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The Bogeyman (1980) aka "The Boogeyman"

Dir: Ulli Lommel

Little do they know that the mirror was playing host to the murdered man's evil soul and wherever a glass shard, or its reflection, ends up, mysterious death follows…
Young Lacey and her Brother Willy are watching their alcoholic Mother and her sadistic lover making out. When they are spotted the lover ties Willy to his bed and gags him.
But Lacey gets a kitchen knife, cuts him free and Willy takes it and stabs the man to death in his Mother's bed, as Lacey watches in the bedroom mirror.

Years later the grown up Lacey (Suzanna Love, wife of the Director) and a now mute Willy (Nicholas Love) are living on their Aunt Helen's (Felicite Morgan) and Uncle Ernest's (Bill Rayburn) farm.
Lacey is also married to a guy named Jake (Ron James) and they have a Son, Kevin (Raymond Boyden).

Lacey (who is still haunted by the murder) receives a letter from her dying Mother who wishes to see her again. The letter brings back nightmarish visions of that night.
Her Psychiatrist, Dr. Warren (veteran John Carradine in yet another non-role) says she should go back to her old home to overcome her past, so she sets off with Jake.

On entering her Mother's bedroom she sees the reflection of her Mother's dead lover coming towards her. She screams and smashes the glass. A shocked Jake cleans up the shards, puts them in a bag, and takes them back to the farm.

After the excellent start Lommel takes his time (perhaps too much time) in getting the main 'haunted' mirror plot up and running and delivers lots of scenes showing how Willy's act of violence has effected him and Lacey. Now although this is an essential component of the tale (and realistic given the circumstances of what Willy did), it is perhaps driven home too frequently, especially with the visit to Dr Warren which basically goes over what we already know (or have worked out) and even gives us flashbacks to the opening.
And despite this time spent on this part of the story there is no explanation of what happened to Willy after he stabbed the man to death. Was he put away for a while? Did he get off completely?

But once the plot moves away from the past, and gets going on the current supernatural events, it starts to at least partially deliver on the trashy horror promised by it's reputation.

The bloody deaths and supernatural set-pieces are quite effective and sometimes exploitative (the famous scissors in the throat death is gilded with bared, blood streaked breasts and there is a dream sequence with sexually violent overtones) but they are sometimes very clumsy in execution, the less said, for instance, about a supposedly fatal feather-lite tap on the head by a falling window the better.
Though one double death does in particular does have a wonderfully perverse, sick, sense of humour, there is little here that would cause any censorship nowadays.

Lommel makes great use of light in setting up the movie's eerie tone, with a blood-red lit scene showing the mirror's evil power and a lantern illuminated search of a barn being two highlights.
Otherwise though the cinematography is pedestrian at best, though there is an effective shot of the farm house during the finale, a house that owes a great dept to the famous house of "The Amityville Horror" in it's appearance.
An effectively ominous electronic score (by Tim Krog), with shades of Carpenter/Howarth's work and Rick Wakeman's music for "The Burning", punctuates many of the film's scenes and although rather simplistic it does add to the general air of otherworldly menace.

Performance wise Nicholas Love does a pretty good job (especially given his character's lack of dialogue) as the unhinged Willy (no jokes please!) as does Ron James as the driven Husband and the other stock character roles are played out adequately enough.
Suzanna Love also deserves a mention as the troubled Lacey, never going overboard and keeping the viewer's sympathy for her character.
Suzanna, a rich heiress, famously bankrolled many of her Husband's film and would often write out cheques on the set to keep them going! They sadly divorced in '87, but her money at least went to a good cause as "The Bogeyman" became a big international hit and had a long life on video and DVD (the fuss it caused as one of the UK 'Video Nasties' ultimately helping to prolong it's life to).

Ulli Lommel himself is one of the more unusual Director's to make a film that ended up as a damned and lambasted 'Nasty'.
Coming very much from the 'dark' art house school (he was a protégé of Fassbinder) he gained critical notoriety and plaudits for his second film "A Tenderness of Wolves", his study of a real-life Homosexual killer of teenage boys in Germany. But the art house was later abandoned for the crumbling Grindhouse as he moved into very American style schlock horror, with "The Bogeyman" being his biggest success.

Lommel and co-writer David Herschel have very little idea how to end the film though with a rather low-key and simplistic solution trotted out and a stock 'twist' shoved on before the credits roll.
It's a weak outcome to a film that, although too sedate at times for it's own good, delivers some strong scenes of supernatural shenanigans and the odd flash of grue but is basically just average, low budget, fare that owes it's high profile to it's undeserved infamy more than anything else.