Revenge of the Boogeyman

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.

Bizarre, pretentious, idiotic sequel starts off with 40 minutes of flashback footage of the first movie. So much footage is used from part one, that when the end credits roll, they actually credit both the cast of this movie AND the first one!

When the flashbacks mercifully end, the rest of this movie is pretty much Ulli Lommel poking the viewer in the eyes with this ridiculous story about filmmakers wanting to do a movie based on the events in part one, then a certain piece of broken mirror turns up and you can guess the rest. And if you can't then you have the iq of a carrot. Why did Lacey even bother to keep the piece of mirror? She had to know that it would cause more murder and mayhem. Then she misplaces it, and can't remember that she left it under her pillow! Perhaps she can't remember because of Lomell using a flashlight for lighting in many scenes, and the for-no-apparent-reason kaleidoscope vision some people have in the film?

We're then treated to see (or is that tricked into seeing?) some of the most idiotic killings ever filmed: death by electric toothbrush, death by shaving cream, death by salad tongs, death by sucking on a tailpipe after being slapped on the ass by a ladder(?!) etc.

No writer is credited (actually this was written by Bruce Starr, Ulli Lommel and Suzanna Love - she incidentally looks great in this movie, but you can watch the first movie to see her) and directed by Bruce Starr, Ulli Lommel and Paul Wilson (but both Ulli Lommel and Paul Wilson took their names off of this, and IMDb doesn't even list Wilson's name here) this was filmed in 1981 and not released until '83, and there is even a flashback sequence within a flashback sequence - what more can you ask for?

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In most versions, the opening titles are in red, in a generic font against a plain black background. The British version, titled "Revenge of the Boogeyman" has a completely different set of titles: red lettering, like that found on a birthday cake, on plain white cards. When John Carradine's name appears, a hand is very clearly visible in the top right corner, holding the card up for the camera to film.

Now, about the so-called Director's Cut/ Redux:

The original Boogeyman II recycled tens of minutes of footage of the first film, and this version recycles even more, approximately eighty to ninety percent of the Director's Cut/ Redux is whole chunks of the first film repeated again and narrated by Ulli Lommell, in the guise of Lommell being questioned by off-screen police about the deaths which occurred in the original Boogeyman film, from 1980. All of the footage of him is taken from one stationary camera angle, while Lommell hides behind mirrored sunglasses, and is obviously looking down at the script on the table in front of him. (Who am I kidding, like there was really even a script for this)

Apparently this redux/ director's cut takes place 22 years later, and the police are just now getting around to questioning him! Lommell claims that he has no memory of the events in the first film, as he narrates the intimate details of the story of the first film, which was told to him 22 years ago? What? Ulli, do you even know what the bloody hell you are talking about here? Or was the dialogue just drunken, stream-of-consciousness ramblings? Ulli also claims that the second film's events are, in his memory, nothing more than "a series of slow motion still-photographs". Again, what the hell does that mean?

Ulli says of the butler, played by Shoto von Douglas: "He actually, ... uh, .... one day, came walking down the street, in the butler outfit, and rang the bell and asked me whether he could serve me". Yeah, Ulli, that happens a lot, I bet.

"Lacey claims that it was the boogeyman. Well, I don't believe in the boogeyman. But yeah, maybe, uh, maybe it was the boogeyman. I'll stand trial for these killings, no problem. I have nothing to hide, I'm innocent. The boogeyman did it." Heavy drinking Ulli, or just stupidity?

Original version of Boogeyman II gets a 2/ 10 from me, just for a couple of unintended laughs.

The Director's Cut/ Redux version gets a 1/ 10, and almost makes the original Boogeyman II look like a classic.

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.

It was more then fifteen years ago that I watched the original Boge(e)yman. It was still the era of VHS. Now that most OOP's and other obscure movies are available on DVD I just watched the original Boogeyman 2. Original, cause a few years ago they made Boogeyman and Boogeyman 2. Back to the eighties it was for me. All I could remember from the first movie was that there wasn't a lot of killings and if they appear they weren't bloody after all. I also noticed in reviews that this version was a bit of a best off of the first part with some additional scene's. And it was, all the best parts of the first part are included in this part and sometimes they show the killing twice in different parts through the film. There are more bloodier killings in this one and a lot are seen from first person shots, but they are cheesy. The score is okay too. That's the reason that I gave it a 3 out of 10. The storyline is terrible, the movie isn't about anything and you can see things coming from miles away. Wait until the end at the graveyard...can you guess what will happen? So, my conclusion, if you haven't seen the first part watch this flick, you will have both movies in one.

I purchased this on DVD and what did I get? A piece of useless garbage that you can't even give away for 1 cent on ebay. Trust me, I tried.

This is one of the worst films ever made. Here's why, the DVD of Boogeyman 2 isn't the VHS version from the 80's, it's a hack job from a hack director who went and took forty+ minutes worth of footage from the first film and the 'new' Boogeyman 2 footage is a bunch of scenes that play in a fast forward mode - what the ??????????? Also, the director shows himself speaking about the proceedings that is spread out through the film. This makes no sense and is so badly done that it leaves the viewer chucking the DVD in disgust.

The original part 2 was a decent horror film but this new DVD version is a worthless piece of garbage.

AVOID this film. (Note: I found a use for my DVD as I used it for a coaster)