The Boogens

This is a must-see late-night popcorn muncher that I first saw on HBO when I was about twelve. For years and years, I searched for the video. How excited I was a couple of years back when I found a copy! How can you not love that title? This movie is slow, many questions are left dangling, and the ending could have been stronger. However, it definitely has its moments! Best watched in groups, preferably while drinking. "Boogens" are killer monsters who are released from a closed land mine after mine workers blast it open after a 100 years. (One of the promo tag lines was "After 100 years, someone has reawakened The Boogens!) Some college-age kids rent a house in the woods, and the Boogens seem to have taken over the basement. Everyone hears noises coming from the basement but think nothing of it. One of my favorite characters was the old, old man whose great-grandfather was killed by Boogens. He approaches the miners and nervously rambles, "Boogens...Boogens...Ya had to let 'em out, didn't ya! Couldn't leave well enough alone, could ya!" The Boogens remain unseen until the last few minutes of the movie, and you will hit the floor laughing once you see a Boogen. (There are supposedly hordes of Boogens running loose, but perhaps because of budget problems, we see only one.) The Boogen looks like a giant turtle shell with elephant trunks for legs and the face looks like a Muppet on a crystal meth binge. One of the funniest scenes is when a Boogen is chasing a girl through the house and she tries to defend herself by throwing a tea pot and newspapers at it. Yep, that'll stop 'em! This is sooooo early 80's that it will most be enjoyed by thirty-somethings who fondly recall the kind of drive-in horror flicks they used to make. Fun for a bad movie/horror night. Fact: This is actually one of STEPHEN KING'S FAVORITES! He gives glowing reviews on the video box.

My Father,Jeffery Sandler, was Supervising Sound Editor on this film when I was just a boy of 11 years. He took me to work quite often, and during post production on The Boogens, he got stumped as to how the monster should sound. Well he comes to me and asks if I have any ideas? And I played around with sounds that scared me and I came with the following:

Breathing: Vampire Breathing

Heartbeat: Heartbeat sound sped up and slowed down repeatedly

Monster Roar: Dog&Cat Fight,slowed down,played backward

That roar was the most horrific thing you ever heard. We set up the sound rig in a hallway intersection in the building(Glenn Glenn Sound)and put speakers at the end of each hall. We turned out the lights so we had dark down all of the hallways(like being in a mine)and played the sound from random directions....even though we know we were alone in the building,Me,My Dad,and a co-worker of his,none of us wanted to walk down into the dark to turn on the light alone. We were all scared out of our minds. Well, my Dad used the sound fx I came up with and gave me $50 for my work. And that was my start in the movie business at age 11.

The "Boogens" are scaly monsters that look somewhat like giant turtles with lots of sharp, nasty teeth. They are released from an abandoned, boarded-up silver mine in Colorado and proceed to do away with character after character. Only one homeless, seemingly pointless knows how to stop them.... I first saw "The Boogens" when I was 10 or 11. Loved it then, loved it now. Sure the plot is nothing new but it's fast paced,well-acted, suspenseful, and humorous. it kind of reminds me of "Tremors" in that it doesn't take itself too seriously but boasts some genuinely suspenseful scenes and slings a little bit of gore in our face. Sure once the boogens themselves show up they're nothing flashy but the director maintains tension (And wisely shows only the boogen's tentacles throughout most of the film)and the ending seems a bit rushed but I still had a blast watching it and re-living a piece of my childhood while doing so.If you liked this film, I recommend you see "The strangeness" a low-budget flick which is also about a tentacled-monster haunting a long-abandoned mine. It was clearly inspired by this film. A classic piece of 80's cheese recommended for horror fans!

A group of four mine surveyors are hired to explore a long abandoned silver mine to see if whether or not it is worth reopening. Two of the men, along with a girlfriend and her best friend, rent a secluded cabin not too far from the mine, but soon find out the hard way that they've released strange, tentacled creatures which once again stalk people in the tunnels, as well as their cabin's basement.

Like other cult films such as "The Boogeyman" I had a real hard time writing this review, because for some reason I had a lot of trouble putting my finger on exactly why I liked this movie, despite the fact it gives plenty of reasons not to. There are plot holes galore, with one blatant example being why would the miners have dug tunnels from the mine to the town's houses? The script is the standard B-movie issue, "let's all line up for a slaughter in the climax" type of formula, although there is a good laugh here and there, and sort of a good rapport between Balding and McCarren. The cast does a fairly good job with the material they're given, with Balding stealing the show with her perky, big-eyed charismatic charm, and "Creepshow" icon Jon ("I want my cake!") Lormer standing out whenever given the screen.

Director Conway does give this movie a creepy edge, showing ominous point-of-view shots from the creatures quietly stalking their victims, and he wisely leaves what they look like up to the imagination of the audience up until the climax. Unfortunately in the end the monster special effects aren't up to the task, and when you do finally get a good look at them you just have to laugh. They're very imaginative but look too phony and turtle-like to be taken seriously, one wonders how this film might have gotten more overall notice if they worked a little harder on them? Given the same cast, director, better monster FX and a more thoughtful script this could have been a monster movie classic.

7 out of 10, you need to be a forgiving sort to enjoy this film despite of its many flaws, but for some it will still manage to strike the right chords.

Here's an odd one: plot development is decidedly lackadaisical, such that the film is almost half over before it starts to feel like it's slowly begun to pick up. In the interval, we get expository dialogue and scene writing that's at most indirectly tied to the predominant narrative, but somehow a lot of it is weirdly endearing... or even funny? (Not all, mind you - there's some tired, passing ableism, and some crude lines that just don't land.) Of course, for a monster movie, even one in which visualization thereof is pointedly reserved for much later in the runtime, it doesn't necessarily speak well to the picture that the horror element rears its head only a few times and very briefly for the first two-thirds of the length. To that point, I assume it was concern for a low budget that so heavily restricted the realization of any abnormal goings-on. With this said, 'The boogens' does manage to be enjoyable, largely on account of charming characters and cast members - though by the same token, this isn't why we're watching it.

In fact given such piecemeal, unbothered development, and the way the horror element is so emphatically shoved into a small corner, to no small extent this comes across as a made-for-TV movie. It distinctly feels like the type of flick that might have aired on ABC with minimal spookiness lest the delicate sensibilities of the Average American Family be overwhelmed. But this is clearly not the case as we note "R"-rated content, so what happened here? All the elements are present for a low-grade genre flick of at least some entertainment, and so it is in its way, yet David O'Malley and Jim Kouf's screenplay minimizes the blood and violence seemingly as much as it can.

For what it's worth, while hardly the pinnacle of the genre, I think everything looks and sounds good. The filming locations are lovely, and the production design and art direction strike me as solid. Any effects on hand look good, including blood; if slightly kitschy, Paul Hipp's cinematography and the creature design are both just fine. Again, I quite like the cast; Rebecca Balding, Fred McCarren, and Anne-Marie Martin, among others, actually do a really great job. All the contributions of those behind the scenes are splendid. And while the horror aspect is broadly pushed back to the very last segment of the film, the last 10-20 minutes are, I'm pleased to say, fairly exciting and well done. Even if we can easily predict who is going to survive by the end of the movie, 'The boogens' is ultimately a good bit of fun.

It's not unfair to say, however, that this probably won't find especial favor with the average viewer. I think I tend to be rather generous and open-minded when it comes to the movies I watch, and I exacted unexpected enjoyment from the substantial portion that was just interactions between the chief characters, well before the climax. I don't think for one moment this will hold true for most folks. All told I think this manages to be slightly better than average in my book, though I'd hardly begrudge anyone who thought lesser of it. 'The boogens' is not an essential watch by any means, but as far as little-known monster flicks of yesteryear go, this isn't half bad.