The Boogens

***/*****
Being in the 80s, there was a significant use of point-of-view (through the eyes of a creature or killer so that we would be kept guessing as to what it or he (or she) ultimately looks like). So that the creature in The Boogens doesn’t appear until needed, the camera serving as its eyes, with us seeing the world from its perspective.
 

The way the film kills off the first victim is a trick of the camera where she’s dragged by something just out of the sight of the camera, with her arms reaching outward, eventually taken down into the basement screaming as the door closes shut. It is bloodless and leaves her fate to our imagination. A lot of horror fans frown upon this kind of sequence, obviously.

I mentioned Martin in the Intro as a mean-spirited, bitter wretch in Prom Night, but as Jessica in The Boogens, she’s much easier to take to. Looking to get some free sex time with her man, Roger, the mine job kind of interferes as does her friends wanting some grub.

There are some habits screenplays adopted in the genre, especially in the 80s, that serve as markers we are all too familiar. Balding falling down as she and McCarren are running through a shaft out of the mine through a tunnel that works off an underground network underneath Silver City. Martin, in a towel after a shower, tries to escape the house (one of the mine monsters found its way into the basement) but is unable to get out of the locked door. The “old kook trying to warn folks to not stir up shit” hangs around but is unable to halt the unleashing of the creatures which drove his own father into an asylum due to being trapped in the mine that lead to the many piles of skeletal remains found near a watering pond within. McCarren trying to flick a flame on a lighter that easily worked before but seems to have quit when it is desperately needed. The aforementioned POV that is relied upon as the camera targets actors with frightened expressions slipping and stumbling. The score is the ole reliable kind the decade could whip up to needle the nerves and drum up some anxiety. The roar of the monsters tries to compensate for their rubbery, puppet appearances. But the overall story is quite simple and lacks any real depth, while it remains very much a monster movie in structure with a little viscera (Roger and Jessica both fare poorly against the creature in the house, as he is found later submerged in the lake in the mine while she falls out from behind boxes in the basement to surprise her buddy, Trish; the two of them have the flesh-torn battle scars thanks in large part to a single talon on the end of its appendage that often wraps around legs and feet when reaching for victims) included. As expected, the mine eventually must be once again closed so that Silver City doesn’t have to worry about a “boogens epidemic”. The tunnels aren’t all that convincing, looking very much like movie sets, but on a low budget that is to be expected (and just for safety precautions, also). The creatures, though, are just so rubbery few will watch the film reacting to them with any serious terror.

I personally enjoy the little, young cast. McCarren and Balding (a reporter for a paper where she came from, eventually working on a story about the mine in Silver City) have a believable, thankfully un-gooey developing budding romance. I was definitely  disappointed Harlan left the film so quickly as the poor guy didn’t even get laid…and he’d been waiting twelve days, bless his heart. Martin tries to hold off one of the boogens but it knocks down a door (which, when we finally see them, makes this preposterous) before its talon hacks away at her flesh. Wounds open and bleed at the slice of the talon in the gorier scenes. Balding, much to my surprise (I seemed to have forgotten about this), is naked in a sex scene with McCarren as the two hit it off relatively in one single evening…that is a rarity seeing the lead naked and having sex with her co-star around ’81 which I was pleasantly appreciative of. It proved that despite the horror genre sort of suffering certain specified “norms” associated with it, there are exceptions.

Equipping herself for that noise in the house.

The guys trying to follow a map that appears worthless

Balding and Martin arriving in the town of Silver City

McCarren is Balding's love interest

Time to go and get some grub

Uh oh. The doggie is left alone.

Jessica takes her beau's boss to school

Jon Lormer, of Creepshow fame, is the prowling kook

Watching for the first time in probably five or so years (the last time was during Turner Classic Movie’s TCM Underground at 1 in the morning), I must admit that The Boogens will endure its “okay” status, perhaps of some worth to those who are fond of the cast and lovely location shooting (in Utah and Colorado; Colorado is where the film is set). I came away feeling not altogether satisfied this go-around, but recall really thinking highly of this film the first time I watched it. I just really liked Balding, McCarren, and Martin. Balding and McCarren, Balding and Martin, Harland and Martin, & McCarren and Harlan all have such rich, genuine chemistry that I found them a pleasure to watch even as the film’s monsters just don’t do them justice. This is a film with a budgetary liability it has a hard time overcoming.