The Boogey Man (1980)

 Seen on Shudder. Recently released by Vinegar Syndrome

I have the double disc of this film and the infamous sequel (never watched the sequel) for years and haven’t watched them. I do remember being in love with the craziness of this back in the mid aughts when it caught my attention after the Ebert disgust towards the trailer was a part of his Siskel & Ebert review program and I rented it on DVD from Netflix.

The use of a screwdriver on the guy in his Mustang and how the invisible mirror spirit pantyhose killer uses the open door to cause the victim’s girlfriend to give him a “stab kiss” never fails to crack me up. It is just so bizarre and hilarious. Their friends just getting tired of their smooching, deciding to hit the bricks while the two faces were joined at the mouth (by force through screwdriver!) also just made me laugh. I’m guessing Lommel meant for that reaction, but I can’t be sure. Lommel’s direction is so straight without a hint of tongue-in-cheek in tone that it makes the film even more entertaining to me.

The ending with the priest touching the shattered mirror, the room turning red, Lacey’s husband, Jake, taken aback later by his wife’s possession as a piece of that mirror is now located on her eye with a green light leaving the kitchen set to this laser show while Lacey’s brother, Willy, finally snaps out of his mute, mentally captured state, is outrageous and I’m just a sucker for something completely and totally weird, this seemingly nonsensical Lommel setpiece has no reason to exist in any normal story. So that is why it fits with a slasher involving the spirit of a killer able to terrorize when a piece of the mirror that “captured him” moves from the house he was stabbed to death in (by Willy as a kid while Lacey watches in horror) and shines at victims available to violently attack.

I can still see why the scene where Susanna Love’s shirt is shredded by the invisible killer remains so memorable and notorious. Considering the horrible content towards women out there in the horror genre, though, this might be viewed as tamer than what the trailer (or Siskel and Ebert) might suggest. Still, Love’s Lacey heading for her son after the attack, and Jake’s combat placing a piece of mirror into the mirror frame as the spirit “resists”: it fits with Lommel’s outre entry in the slasher cycle.

And there is even a scene where Willy is in a barn when a woman his age wants some eggs and comes onto him only to be lifted off her feet with an intense chokehold! You’d think he’d kill that poor gal but the release after hearing his sister was timed right as her face was turning different colors. It is that rare scene where you see “volatile Willy” since the actor, Nicholas, remains mostly aloof, bored, or deep in his thoughts. 

Seeing John Carradine as a psychiatrist trying to get Lacey to conquer those demons of the mind tormenting her with Jake making sure she goes to the house where Willy had killed the stocking face killer fucking their mom was sure unpredictable casting. Only Lommel would cast Carradine as someone hoping to heal a tormented soul’s mind instead of further horrify it.

A kid killed by a window crushing his throat while trying to scare his sister (who couldn’t handle the killer’s spirit invisible scissors attack, complete with shirt cut open and throat stabbed) by the invisible force will probably elicit applause. God that kid was obnoxious. Typical brat causing his sisters stress while their parents were away.

Lacey’s family sure did have a nice big spacious house, her aunt and uncle taking her in after the traumatic events of the miserable childhood with a mother perfectly fine with her lover tying up her son to a bed (and abusing him). Too bad Lacey’s uncle is stuck to the loft beam by a pickaxe in his barn and her aunt is found choked to death with a green water hose in a cabinet.

Letterboxd review:

That score, the laser show at the end, use of mirror sending off a beam of light that allows the spirit of a killer conducting invisible attacks, and lots of awkward characters/performances caught all in the madness...this fits in my total enjoyment along with Bloodbeat. Played with a straight face and tone, and yet so off the wall, filled with outlandish supernatural ideas that seemed born out of some fog of drug-induced mania at 3 AM. While the "screwdriver kiss" is obviously my favorite "duo kill", the scissors to the throat is gnarly. And I am always a sucker for an Amity "evil eye window" lookalike house. The only movie I can think of where a piece of glass suck on the bottom of a kid's shoe threatens folks from across a lake.