El espejo asesino: el hechizo del diablo

Dealing with a childhood trauma, Lacey and Willy must overcome their fears and survive the wrath of The Boogey Man

The movie opens up to a woman seducing a man while her two young children watch from the window, unbeknownst to them. When the kids get caught, the man ties up the male child to his bed. Lacey lets Willy loose with a large butcher knife which he uses to then kill the man who is having sex with his mother all while Lacey watches. Fast forward 20 years and we see that Lacey and Willy are all grown up, with Willie being mute from the traumatic events of that night. Lacey is also dealing with trauma of her own as she freaks out each time she sees a knife.

Her boyfriend Jake thinks it might be a good idea if she sees a hypnotist and goes back to the house where it all happened in order to move beyond the trauma. While visiting the house, Lacey sees the man from 20 years ago that was killed. After Lacey destroys the mirror, Jake decides to take it back home with them and use it in order to have Lacey face her fears. The spirit of the dead man appears to be in the mirror as it causes people to either kill themselves or get killed whenever they look into a piece of it's glass.

The Boogeyman is an odd early 80's horror flick that falls into both the slasher and supernatural horror sub genres. A lot of the movie doesn't make sense or isn't explained well enough at least. I get the angle Ulli Lommell was going for with the haunted mirror, but it fails to make a lot of sense in the film. Boogeyman takes a lot of elements from horror movies like Halloween, The Exorcist and Amityville Horror which is obvious. But blending all of those themes/sub genres together like they did in this movie left me feeling like it was a bit of a mess.

The acting was forgettable except for Suzanna Love who played the main character Lacey. She was actually not too bad in this low budget slasher. I also give The Boogeyman credit for it's overall gore and death scenes. There were some super effective killings including some neck stabbings and bloody eyes. I just expected so much more from an 80's movie with this terrific title. So much more could have been done to make this an actual scary movie.

Overall, The Boogeyman is a watchable 80's horror flick that takes many ideas from successful scary movies before it's time. I'd watch it at least once and make your own conclusions.

5/10

surprising because Ulli Lommel was involved in writing directing and producing this thing.i didn't realise Lommel was behind it until i got it home.by then figured what the hey.i mean how bad could it be,right.after all,i managed to see at least some of Lommel's other travesties,B.T.K and Black Dalia.those were putrid.The Boogeyman however,is not.it has interesting story,some decent performances,and some unusual music/sound effects.it is readily apparent a low budget production,but i could watch it all,without having to pause to vomit,so that's something.no classic by any means,but still...for me The Boogeyman is a 5/10

Young Lacey (Natasha Schiano) is forced to watch as her brother Willy (Jay Wright) stabs their mothers' lover to death with a big, sharp kitchen knife. Also witness to the killing is a bedroom mirror. 20 years later, the now-grown-up Lacey (Suzanna Love) and Willy (Nicholas Love, Suzanna's real-life brother) are living with an aunt & uncle on their farm. Willy, although mute, seems to be dealing with this dark past better than her; in desperation, her husband Jake (Ron James) tries to make her face her fears, but he only makes things worse. Now, Lacey is afraid that the lovers' vengeful spirit has been released from the mirror and is out for blood.

Overall, the script (by producer & director Ulli Lommel, Suzanna Love (his real-life wife at the time), and David Herschel is pretty slight, and sloppy. But Lommel, who had a background in art films, still creates a funky and amusing supernatural slasher that plays like a mash-up of "The Exorcist" and "Halloween". (Not for nothing is the fact that the farmhouse is very "Amityville"-esque.) The pacing is actually pretty good, and the film is over before the viewer knows it. Once the story really kicks into gear, "The Boogey Man" is quite fun, and colourful, with some very enjoyable splatter effects (and a sense of humour). Eventually, it can't help but get rather cheesy, but the finale is a genuine hoot regardless.

The gorgeous Suzanna acts her little heart out in the lead. The supporting cast is variable; most of these no-names are obvious amateurs. Token "name" cast member John Carradine, one of those old-time veterans who said "yes" to a lot of scripts in order to keep earning a living, is kind of wasted as a psychiatrist. Nicholas L. does an okay job as the unsmiling sibling.

One point of interest is the sometimes offbeat and sometimes catchy electronic soundtrack composed by Tim Krog. It's very reminiscent, at times, of the legendary "Tubular Bells".

Lightly amusing horror fare, with some entertaining special effects. It was followed three years later by "Boogeyman II".

Seven out of 10.

"The Boogey Man" won't change your life, but if you've got eighty minutes to fill on a lazy summer evening, you could do a lot worse. The story revolves around pretty, charismatic Suzanna Love and her brother, who suddenly find themselves tormented by memories of a traumatic past. When they were children, the brother killed their mother's abusive lover...who comes back to haunt the siblings in just about the oddest conceivable manner. Derivative in spots, with a few subpar performances, but Love ably carries this relentlessly eerie film; horror icon John Carradine has a cameo as a psychiatrist who tries to convince our heroine that there is a rational explanation for the increasingly strange events in her life. Not the stuff of classics, but pretty good of its type.

Other than "THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR" (which I didn't particularly care for). I'm fairly new to Ulli Lommel's work, but I gotta say the shoe-string budgeted "THE BOOGEYMAN" was rather a nice surprise. In spite of its stilted nature (especially the scenes involving John Carradine's psychobabble), there's something rather interesting, creative, visually enticing and uncanny around its process of a supernatural slasher. Maybe even a pioneer for the sub-genre, as what felt like a thematic blueprint, still with some slasher influences, eventually goes down its own path. How the plot goes about it early, I thought it was going to be more traditional, where we get a psychological based psychopathic breakdown (the brother), and one's attempt (the sister) to overcome their demons, but once the mirror (the evil entity's source of power) comes into the picture. There begins the supernatural interference, and it doesn't hold back.

An invisible force, POV shots, heavy breathing, floating objects, glowing neon special effects and a growing death toll, as one by one people's fates end in a rather horrific, and jolting demise. These victims just seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's nothing out of the ordinary, can come across as crude, and at this point the story does begin to get sloppy in the details, yet it manages to pack a sting. Lommel's low-scale aesthetics do construct some stylish usage from its leering camerawork, moody lighting, stately rural backdrop (with a farmhouse resembling "AMITYVILLE HORROR") and minimal set-pieces. But the real talking point is that screwy electronic music score. It perfectly adds to the strange, traumatic vibe of the escalating insanity of the situations. Something that once it starts definitely won't leave your head. The acting is quite sound, and Suzanna Love shows she has quite a set of lungs on her.