Boogey Man, The (1980) – Nostalgia Central

Two young children surreptitiously watch through a window as their mother is having sex with a man. When the young voyeurs are caught, the man (Howard Grant) ties the boy, Willy (Jay Wright), to his bed.

The young girl, Lacey (Natasha Schiano), frees her brother with a large butcher knife, which he then uses to kill the man. Lacey witnesses the murder reflected in a mirror.

Twenty years later, Willy (now played by Nicholas Love) has been stricken mute ever since the traumatic events of that night. The adult Lacey (Suzanna Love) is haunted by recurring nightmares.

She consults a psychiatrist (veteran character actor John Carradine) who convinces her husband that she must return to the scene of the murder and confront her guilt in order to expunge it.

Lacey and her husband, Jake (Ron James), revisit her former home, now occupied by a new family. In the bedroom where the murder occurred, she sees her mother’s dead lover from 20 years ago in the mirror and smashes it.

Jake picks up the pieces of the broken mirror and takes it home, where he glues it back together to prove to Lace that it’s not haunted.

Unfortunately, when she broke the mirror, she freed the murdered man’s evil spirit, which now seeks revenge for his death.

After a series of needlessly bloody mirror-related killings (scissors in the throat, a knitting needle through the mouth, a pitchfork through the neck etc), the movie’s climactic scene occurs in the kitchen and involves a hurricane-force wind blowing through the room while a priest uses a crucifix to try to hold off the Boogey Man as he is being stabbed by kitchen knives that fly through the air.

While all this is going on, Lacey – wearing a shard of the evil mirror in her eye – becomes possessed by the Boogey Man, levitates, and wreaks havoc.

Written, directed and produced by Ulli Lommel, the film – which “borrows” extensively from Halloween (1978), The Exorcist (1973), Carrie (1976) and The Fury (1978) – became embroiled in the UK’s “Video Nasties” debate and, in 1984, it was placed on the Director of Public Prosecutions’ list of films deemed inappropriate for public consumption and removed from video store shelves.

The film was later passed fully uncut in the UK in 2000.

Lacey
Suzanna Love
Dr Warren
John Carradine
Jake
Ron James
Willy
Nicholas Love
Kevin
Raymond Boyden
Aunt Helen
Felicite Morgan
Uncle Ernest
Bill Rayburn
Father Reilly
Llewelyn Thomas
Young Willy
Jay Wright
Young Lacey
Natasha Schiano
Lacey and Willy’s Mother
Gillian Gordon
The Lover
Howard Grant
Jane
Jane Pratt
Susan
Lucinda Ziesing
Timmy
David Swim

Director
Ulli Lommel