After revisiting The Devonsville Terror the other night I felt I needed to give The Boogey Man another try. I never really enjoyed it to the fullest, mostly because I think it's quite lame compared to other slasher-esque movies from the same time - and it feels obvious like Lommel just made it to make money, and absolutely nothing else.
Of course I have no idea what his purpose was, but after watching the first scene - a very shameless rip-off on John Carpenter's Halloween it feels like Lommel only was out trying to get back some money after a couple of more arty (and not really good) experiments in the United states.
I've always said - more as a joke - that the best thing with Lommel's movies are that they're often shorter than 80 minutes, but I'm serious. It's a good thing. Too many productions goes on forever and it's better to just make an entertaining movie and skip the more serious ambitions until next time - or never again. The Boogey Man is a very simple cash-in on the slasher-craze and have a pointless cameo by John Carradine. He's so underwritten his character is forgotten the same the left the screen. I know, I seem every negative here - but I'm not. I just like to point out some of the flaws before going to the positive words.
Lommel seems to have no clue how to make a horror movie and therefore he throws in everything he's seen recently. It has the same atmosphere as Halloween (and a couple of identical scenes...), uses a house very similar to The Amityville Horror, includes a Exorcist-like possession scene with a priest waving a cross + horny teenagers getting killed down by the lake. The Boogey Man have everything and it's a very entertaining mess.
Forget about gore. It have one really graphic scene - the famous scissors... still the best shock in the movie and it holds up quite well even today - but the rest is just splashing blood (which is not gore, something American reviwers should learn!) and very cheap effects. Lommel included different versions of the head-impalement in several of his movies after this one. He must have liked that a lot. Or just felt everyone should be reminded of his first big success.
The acting is okay-ish, Suzanna Love is alwasy good - so is Llewelyn Thomas as the priest. Suzanna's real brother Nicolas plays her brother here, not bad - but he delivers a very broad performance, something very hard to fail with.
You know, there's not much to say about The Boogey Man. It's very generic, slightly mad - very much Halloween (it even borrowed the title from what Dr Loomis says in Carpenter's classic) and 100 % mainstream. It's lame, but lame in a nice cozy way.
I didn't get bored. That's something.
"Of course I have no idea what his purpose was, but after watching the first scene - a very shameless rip-off on John Carpenter's Halloween it feels like Lommel only was out trying to get back some money after a couple of more arty (and not really good) experiments in the United states."
Well, I guess Lommel had bills to pay.
"The Boogey Man is a very simple cash-in on the slasher-craze and have a pointless cameo by John Carradine."
NO!
Having John Carradine in a film is never pointless...hahahhahahahhah.....but I think I know what you mean.
"You know, there's not much to say about The Boogey Man. It's very generic, slightly mad - very much Halloween (it even borrowed the title from what Dr Loomis says in Carpenter's classic) and 100 % mainstream. It's lame, but lame in a nice cozy way.
I didn't get bored. That's something."
Well, you didn´t get bored.....good review and thanks, I haven´t seen this one yet.
Posted by: Megatron | June 03, 2013 at 21:02