Red-Barracuda
Well folks, if you ever wondered what the absolute worst video nasty was then you need look no further. Revenge of the Boogeyman is quite simply an awful film. I don't mind poorly executed horror films or absolute trash-fests – far from it. But I do mind films that exploit the viewer with little or no pay back. Luckily I was well aware of this bad boy's reputation in advance of seeing it so I was prepared. I had also seen the third film in this franchise Return of the Boogeyman which was truly an even worse excuse for a film. But that doesn't change the fact that this is a terrible movie from an abysmal franchise. Don't get me entirely wrong here; I actually like the original Boogeyman. It's no great shakes but it's entertaining and does the job. Unfortunately it clearly should have ended there as the sequels seem to purely be an excuse of regurgitating the material of that first movie. And this film is a good example of this. The first half is simply made up of flash-backs of scenes taken from part one. This is barely film-making to be honest and director Ulli Lommel should really hang his head in shame but seeing as his franchise has repeated the exact same trick a further two times I suspect he isn't strictly too bothered.Once we get beyond forty minutes of flash-backs we kick into a new story where Lommel himself plays a director who has been asked to make a film about events depicted in the first movie. Lommel spends a great deal of time railing against Hollywood and how the ungrateful swine there ignore him unfairly. Well to be honest Ulli, on the strength of this movie you can't really say they don't have a bit of a point. The rest of the movie involves the Boogeyman returning and killing various people in what has to be a series of the most stupid death scenes ever conceived for a motion picture. These killings include seminal moments such as death by toothbrush. To be fair, it's the sheer idiocy of these murder scenes that makes this feature even vaguely bearable. They are so stupid they are sort of worth watching. But all things considered, I don't think Revenge of the Boogeyman as a whole is in the least bit worth seeking out. The only reason I can conceivably think you should watch this is if you are attempting to complete the video nasty list. Otherwise please stay away
Coventry
Writer/director Ulli Lommel is nowadays a very notorious and even quite hated individual because he unleashes multiple downright insufferable straight-to-video horror stinkers on the market every single year, but there once was a time when he was a promising filmmaker. In the very earliest phase of his career he made the near-brilliant "The Tenderness of Wolves" and throughout the early eighties he made a handful of inferior but highly amusing horror movies, like "Brain Waves", "The Devonsville Terror" and "The Boogeyman". That last one is definitely a minor 80's classic. The story is pure hokum, but the film is full of absurdly grotesque murder sequences and extreme gore. Ulli Lommel and his buddies must have been so proud on their accomplishment that they decided to re-use all the best footage to fill up almost three quarters of the sequel. Yes, you read that right: "Boogeyman II" is stuffed like a Christmas turkey with key footage of the original, and that's the main reason why it receives so many negative reviews around here. Personally I didn't mind all that much, because it's been a couple of years since I watched it. This way, I get to re-watch all the fun parts (like that awesome mouth-to-mouth impalement sequence) without having to sit through the dull parts. Part two takes place in Hollywood, where survivor Lacey is staying with friends to recover from her trauma. Through long and extremely detailed flashbacks, Lacey tells the story about the murderous spirit in the little piece of mirror to befriended actress and her husband director (played by Ulli Lommel himself, with his atrocious German accent). Naturally they want to exploit Lacey's bizarre thriller story and turn it into a horror movie, but then the Boogeyman returns to kill them all during a typical Hollywood pool party. "Boogeyman II" is 50 minutes of stock footage and 25 minutes of non-stop new murders. The new massacres are very lame in comparison with those of the original, though. Death by electric toothbrush and suffocation in shaving gel, for example. The film still got included in the infamous list of video nasties, but only because of the stock footage of the original and not because of the ridiculous new murder set pieces.
Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki
Bizarre, pretentious, idiotic sequel starts off with 40 minutes of flashback footage of the first movie. So much footage is used from part one, that when the end credits roll, they actually credit both the cast of this movie AND the first one!When the flashbacks mercifully end, the rest of this movie is pretty much Ulli Lommel poking the viewer in the eyes with this ridiculous story about filmmakers wanting to do a movie based on the events in part one, then a certain piece of broken mirror turns up and you can guess the rest. And if you can't then you have the iq of a carrot. Why did Lacey even bother to keep the piece of mirror? She had to know that it would cause more murder and mayhem. Then she misplaces it, and can't remember that she left it under her pillow! Perhaps she can't remember because of Lomell using a flashlight for lighting in many scenes, and the for-no-apparent-reason kaleidoscope vision some people have in the film?We're then treated to see (or is that tricked into seeing?) some of the most idiotic killings ever filmed: death by electric toothbrush, death by shaving cream, death by salad tongs, death by sucking on a tailpipe after being slapped on the ass by a ladder(?!) etc.No writer is credited (actually this was written by Bruce Starr, Ulli Lommel and Suzanna Love - she incidentally looks great in this movie, but you can watch the first movie to see her) and directed by Bruce Starr, Ulli Lommel and Paul Wilson (but both Ulli Lommel and Paul Wilson took their names off of this, and IMDb doesn't even list Wilson's name here) this was filmed in 1981 and not released until '83, and there is even a flashback sequence within a flashback sequence - what more can you ask for? ==========================In most versions, the opening titles are in red, in a generic font against a plain black background. The British version, titled "Revenge of the Boogeyman" has a completely different set of titles: red lettering, like that found on a birthday cake, on plain white cards. When John Carradine's name appears, a hand is very clearly visible in the top right corner, holding the card up for the camera to film. Now, about the so-called Director's Cut/ Redux: The original Boogeyman II recycled tens of minutes of footage of the first film, and this version recycles even more, approximately eighty to ninety percent of the Director's Cut/ Redux is whole chunks of the first film repeated again and narrated by Ulli Lommell, in the guise of Lommell being questioned by off-screen police about the deaths which occurred in the original Boogeyman film, from 1980. All of the footage of him is taken from one stationary camera angle, while Lommell hides behind mirrored sunglasses, and is obviously looking down at the script on the table in front of him. (Who am I kidding, like there was really even a script for this) Apparently this redux/ director's cut takes place 22 years later, and the police are just now getting around to questioning him! Lommell claims that he has no memory of the events in the first film, as he narrates the intimate details of the story of the first film, which was told to him 22 years ago? What? Ulli, do you even know what the bloody hell you are talking about here? Or was the dialogue just drunken, stream-of-consciousness ramblings? Ulli also claims that the second film's events are, in his memory, nothing more than "a series of slow motion still-photographs". Again, what the hell does that mean? Ulli says of the butler, played by Shoto von Douglas: "He actually, ... uh, .... one day, came walking down the street, in the butler outfit, and rang the bell and asked me whether he could serve me". Yeah, Ulli, that happens a lot, I bet. "Lacey claims that it was the boogeyman. Well, I don't believe in the boogeyman. But yeah, maybe, uh, maybe it was the boogeyman. I'll stand trial for these killings, no problem. I have nothing to hide, I'm innocent. The boogeyman did it." Heavy drinking Ulli, or just stupidity? Original version of Boogeyman II gets a 2/ 10 from me, just for a couple of unintended laughs. The Director's Cut/ Redux version gets a 1/ 10, and almost makes the original Boogeyman II look like a classic.
