The Boogeyman (1980 film)
| The Boogeyman | |
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Theatrical Poster for The Boogeyman
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| 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 |
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Release date
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Running time
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82 minutes 85 minutes (UK Extended version) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $300,000 (estimated) |
| Box office | 4,500,000 (USA) $35,000,000 (Worldwide) |
The Boogeyman (released in the United Kingdom as The Bogey Man) is a 1980 American supernatural horror film directed by Ulli Lommel and starring Suzanna Love, John Carradine, and Ron James. The movie's title refers to the long-held superstition of boogeymen beings, and its plot concerns an adult brother and sister who are targeted by the ghost of their mother's deceased boyfriend which has been freed from an imprisoned mirror.
The film has received mixed to negative critical reviews, with criticism mainly regarding the heavy similarities from earlier horror films such as Halloween, The Exorcist, and The Amityville Horror. However, the movie became successful enough commercially to make the film-makers eager to release sequels, resulting in the film being followed by Boogeyman II and Return of the Boogeyman.
The film opens with Willy and Lacey as children watching their mother and her boyfriend preparing to make out. When the mother notices them, she has her boyfriend tie Willy to his headboard before sending Lacey to her room. She frees Willy from his bed and Willy enters their room and repeatedly stabs his mother's boyfriend with a chef knife in front of a large mirror.
Twenty years later, Lacey now an adult, is married with a young son and lives with her aunt and uncle on a farm. Willy who also lives with them, but has not spoken a word since the night he killed his mother's boyfriend and sometimes, Willy takes various knives from the kitchen and hides them in a drawer. One night over dinner, Lacey finds a letter in the mail from her mother, who claims to be on her and wishes to see them one last time that night, but Willy burns the letter.
Lacey suffers from nightmares, and has a particularly frightening dream where she is dragged, tied to a bed and almost stabbed by an unseen entity. Her husband, Jake takes her to a psychiatrist to help her confront her fears, and decides to go visit the house she grew up in. They arrive not knowing who is actually living there and meets two teenage girls and their younger brother. Their parents, the homeowners, have apparently just placed the home for sale and then gone out of town. The daughter thinks Lacey and Jake have been sent by the real estate company to view the house. Jake and Lacey pretend they want to buy the house so they can look around. At the house, however Lacey sees a reflection of her mother's deceased boyfriend coming towards her in a mirror inside 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 the teenage girls and their brother are all killed by an unseen force. However, the vengeful spirit of the deceased lover has been released from the mirror.
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