This film begins with the vile abuse of a small boy and his sister after they spied on their mother getting it on with her boyfriend. After Willy is tied up and gagged on a bed, his sister Lacey grabs a huge butcher knife, cuts the ropes that are holding her brother to the bed and then hands him the knife. He then stabs his abuser repeatedly.
The film then flashes forward as we see Willy (now dumb after what had happened that night) and Lacey who is now married with a son. Lacey is also still traumatised from past events as she regularly has nightmares and night traumas. Lacy receives a letter from her mother in the mail who is writing as she doesn’t have long to live and wants to see her children again.
She goes to see a psychiatrist (played by John Carradine) to try to fathom out how to overcome her past traumas. A visit to the old childhood house where the past traumatic events occurred is suggested. Lacey’s husband finds that the house is up for sale and so looking around inside it should be easy. It’s here that Lacey sees a vision of her mother’s abusive lover in a mirror and so smashes it with a chair. The mirror and its broken pieces are all taken back with Lacey and Jake to the farm they live on. Unbeknownst to them however is that the mirror and its broken fragments hold a malevolent evil for anyone who comes into contact with it as we see with very gory results throughout the rest of the film.
Even though there are loads of references to other more famous horror films (I counted bits pinched from Halloween, The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, Carrie, Nightmares…) The Boogey Man is still a really entertaining horror film. It would earn its own notoriety in the UK as it would earn its own place on the DPP List and would forever be known as a Video Nasty. It was actually passed uncut for its initial cinema release in 1981 but was then banned in 1983 after being issued on the VIPCO label. It was issued on video in 1992 but only after being cut by 44 seconds. This was the release I watched when I saw the film for the first time.
Seeing it today I’m glad that it’s now looking fantastic on Blu ray and completely uncut. It has a great feel to it, even though it steals from many other films. Check out Tim Krog’s score for the film. It’s early 80’s slasher movies personified.
In fact, the poster for the film is hanging on the wall of the exploitation production company that John Travolta works at in Brian De Palma’s movie Blow Out. I bet De Palma referenced The Boogey Man when he was making the starting sequence of his film (cheekily called Co-Ed Frenzy within Blow Out) as there are many nods to The Boogey Man- the POV shot, the ultra sleazy analogue synth soundtrack…
Grade- B
meathookcinema.com 