I wanted to but couldn't!

Better Late Then Never

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

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.

"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.

John Carradine was in some of the greatest films ever made as a supporting player. But that sonorous speaking voice was forever in demand for various horror flicks and he willingly obliged. Just as soon as my paycheck clears I'll speak anything you want.In The Boogey Man however Carradine's penchant for scenery chewing when he knew he was in crap was not even utilized in The Boogey Man. Instead he plays a psychiatrist listening to the tales of horror from a woman who has unleashed the spirit of The Boogey Man who when he was flesh and blood was murdered when he was doing the deed with her mother.This one is not even for John Carradine fans who like to hear his voice. He's dull and the rest of the cast emote on the level of a grade school play.

Lacey and Willy are young siblings forced to endure life with an unpleasant mother and her mean lover (husband? boyfriend?). The man has a penchant for wearing a stocking over his face and tying Willy to his bed. One night, Lacey frees Willy from his bonds and he kills Pantyhose Man. Apparently, this doesn't matter much to anyone because we flash forward to a grown Lacey, living with her husband, young son, and Willy (who hasn't spoken since that fateful night). Lacey and Willy aren't without their issues (understandably!) and Lacey's husband thinks a trip to her childhood home will help. While in the bedroom where the murder occurred, she sees Pantyhose Man coming toward her, freaks out, and smashes the mirror. And now things start to roll, because it's the possessed mirror that's causing all the problems. According to an old belief, a mirror can store what it's "seen" and if it's broken, it can release its past. Or something. Pieces of the mirror glow and stuff goes down, and that's all you really need to know. Once I accepted that the slasher in this slasher movie wasn't a person but was instead a mirror, I could kind of go with it. It wasn't great, it certainly didn't deserve to be a "video nasty" because not much really happened, but it was an adequate time killer.Where it did succeed for me was in atmosphere. I was alive in the late 70s/early 80s and the way that the film was shot and the locations that were chose really did take me back in time.ff

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.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com