Bad Movie Tuesday: The Boogeyman (1980), a pretty lame but pretty fun to watch B-movie about a campy evil spirit in a mirror.

MY CALL: This silly, campy, extra bad movie is a perfect Bad Movie Tuesday. The death scenes occasionally don’t seem like they’d be fatal, we never properly understand what the evil entity even is, and the “rules” of this horror movie seem to develop and change scene by scene like even the writer never had a proper grasp on it. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Boogeyman: For more Boogeyman movies, try The Boogeyman (2023) and The Boogeyman (2005). Then move on to Candyman (1992), Jeepers Creepers 1-2 (2001, 2003), Darkness Falls (2003), The Babadook (2014), The Bye Bye Man (2017), which I find to be yet more fun and/or better and/or intense movies with much better “horror” backing their Boogeymen.

Growing up with their abusive harlot mother, Lacey (Suzanna Love; Boogeyman II, The Devonsville Terror) and Willy (Nicholas Love; Jennifer 8, Twin Peaks) were two traumatized kids. Young Willy murdered his mother’s horrible boyfriend as his kid sister watched. Needless to say, if their mother’s abusive boyfriend becomes a ghost, he’s gonna’ be a problem for these two.

Now adults, Willy is a mute farmhand and Lacey has a husband and child. They receive word that their mother, who they haven’t seen in twenty years, is dying and wishes to see them one last time. This brings about graphic, mildly sexualized nightmares in Lacey. Meanwhile, Willy seems to be violently triggered by sexuality, and both siblings seem to be having irrational responses to mirrors.

Dr. Warren (John Carradine; Evils of the Night, The Nesting, The Howling, The Sentinel, Buried Alive) advises that Lacey face her fear and revisit her childhood home, the origin of her trauma. At her mother’s house, a mirror is accidentally broken and some form of evil is somehow freed to wreak lame havoc on this movie. Shortly after it shatters, a young woman in the house is forced (I guess by an unseen force?) to stab herself in the throat with scissors in a rather dull death scene. And then her kid brother is I guess killed when a window seemingly softly drops down on his neck. Finally a medicine cabinet door bitch-slaps the remaining sibling—killing her!?!?! Yup. Death by medicine cabinet bitch slap. That’s a thing in this movie.

So the rules apparently are as follows: 1) mirrors are bad and bring out the worst in us, and 2) the presence of broken mirrors turns truly deadly. I’m glad we cleared up this very well-written concept in this garbage movie.

In the name of all things stupid, a piece of mirror flings itself to the floor where Lacey’s son steps on it. Mind you, this is now a different mirror back at Lacey’s house. It then sticks to the boy’s shoe (SOMEHOW) and he transports it to the lake behind their property. Then, while the boy is sitting by the lake fishing, the sun reflects off this piece of mirror on his shoe to an abandoned cabin on the other side of the lake, where some twentysomething couples are hanging out. We hear heavy breathing and see POV of I guess the murderous spirit of the mirrors as a knife telekinetically stabs a guy through the back of the head and out his mouth, which then “kiss stabs” his girlfriend with the aid of more telekinesis slamming her in the butt with the car door (into the deadly kiss) in a very dumb, but admittedly laughable “so bad it’s good” death scene.

Okay, let’s review the new additional rules. So apparently 3) the mirrors and their broken fragments are intelligent and self-ambulatory to some degree AND mirrors are connected like a phone network with other mirrors; 4) the glare reflection of the mirror counts as the presence of an evil mirror regarding the mirror’s evil, murderous influence; and 5) the Boogeyman of the mirror has the power of telekinesis and is a mouth-breathing panter. I guess this better explains the scissors death scene from earlier. And now with this heavy breathing, it finally feels like there is a poltergeist-boogeyman, whereas before this just felt like a bunch of haphazard supernatural effects.

After our incorporeal boogeyman sexually assaults Lacey, they call their local priest. More dead bodies (that we never saw killed) turn up, the boogeyman cuts the phone lines and possesses Lacey, the lighting turns green because “why not, Argento does it, right?”, and levitations and in-door windstorms ensue. The priest attempts a weak-ass exorcism and gets stabbed in the back with truly a dozen kitchen knives. It’s all so horrible and campy, but amusingly watchable for its tremendous faults.

In the end, they somehow explode a mirror by dropping it in a well on their farm, and everything seems to be fine again. Or is it? Oh, snap! It’s not okay. Cue heavy breathing sounds! At least we now know for the sequel, yes there’s actually a sequel to this craptastic bad movie, that 6) priests don’t work against evil mirrors, and 7) farm wells detonate evil mirrors BUT then the mirror respawns like a FPS videogame avatar to start killing again. And knowing’s half the battle, G. I. Joe!

This movie is bad. The death scenes occasionally don’t seem like they’d even be fatal, we never properly understand what the crap this evil entity even is, and the “rules” of this horror movie seem to develop and change scene by scene like even the writer never had a proper grasp on it. Director and co-writer Ulli Lommel (Boogeyman II, Zombie Nation, Return of the Boogeyman, The Tomb) clearly knows exactly how to make an effective Bad Movie Tuesday. So you may just expect future coverage of his sequel here on Movies, Films and Flix.