Hollywood Satire: Video Nasty Style!

Video Nasty #8

Revenge Of The Bogey Man

1983

HE'S BACK

MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL...WHO'S THE DEADEST OF THEM ALL?

Original American Title: Boogeyman 2

NTSC Running time: 79:57 (plus or minus a few seconds due to the VHS counter)

Directed by Bruce Starr (some sources cite Ulli Lommel as an uncredited director.)

Written by Suzanna Love, Ulli Lommel and Bruce Starr

Produced by Ulli Lommel

Starring: Suzanna Love, Ulli Lommel, Shannah Hall, Shoto von Douglas

Body Count: 15: 6 in footage from The Boogeyman, 9 in Boogeyman 2 proper.

Availability: Original version is VHS only and out of print.  My copy is a budget release from Gemstone Entertainment, the kind of thing you'd get for five bucks at a K-Mart (it doesn't even have an FBI warning!), and I have seen reference to a release from VCII (who also released Mardi Gras Massacre).  A "Redux" version entitled Ulli Lommel's Boogeyman 2 Director's Cut omits a lot of the new footage and is an entirely different film.  It is available on Region 1 DVD from Image Entertainment.

BBFC Status

Why it's a Nasty: Scenes from the first film were included, making it a Nasty by default.

What was cut: Nothing.  The original Video Nasty version (titled Revenge Of The Bogey Man) was never given a BBFC certificate.

Current BBFC status: The re-edited version, titled Bogeyman 2 - Redux was awarded an 18 certificate on September 22, 2003.

Availability: Redux version available on Region 2 DVD from Hollywood DVD Ltd.

Revenge Of The Bogey Man was seized, but escaped prosecution.

I think I liked this one better than the first.  Has anyone ever said that before?

Every review I've read of Boogeyman 2 categorizes it as a waste of time, advising viewers to watch the first and forget about it.  And I, for the life of me, cannot figure out why.

Yes, it's loaded with flashbacks to the first film.  Yes, it's low-budget...or cheap, depending on your point of view.  Yes, the setup is totally cheeseball and the action ridiculous.

But I think that was the point.

Suzanna Love returns to the role of Lacey, now terrorized and traumatized...and what better way to relax than take a vacation to sunny Hollywood!  Her friend Bonnie Lombard (Shannah Hall) and her husband, film director Mickey Lombard (Ulli Lommel), are happy to have her, and listen to her story (enter the flashbacks!) with growing awe and disbelief.  Bonnie thinks it's fantastic and wants to write a screenplay of Lacey's story.  Mickey, who is in the middle of begrudgingly adding some nudity to his art film at the behest of slimy producer Bernie (Bob Rosenfarb), is hesitant and the only character in the entire film who:
A) believes Lacey's story, and
B) doesn't want to exploit her.
(Lommel and Love were married in real life at the time, and their playing the only likable characters is one of the film's many in-jokes.)
Bonnie throws a party filled with sleazy Hollywood bottom-feeders, anxious to get Lacey's story made into a film.  But Lacey doesn't want a film made of her story...and now the last piece of the cursed mirror (that she carries with her everywhere for some unfathomable reason) has gone missing!  The Boogeyman is at large in Tinseltown!

The deaths come fast and furious, with the first half acting as a "highlight reel" from the first film (showing all but two of the deaths, notably skipping the deaths of Lacey's aunt and uncle that happened in the barn...even after the idiots at the party exhort Lacey, "Tell us about the barn!"), and the second half quickly dispatching nine Hollywood douchebags.  My favorite was the handlebar-mustachioed greaseball who is done away with by a disembodied electric toothbrush!

Boogeyman 2 is a satire of the film business, produced, written by and starring Ulli Lommel, who was inundated by requests for a sequel after the success of The Boogeyman...so he made a film where amalgams of everyone who wanted the sequel are killed by The Boogeyman!  The humor is bitter and scathing, and I thought it was great fun.  At just under 80 minutes, it drags only because of the flashbacks, which up the body count, but don't do much else if you've seen the original.  The deaths are filmed in extreme closeup and shrouded in darkness, which shows the limited budget...but it's got style...style that seems to be there just to thumb its' nose at those who would have given the film a bigger budget: "Don't need your money, and we don't need you!"

With its' high body count (the most of any Nasty so far), tongue-in-cheek humor and short running time, Boogeyman 2 is a fun ride, definitely better than many reviewers would lead you to believe.  Like most Nasties, you can check your brain at the door and have a gore-soaked laugh or two, especially if you've ever met phony Hollywoodites whose shallow fakery makes you want to vomit.  I can't stress enough: Don't expect high-quality filmmaking or effects, this is just for fun.  And fun it is (as long as you, like me, love trash cinema).

So if you break a mirror, make sure you pick up all the pieces.  And whatever you do, don't let them out of your sight.  You never know who might embed a piece of portable evil in their white-gloved hand.  An easy precaution to take.  I'll keep warning you about what not to do, because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.

Intermission: Identity Crisis

You may have noticed that I'm not who I say I am.  My name's not JustinCase.  It's not even Justin.  Let's make things a little squarer between us, shall we?

I've been looking at pages from other writers.  I feel alternately sick and sad.

There's the numerous "this is a diary of the life of my family" pages that seem to all be written by the same plain Christian woman who cares about nothing but what cute thing her kid did that week and has a short-haired, suit-wearing, empty-eyed tool of a husband present in some of the pictures (of which there are about a thousand).  This woman talks about teaching her kids to pray, the artwork the kids drew, and how she just LOVES her BFFs!

Shoot me in the fucking head, please, I don't want to know these people exist.

There's also the "look at me!" pages: Aspiring writers showing off their vocabularies and acting pretentious because they want everyone else to think they are as awesome as they know themselves to be.

Am I one of these people?  God, I hope not...but I might be.

All the characteristics are there: The dorky, "ain't I cool" pseudonym; The high-concept framing device; The desire to have my words read by others; The fear that I'm just not good enough to be taken notice of.

Maybe the difference (if there is one) lies in this: I am well aware that writing this blog will probably bring zero recognition (it being geared towards a very small percentage of the population that might care about the subject of the Video Nasties), and that what I write will not make me famous, change the world, or get me a job writing for some cool magazine or something.

And being aware of these things makes me a little sad.  Because the simple act of writing something and then sticking it on the internet where damn near anyone can see it reeks of attention-seeking, and the act of hiding my true identity behind a nom de plume is a paradoxical barrier: "Read what I have to say, but I won't tell you who I am."  That way if you like it, I can take all the credit.  And if you hate it, you don't hate me, you hate a fictional creation, a cutout of myself that will take all the blame and feel nothing.

I despise pretension, and I will keep it to a minimum.  I won't say there won't be any: in this situation, it's unavoidable.  But I want to be honest.  I want you to know where I stand.  I don't want to put myself on a pedestal, looking down on my readers, trying to show how cool I am.

I want to throw my arm around your shoulder, talk of film, and try to feel a little less alone in my love of all these weird movies.  I want to know that you're out there.  I want to feel that coolness about myself without shoving it in people's faces and making them feel bad.  I think you're cool for reading, and I hope you think the same of me for writing...but I won't assume you feel that way, and I won't feel it for you.

About the name: I end every entry the same way because that's something I say in real life.  When someone asks why I took some precaution, I will always respond with "Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase."  It makes me smile.  That's all.  Maybe I'll share my real name on here someday when I feel a little more secure about who I am.  For now, I like the security of being able to say all this stuff without having to think about the fact that it's me saying it.  Like just about everyone who's ever used a pseudonym, being JustinCase gives me a little bit more confidence than being the person I am everywhere else.  I told you I'd be honest.

So that's where we stand: I will do my best to bring you the meat of the matter, the hard facts about classic exploitation and horror, and to do so without pretense of thinking I'm amazing or better than you.  All you've gotta do is read if you want to.  Easy, huh?  Thanks.  I appreciate it.  Truly, and from the bottom of my being.  And I hope you don't mind if I keep using the name.  I like my signoff, and I'll continue saying goodbye the way I have this whole time: My name's Justin.  JustinCase.

They Thought It Was Over...It's Not!

Because once is not enough, here's a trailer for Revenge of the Bogey Man:



Flashback, flashback, flashback...to, like, two nights ago!  The concept of overusing footage from the first film for a cheapjack sequel is not unique (rumor has it that the makers of Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 were originally told to just re-edit the first and call it a sequel), this case is interesting because Ulli Lommel didn't want to make a sequel.  After pressure from all sides (and an offer from major studio Paramount, which was turned down), Lommel decided to make an independent sequel and satire Hollywood in the process...at least, that was the idea.  Did he succeed?  Only one way to find out.

Boogeyman 2 is up next, in its' original Nasty, Bruce Starr-directed version on good old VHS.  Have you held on to your VCR?  Don't you know you could very well need it?  I do.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.

The Invisible Monster!

Video Nasty #7

The Bogey Man

1980

THE MOST TERRIFYING NIGHTMARE OF CHILDHOOD IS ABOUT TO RETURN!



American Title: The Boogeyman

NTSC Running Time: 81:41

Directed, Written and Produced by Ulli Lommel (While the credits explicitly state this, buried in the end credits is this: Screenplay by Ulli Lommel, Suzanna Love and David Herschel.  Megalomania strikes again.)

Starring: Suzanna Love, Ron James, John Carradine, Nicholas Love

Body Count: 8, and one implied.  (But how she could have died from getting hit in the face with a medicine cabinet, I don't know.)

Availability: On Region 1 DVD from Sony on a double-feature with Return Of The Boogeyman.  Anchor Bay also offers a double-feature (with The Devonsville Terror).  I believe both are out of print.  The Sony release is a bit easier to find, and quite affordable.

BBFC Status

Why it's a Nasty: Bondage and that Blood/Breasts combo that the BBFC finds so offensive.

What was cut: 44 seconds of a woman bound and a dead woman in the bathtub with blood on her chest.

Current BBFC Status: The uncut version was awarded an 18 certificate on July 20, 2000.  An even longer version (under the title Ulli Lommel's Boogeyman) was approved on May 7, 2004.

Availability: Region 2 extended cut from Hollywood DVD Ltd.
The Bogey Man was seized, but escaped prosecution.

The first thing you get from this flick is a lesson in parenting: Don't tell your kids to play outside in the middle of the night, tie them to beds, or leave large knives within easy reach of toddlers.  But I didn't have to tell you all that, right?

1960: Drunken, kinky, neglectful mom has her creepy boyfriend tie her son, Willy,  to a bed when he won't listen.  His sister, Lacey, goes to the kitchen and grabs a huge knife to free him with.  Once he's up and around, he does what any abused six-year-old would do: STAB! STAB! STAB!!!  Willy knifes the boyfriend, while Lacey watches in a wall-mounted mirror.

1980: Lacey (Suzanna Love) and Willy (Nicholas Love, real-life brother of Suzanna) live with their aunt and uncle on a small farm.  Willy hasn't spoken in twenty years.  Lacey is married and has a small child, Kevin, and everything is pretty normal...until a letter from mom arrives.  Now, Lacey is having nightmares and can't stop thinking about the murder she saw as a child.  Her asshole cop husband (Canadian comedian Ron James in his film debut) and her dopey shrink (legendary John Carradine) tell her she has to go back to the house where the murder took place.  It's a lovely house, actually, and there's nothing wrong with it.  The girl who answers the door is there with her bro and sis, and the visiting couple are free to look around because, lucky for them, the house is for sale.  Lacey and hubby poke around and everything's fine...until Lacey spots the mirror...and her mom's boyfriend is in it!  Rising from the bed and coming for her!  She smashes the mirror with a chair.  Her idiot husband picks up all the pieces and the frame and takes it back home!  Where he reassembles it!

But when a mirror breaks, all it has seen is freed.  And the long-ago dead boyfriend is now the invisible BOOGEYMAN, and he'll kill anyone who gets anywhere near a broken piece of the mirror!!!

Written down, it sounds pretty stupid...and it is, I guess, but it's also so much fun that you don't really notice just how dumb it is until you think about it afterwards.  The idea of the Boogeyman is never fleshed out as well as it should be, so calling the film The Boogeyman is a neat gimmick that gets horror fans thinking of Halloween (the cheesy Carpenter-inspired score does that, too), but the ideas here are pretty original and it would have been neat to see what could have been done with the broken-mirror premise by a crew that had a bit more ambition...or money...or talent.

Not that there's no talent in evidence: John Carradine has over 300 screen credits (including John Ford's 1939 oat-opera classic Stagecoach) and no shortage of ability...although his lines leave a lot to be desired.  The sequences involving the mirror range from dumb to frightening, and I got a couple of decent scares from the film.  Oh, and that is future Sassy and Jane magazine editor/founder Jane Pratt as the girl who cuts her top open and stabs herself in the neck, the Boogeyman's first real victim.  Personally, I think this film is her finest accomplishment...but what do I know?

All in all, a fun way to kill 81 minutes, a few chills, a few thrills, some good and not-so-good acting and effects, with Carradine and Suzanna Love bringing the best performances; Carradine because of his experience, Love because she has the most to work with, and you can tell she was at least having fun.  I feel ready to tackle the sequel...and it'll probably be a lot like watching The Boogeyman all over again!

So don't break any mirrors: you never know what they may have seen.  I sure won't.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.

A Shattered Mirror...

Coming soon:



Ulli Lommel's The Bogeyman (that's spelled The Boogeyman here in the States) is not alone on the Nasties list: its' sequel Revenge of the Bogeyman (that's spelled Boogeyman 2 over here) soon joined as well, due to a large portion of it being flashbacks to the first film.  Think Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 for a similar case of "lifted" footage.  It sure keeps the budget low...but Lommel is an enterprising fellow, and he didn't stop at one movie: his Boogeyman 2 Director's Cut is comprised almost entirely of footage from the first film, the rest of it is Lommel in an interrogation room talking about the "case", and the title is totally inaccurate considering that Boogeyman 2 was directed by Bruce Starr, not Lommel.  Compounding the offense, the Boogeyman DVD also contains The Return of the Boogeyman on the flipside, and it too is filled with footage from the first film!  Somebody needs to call "Shenanigans" on these guys, before they re-release the entire first film all over again as Boogeyman 4.

But at least we'll have some fun, right?  So good to jump back into the fray!  I'll be here in the 80s if you need me.  I'm always here for whatever you might need.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.

The Latest Acquisitions.

I'm back!  I've been pretty tied up with work, school and family, but the Nasties (and this blog) are never far from my mind.  Neither are you, you awesome readers.

"Postmaster General loves me.  You know how that one goes." ~ Digger, "Security Envelopes"

In the mail this week: Three Nasties so far, plus one legendary title that has to be seen to be believed.

I received a factory-sealed VHS cassette of the Bruce Starr/Ulli Lommell sequel Boogeyman 2 (known to the DPP as Revenge Of The Bogeyman) on Tuesday.  Boogeyman 2 found its' way onto the list mainly because of the large amount of footage from the first film, and while a DVD is available, it is a completely different version, re-edited with a much larger amount of footage from the first film.  Make no mistake: Ulli Lommel's Boogeyman 2 Director's Cut does NOT count as a Video Nasty.  I am still awaiting the arrival of the first film from a different source, but I'd like to give big thanks to Leslie at MovieJukeboxReplay for kicking ass above and beyond the call.

Yesterday brought more: Aldo Lado's 1975 L'ultimo Treno Della Notte (on DVD from Blue Underground under the title Night Train Murders, and on the Nasty list as Late Night Trains), Guilio Berruti's 1978 nunsploitation film Suor Omicidi (on DVD under its' Nasty title Killer Nun, also from Blue Underground), and a film that, if it had been available in 1980s Britain would have given Mary Whitehouse a coronary, Joe D'Amato's 1980 groundbreaker Le Notti Erotiche Dei Morti Viventi (from Shriek Show as Erotic Nights of the Living Dead).

Late Night Trains is essentially a Last House on the Left remake: Two girls are menaced, raped and killed by vagabond lunatics who meet their end at the hands of one of the girl's parents.  One of the selling points for me is the appearance of Macha Meril, who portrayed psychic Helga Ulmann in Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso.  A score by Ennio Morricone doesn't hurt, either.

Killer Nun stars Anita Ekberg (probably best known as the lead in Fellini's La Dolce Vita) as Sister Gertrude, a morphine-addicted nun who is losing her mind.  Other notables in the cast are Alida Valli (Suspiria) and Joe Dallesandro, who we will see again when we view another Nasty, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein.

Which brings me to Joe D'Amato.  Born in 1936 in Rome, Aristide Massaccesi directed at least 193 films.  I say at least because no one seems to be sure just how many aliases he used.  He directed only one film under his real name, 1973's La Morte Ha Sorisso All'assassino, aka Death Smiles On A Murderer.  Other noms de film include David Hills, Alexandre Borsky, and Robert Yip, but he will always best be known by his most used alias, Joe D'Amato.  He has two Nasties to his name...but almost all of his films would qualify.  The two on the list are Antropophagus, aka Anthropophagus The Beast (and a censored American cut under the title The Grim Reaper), and Rosso Sangue (aka Monster Hunter and Horrible, its' Nasty title is Absurd, a moniker also adopted by a Black Metal band from Germany who gained infamy as teenagers when they commited a murder), a loose sequel to Antropophagus.  The only thing that really makes a link between the two is the presence of Luigi Montefiore (often billed as George Eastman) as an unstoppable monster, but when you're dealing with Joe D'Amato, that's enough.  While he is most famous for his horror films (the two Nasties and a well-respected taxidermy-horror film titled Buio Omega [literally The Final Darkness, available from Shriek Show as Beyond The Darkness and in a censored cut from Thriller Video as Buried Alive]), he made all kinds of films, but the majority were...I'll be polite and say "erotic" movies.  His late career was filled almost entirely with hardcore porn, but his most famous are from earlier in his career: the Black Emanuelle series starring Laura Gemser, an Indonesian actress who retains a cult following to this day (she branched out into costume design later on, notably for Lucio Fulci's final film Porte Di Silenzio and the supposed "best worst movie" of all time, Claudio Fragasso's Troll 2).  The Black Emanuelle films were an Italian take on the famous French sexpot that made her a reporter in more volatile situations than the usual fare: tracking down the makers of snuff films, adventuring in search of a cannibal tribe, and a two-film stint in prison.  D'Amato didn't instigate the series, nor did he finish it, but his twisted melding of violence and sex made his films the most well-regarded.

Santo Domingo, 1979:
D'Amato, and his stock company (which mostly means Gemser and Montefiore, D'Amato started as a cinematographer and continued to act as such for his own films) arrive in the tropics to make some movies.  Several of them.  They share actors, and sometimes whole scenes transposed from one to another.  Scripts?  Minimal.  Scenery?  Abundant.  Twisted sensibility that unknowingly creates legendary (though not great) cinema?  Oh yeah, because this tropical vacation produced the first (and perhaps only) serious attempts at combining horror and pornography in the forms of Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead and Porno Holocaust.

I screened Erotic Nights soon after it arrived.  I'd like to recommend it...but therein lies the problem.  Am I glad that I have seen it?  The answer is an undeniable yes.  Its' sheer weirdness of form is unmistakably D'Amato (his "touch" is competent but almost without style), and the first couple of reels consist of about five or six sex scenes interspersed with four or five zombie attacks, making good on the title...until the "story" begins and then it is a lovely travelogue of a tropical beach and nothing much else until it perks up slightly in the final reel with more zombies.  That's about it.  So I can't truly recommend it as a good film to anyone...but I won't tell you not to watch it, either, because just being able to say that I have witnessed it is, to me, a badge of honor, a symbol of my commitment to terrible, sleazy, unwatchable movies, and if I can ever find a copy I can afford, I will not hesitate to purchase a copy of Porno Holocaust, which itself has some similarities to Antropophagus, again featuring Montefiore as a hulking beast, only this time he has a much more..."personal" way to dispatch female victims.

If he were still alive, I'd vote Joe D'Amato for pope.

The next Nasty?  Yes, I know, it's been awhile, and I'm excited to dive back in.  I've got 19 now, and I'm weighing my options: The Burning, Frozen Scream, The Werewolf And The Yeti, I Miss You Hugs And Kisses, Tenebrae, so much more.  I'll keep you posted.  In the meantime, remember:

"Quite upset, angry, just plain annoyed - No recourse except for celluloid." ~ Type O Negative, "How Could She?"

So keep your VCR plugged in, and kill your Tivo: the government is watching you through it.  I give this advice because I care.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.