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The bogy man

Original Poster

Titles: The Boogeyman

Release Date: November 7th, 1980

Tagline: "The most terrifying nightmare from childhood is about to return!"

Budget: $300,000

Box Office: $35,000,000 (estimated worldwide)

The Boogeyman (1980) is a supernatural slasher film directed by Ulli Lommell. The story follows two siblings who are being haunted by the spirit of their mother's vindictive boyfriend (who they killed 20 years prior), his ghosts is released after a mirror is shattered.

Plot[]

The film opens with Michael and Lacey as children watching their mother and her lover preparing to have sex. When the mother notices this, The mother's boyfriend ties Willy to a bed and tells Lacey to go to bed, but Lacey frees him with a kitchen knife and Willy soon takes revenge. While the boyfriend has sex with the mother, Willy enters the room and repeatedly stabs his mother's boyfriend to death in the back with the kitchen knife, as the murder is witnessed by a reflecting mirror on the wall.

20 years later, Lacey, now an adult is married with a young son and lives with her aunt and uncle on a farm. Willy also lives with them, but has not spoken a word since the night he killed his mother's lover, and sometimes, Willy takes various knives from the kitchen and hides them in a drawer.

Lacey is afraid that strange things will happen and worries a lot. Later at night, Lacey has a nightmare where she is dragged, tied to a bed and stabbed with a kitchen knife by an unseen person. Her husband takes her to a psychiatrist to help her confront her fears, and they decide to visit both Lacey's mother and the house she grew up in. Lacey's mother is raising a new sister and little brother. The little brother always shouts out "Boogeyman" and tries to scare Lacey. At the house, however, Lacey sees a reflection of her mother's dead lover coming towards her in a mirror in the bedroom where he died, and smashes the mirror in a panic with a chair. Her husband takes the broken mirror with him in an attempt to repair it, but a piece is left behind which later glows red as her mother's sister is killed by an unseen force that stabs her neck with scissors and her brother's neck is crushed by a window. Lacey's mother comes in, only to find her sister and brother killed. She sees the broken piece on the ground and uses water on it, only to see the glass piece turned to flames and Lacey's Mother is killed by a bludgeon from a cabinet.

Willy is also having problems with mirrors. Seeing his reflection in one causes him to nearly strangle a girl and so he paints all the mirrors in the house black. Later, pieces of a broken mirror in a bag at his feet cause a pitchfork to levitate and nearly impale him, but misses the attack, as he gets saved from it.

Another shard from the broken mirror becomes stuck to Lacey's son's shoe, and when it reflects the sunlight onto a group of nearby teens they are also killed, including a couple who are killed when the boyfriend is stabbed through the back of the neck with a screwdriver with the blade exiting through his mouth, while his girlfriend is forced into the car via the car's door and pushes onto the screwdriver's blade, killing her as well. Soon, Lacey then tries to get in the house, only to see that her shirt starts to tear apart from an unseen force.

Later, Lacey's husband brings in the family priest to investigate the mirror, only to see that when the priest's hand touches the mirror, the mirror turns red and soon, a piece of the mirror floats from the mirror and becomes lodged over Lacey's eye and she becomes possessed by the evil spirit of her mother's lover. It is only through the actions of the family priest that the shard is removed (In which, the family priest gets killed by various floating knives) and thrown into water, where it bursts into flames as he dies from his wounds. The remainder of the mirror is thrown into a well, where the same thing happens, as an explosion releases and thus, destroying the mirror once and for all.

The film ends with Lacey, her husband and the children visiting the graveyard, only to notice that one last mirror shard, missed by Lacey and her husband, glowing red on the ground, showing that the terror is not over and setting up the events for the sequel. - from wiki

Notes[]

  •  Released on VHS by Wizard Video
  • In the vein of other Halloween inspired slasher films from that era. (similar knife pov, stalk and slash elements)

Villain[]

The spirit of a man killed in the opening scene takes malicious revenge on anyone that comes to contact with the mirror where his specter is trapped.

Review[]

Credits & Cast[]

Directed by Ulli Lommel
Produced by Ulli Lommel
Gillian Gordon
Written by Ulli Lommel
Starring Suzanna Love

John Carradine
Ron James

Music by Tim Krog
Cinematography Jochen Breitenstein
Edited by Terrell Tannen
Distributed by The Jerry Gross Organization
Image Entertainment
Release date(s) November 7, 1980 [1]
Running time 82 min
85 min (UK Extended version)
Country  United States
Language English
Budget $300,000 (estimated)
Box office 4,500,000 (USA)
$35,000,000 (Worldwide)
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