Redux ends. Directed by Ulli Lommel this has to be one of the worst films ever, please bear in mind that I'm referring to the 'Director's Cut' DVD version & NOT the Boogeyman II I thought I was getting. In fact I have seen the original cut of Boogeyman II years ago & I would be interested in comparing the two. Basically just about the entire film is footage from Boogeyman with a few sections cut out, it's like it was cut down for an hour TV time-slot with some of the more boring exposition scenes cut out & the Lombard interview scenes in place of the commercials as they're about as entertaining & useful. The sped up footage from Boogeman II is worthless & the bits with Lommel as Lombard being interrogated by the police are obviously shot on video & look out of place & as tacked on as they surely were. The abomination I just finished watching is an absolute travesty that I still can't quite believe. Why didn't they just keep Boogeyman II as it was & release that? It's been a long time since I watched it last but I remember it being a hell of a lot better than this pile of donkey crap. There really isn't much else to say except just watch the original Boogeyman instead, it's virtually the same as this just without the annoying Lommel popping up every 10 or 15 minutes & doesn't have the frustrating sped up footage from Boogeyman II, this is a complete mess of a film & I hated it. Definitely one to avoid, trust me you'll be glad you did. In fact Boogeyman Redux is so bad I'd walk out on it on an aeroplane.

Boogeyman II Redux (1983) was Ulli Lommel's re-editing of the first Boogeyman with new footage of himself as "the director" being interviewed about the murders that were committed in the first movie. Why was this done? Well, Ulli Lommel wanted to create his perfect vision of the movie, a cut of the film that he always wanted to do (and also to keep retaining the rights to Boogeyman). According to him as long as he uses the movie in some way he retains the rights to it in the North American market. He also gets to exorcise the faults of the sequel and recreate it as his own. If you haven't seen the first film then you'll enjoy it more than if you never watched the original.The "Redux" also features two "trailers" for future Boogeyman sequels (one is for the rarely seen Return of the Boogeyman and another is a hybrid of two of Lommel's other films "War Birds" and "U.F.O." The clip for Boogeyman 5 is pieces of those films edited together with a couple of scenes from The Boogeyman. Okay Mr. Lommel we get the joke already. Well whenever he releases those films outright or if he releases the long awaited Part four onto the rest of the world we'll never know. All I wish for is that he release his entire catalog on d.v.d. I will be one of the many that'll by his films because I actually enjoy his style of film making.Despite what people say, the spliced in footage doesn't look bad and Boogeyman II Redux is worth another look at. Keeping in mind with what Ulli Lommel wanted to create in the first place.Recommended for horror fans of those of Ulli Lommel.