Revenge of the Boogeyman

It didn't make sense, so much that I restarted it a few times to make sure I wasn't watching "the making of Boogeyman II". The acting was TERRIBLE, the plot was ridiculous. It looked like the worst B movie I've ever seen. Totally LOW BUDGET and LOW SKILL. I don't remember ever seeing any of these actors in any other movie, and its no wonder. A bunch of garbled screen flashes of garbage that didn't really make any sense or fit into the movie other than the fact that they were random horror pics, at least it kept consistent with the genre. Most high school kids could do better at storyline, acting, filming, directing. A waste of time.

This is more flashbacks of the first "Boogeyman" movie than anything else (literally %75 of this film), and what it dosen't rip off is boring, cheap garbage. In fact the best thing I can say about it is that it isn't quite as bad as the next sequel, "Return of the Boogeyman", which is only surpassed by maybe "Plan 9 from Outer Space" or perhaps a test pattern. Rub your eyes real hard, its more entertaining than watching this one.

Boogeyman II(1983/2002)

* 1/2 (out of 4) Original Cut

BOMB (out of 4) Redux Version

Notorious follow up to the 1980 cult classic has that films only survivor (Suzanna Love) going to Hollywood to see a friend when several producers become interested in her story. The only problem is that part of the broken mirror from that original film is with her and soon the boogeyman is once again killing folks. If the story sounds mildly interesting then you can just forget that because sadly this film is made up of at least sixty-percent of footage from the original movie. I still remember the first time I watched this film and how confused and disappointed I was that it didn't feature more of a story. THE BOOGEYMAN was a surprise hit and an effective thriller but none of that eeriness made its way to this cheap sequel, which was made after Lommel turned down an offer from Paramount for a bigger budget. Once you try and get past the fact that the majority of this movie is from the original, you're left with a rather nutty film. We get some extremely bizarre and at times downright stupid death scenes including one with a tooth brush and another with a car muffler. How these death scenes are carried off are rather obvious and cheap. I hated this film with a passion when I first saw it and the "director's cut", released through Image, didn't do the film any justice as it just featured this film minus about twenty-minutes and then with new footage thrown back into the film making it more BOOGEYMAN 4 than anything else. I was rather shocked to see how much nostalgia this film carries and how much better it plays out today. You can just look at the thing and see, smell and taste the cheapness of those early 80's and on that level the film mildly works. The performances are all rather bland, especially Lommel as the director and it's a shame Love wasn't given more to do here. No matter how the movie struck me this time there's no denying that this is still a major disappointment considering how effective the first film was and how much more could have been done here. As it is, the film comes off as Lommel just throwing a fit about Hollywood as that's what takes up a lot of the new footage.

When THE BOOGEYMAN became a huge hit in 1980 every studio lined up hoping Ulli Lommel would do a sequel. For a while he refused but when he finally gave in he turned out one of the worst films ever made. Boogeyman 2 started with over forty-minutes worth of footage from the first film and then the second half had the director starring as a director being forced into making a sequel and the boogeyman shows up to kill the producer's. Then in 2002 for the DVD release, the director decided he didn't like this version so what's he do? He keeps all the footage from The Boogeyman but with the Boogeyman 2 footage he turns the color into B&W and has the scenes play in a fast forward mode. He then adds fifteen minutes of newly shot footage (of himself) and pretty much changes the entire film to where you should really be calling this Boogeyman 4. On the DVD interview the director says that parts 5-9 will be coming soon. Since there isn't a part 4 I'd say that's what this is suppose to be, although Image is still selling the DVD as a sequel to the original film, which is certainly false marketing. So in the end, Lommel made a hit film in 1980, kept the rights to that film and since then has made two sequels plus this thing with that original footage with newly added stuff on each one. Talk about milking a movie.

This "Redux" version actually adds more scenes from the original movie and takes away several scenes from the original part 2. Again, the original part 2 was a horrid film but it did feature some hilarious death scenes including one by a muffler and another by a toothbrush. This "Redux" version makes the film look even worse and it's a damn outrage that Image would release what's basically part 4 as the original part 2. I'm counting this as a new view.

Made in 1982, "Boogeyman II" is an unsuccessful followup to Ulli Lommel's 1980 horror hit. Carrying sequelitis to a distressing extreme, about half the current picture's running time consists of flashback highlights from the earlier film, amounting to virtually a condensed version. Small wonder that, in common with many other marginal films of late, the pic had no theatrical release but has gone instead directly into the home video market.

Uncredited screenplay is built around the first film's heroine Lacey (Suzanna Love) moving from Maryland to L. A. six months after the supernatural murders recounted in part 1. Much of the pic's early reels consists of flashback material as she tells her story to friends and film director Mickey Lombard (Ulli Lommel).

Beyond recapitulation of already-released footage, "Boogeyman II" is a vehicle for expatriate German filmmaker Uli Lommel to express his misgivings about the Hollywood scene. Recalling (no doubt unintentionally) the theme of an unsung little film-about-films "The Other Woman" by the Czech actor-director Hugo Haas, the picture has Lommel (under protest) shooting some skin shots to spice up his current art film entitled "Nathalie and the Age of Diminishing Expectations". His producer has already retitled the epic "Kiss and Tell".

As Haas did 30 years ago, Lommel (in character) sounds off about the commercial vicissitudes of filmmaking. Thumbing through a copy of Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon", he spots a photo of Erich von Strohim and comments cynically about the "good old days when Hollywood destroyed real people instead of toys". Regarding spiralling costs and waste, once again the target is a familiar one, as Lommel's agent expresses the low-budget filmer's refrain: "Brian De Palma spent $18,000,000 on that bomb of his "Blow Out", you could make 50 movies for that".

Amidst this griping, the lethal mirror shard brought along from ""Boogeyman" by Lacey goes on the rampage again, possessing the butler Joseph (Sholto von Douglass). With extremely cheap blood and gore effects, various household objects are supernaturally levitaged and used to kill off the greepy guests at a Hollywood party. Besides a garden hose, hedge-clipper, corkscrew and barbecue tongs, the appliances employed in this weak spoof of the "Power tools of death" horror genre extend to an electric toothbrush and even a girl smothered by shaving cream. It's a feeble exercise in black humor, right up through the inevitable graveside ending (ripped off from De Palma's "Carrie").

My review was written in July 1983 after watching the movie on videocassette.

Under interrogation from the police, art-house film-maker turned horror director Mickey Lombard (Ulli Lommel) gives his account of the events that have resulted in his arrest for a series of grisly murders.

In the mid 80s, UK horror fans were treated with utter contempt by the BBFC when the organisation saw fit to draw up a list of films they deemed unsuitable for public viewing due to their graphic nature—a list which included several films that are now recognised as classics of the genre. To make matters even worse, this 'video nasty' list also included certain titles that were indisputably complete and utter garbage. Years later, horror fans who actively seek out all of the official 'nasty' titles for the sake of completion can find themselves playing a game of horror movie Russian roulette.

One video nasty that is most definitely the movie equivalent of a loaded chamber is Ulli Lommell's Boogeyman II (AKA Revenge of the Boogeyman), an absolutely dire snooze-fest that almost makes taking a bullet to the brain seem like the preferable option (it would certainly involve a lot less suffering). Consisting primarily of regurgitated footage from the first film, plus a few additional scenes starring the director himself and some risible supernatural killings (including death by electric toothbrush!?!), Boogeyman II makes most of the other nasties look like classics in comparison (so perhaps it's not an entirely worthless flick after all).

So bad is the film, in fact, that it has been suggested by some (including Lommell himself, unsurprisingly) that the whole thing was a massive two fingers up to the film industry by a disgruntled director unable to receive funding for anything but horror films. If this was the case, then I guess Lommell succeeded: his film is a joyless experience from start to finish, one which must have had his investors seething with rage.

Incredibly, twenty years after its initial release, director Lommell issued a re-edited 'Redux' version intended to finally realise his original vision. If anything, this cut is even worse than the first one.