Boogeyman II

Made in 1982, "Boogeyman II" is an unsuccessful followup to Ulli Lommel's 1980 horror hit. Carrying sequelitis to a distressing extreme, about half the current picture's running time consists of flashback highlights from the earlier film, amounting to virtually a condensed version. Small wonder that, in common with many other marginal films of late, the pic had no theatrical release but has gone instead directly into the home video market.

Uncredited screenplay is built around the first film's heroine Lacey (Suzanna Love) moving from Maryland to L. A. six months after the supernatural murders recounted in part 1. Much of the pic's early reels consists of flashback material as she tells her story to friends and film director Mickey Lombard (Ulli Lommel).

Beyond recapitulation of already-released footage, "Boogeyman II" is a vehicle for expatriate German filmmaker Uli Lommel to express his misgivings about the Hollywood scene. Recalling (no doubt unintentionally) the theme of an unsung little film-about-films "The Other Woman" by the Czech actor-director Hugo Haas, the picture has Lommel (under protest) shooting some skin shots to spice up his current art film entitled "Nathalie and the Age of Diminishing Expectations". His producer has already retitled the epic "Kiss and Tell".

As Haas did 30 years ago, Lommel (in character) sounds off about the commercial vicissitudes of filmmaking. Thumbing through a copy of Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon", he spots a photo of Erich von Strohim and comments cynically about the "good old days when Hollywood destroyed real people instead of toys". Regarding spiralling costs and waste, once again the target is a familiar one, as Lommel's agent expresses the low-budget filmer's refrain: "Brian De Palma spent $18,000,000 on that bomb of his "Blow Out", you could make 50 movies for that".

Amidst this griping, the lethal mirror shard brought along from ""Boogeyman" by Lacey goes on the rampage again, possessing the butler Joseph (Sholto von Douglass). With extremely cheap blood and gore effects, various household objects are supernaturally levitaged and used to kill off the greepy guests at a Hollywood party. Besides a garden hose, hedge-clipper, corkscrew and barbecue tongs, the appliances employed in this weak spoof of the "Power tools of death" horror genre extend to an electric toothbrush and even a girl smothered by shaving cream. It's a feeble exercise in black humor, right up through the inevitable graveside ending (ripped off from De Palma's "Carrie").

My review was written in July 1983 after watching the movie on videocassette.

This is more flashbacks of the first "Boogeyman" movie than anything else (literally %75 of this film), and what it dosen't rip off is boring, cheap garbage. In fact the best thing I can say about it is that it isn't quite as bad as the next sequel, "Return of the Boogeyman", which is only surpassed by maybe "Plan 9 from Outer Space" or perhaps a test pattern. Rub your eyes real hard, its more entertaining than watching this one.

Boogeyman II(1983/2002)

* 1/2 (out of 4) Original Cut

BOMB (out of 4) Redux Version

Notorious follow up to the 1980 cult classic has that films only survivor (Suzanna Love) going to Hollywood to see a friend when several producers become interested in her story. The only problem is that part of the broken mirror from that original film is with her and soon the boogeyman is once again killing folks. If the story sounds mildly interesting then you can just forget that because sadly this film is made up of at least sixty-percent of footage from the original movie. I still remember the first time I watched this film and how confused and disappointed I was that it didn't feature more of a story. THE BOOGEYMAN was a surprise hit and an effective thriller but none of that eeriness made its way to this cheap sequel, which was made after Lommel turned down an offer from Paramount for a bigger budget. Once you try and get past the fact that the majority of this movie is from the original, you're left with a rather nutty film. We get some extremely bizarre and at times downright stupid death scenes including one with a tooth brush and another with a car muffler. How these death scenes are carried off are rather obvious and cheap. I hated this film with a passion when I first saw it and the "director's cut", released through Image, didn't do the film any justice as it just featured this film minus about twenty-minutes and then with new footage thrown back into the film making it more BOOGEYMAN 4 than anything else. I was rather shocked to see how much nostalgia this film carries and how much better it plays out today. You can just look at the thing and see, smell and taste the cheapness of those early 80's and on that level the film mildly works. The performances are all rather bland, especially Lommel as the director and it's a shame Love wasn't given more to do here. No matter how the movie struck me this time there's no denying that this is still a major disappointment considering how effective the first film was and how much more could have been done here. As it is, the film comes off as Lommel just throwing a fit about Hollywood as that's what takes up a lot of the new footage.

When THE BOOGEYMAN became a huge hit in 1980 every studio lined up hoping Ulli Lommel would do a sequel. For a while he refused but when he finally gave in he turned out one of the worst films ever made. Boogeyman 2 started with over forty-minutes worth of footage from the first film and then the second half had the director starring as a director being forced into making a sequel and the boogeyman shows up to kill the producer's. Then in 2002 for the DVD release, the director decided he didn't like this version so what's he do? He keeps all the footage from The Boogeyman but with the Boogeyman 2 footage he turns the color into B&W and has the scenes play in a fast forward mode. He then adds fifteen minutes of newly shot footage (of himself) and pretty much changes the entire film to where you should really be calling this Boogeyman 4. On the DVD interview the director says that parts 5-9 will be coming soon. Since there isn't a part 4 I'd say that's what this is suppose to be, although Image is still selling the DVD as a sequel to the original film, which is certainly false marketing. So in the end, Lommel made a hit film in 1980, kept the rights to that film and since then has made two sequels plus this thing with that original footage with newly added stuff on each one. Talk about milking a movie.

This "Redux" version actually adds more scenes from the original movie and takes away several scenes from the original part 2. Again, the original part 2 was a horrid film but it did feature some hilarious death scenes including one by a muffler and another by a toothbrush. This "Redux" version makes the film look even worse and it's a damn outrage that Image would release what's basically part 4 as the original part 2. I'm counting this as a new view.

How sweet of him.

And just to make sure that no one can blame him for running short of ideas, he included some very wtf innovative kills.

A woman gets killed by shaving foam.

A supernatural entity hits a woman's butt by a ladder causing her to swallow a car's exhaust pipe. The entity later turns on the car's engine and forces the woman to swallow the fumes.

Thank God I saw this for the first time recently since i just revisited part 1. This movie doesn't deserve a single viewing let aside revisiting.

Some info:

Jackie Chan's Fearless Hyena part 2 added flashbacks from part 1.

Wes Craven's Hills Have Eyes part 2 added flashbacks from part 1.

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?

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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.