Boogeyman II (Bruce Pearn, 1983)

Also known as Revenge of the Boogeyman, Boogeyman II is a sequel to 1980's The Boogey Man, and, as we can already tell by the filmmakers not caring that "boogey man" was two words in the first film, is a monument to laziness, barrel-scraping, and the "fuck it, this'll do" attitude. Boogeyman II, an occasionally hilarious act of bad faith, should be re-released in 2019, the pinnacle year of bad faith (at least until next year). For now, used VHS and YouTube are your best bets. It's a harder film to track down than the original Boogey Man. (Almost every horror blog warns us to avoid the 2003 "director's cut" DVD, which is somehow even worse than the VHS cut.)

Ulli Lommel, the co-writer and director of the first Boogey Man (and who I wrote about in detail in my review of that film a few months ago), was approached by a Hollywood studio to make a big-budget sequel to the first film, which had done very well as an independent release. Lommel had no interest in making a sequel or working within the system, so he told Hollywood to get stuffed. He then decided to make the sequel independently at his own home and turn it into a meta art film about sequels and his own reluctance to make the movie. It's a fascinating idea, but Lommel is not that great when it comes to execution (especially compared to his mentor, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose own film about the disaster of making films, Beware of a Holy Whore, wipes the floor with Boogeyman II). What we get is a film that doesn't work as either a horror movie or a self-aware meta-commentary. It's turgid postmodern slop with some reasonably (often unintentionally) funny moments.

Boogeyman II ends up playing as a cheaper retread of The Boogey Man mashed together with rejected outtakes from Altman's The Player, which is honestly kind of interesting. I doubt Robert Altman or that film's screenwriter Michael Tolkin was influenced by Lommel, but the small-time wheeler-dealers of the film industry make up the bulk of the characters in both, and several lines of dialogue (one aspiring young actor says he's working on a movie that crosses Star Wars with Smokey and the Bandit; an investor bemoans the budget of Brian De Palma's Blow Out (a then-flop before becoming a cult movie years later) and says she could have made 18 movies with the money) could have been spoken in Altman's movie a decade later. That is the extent of my comparison of Lommel to Altman. Back to the boogey man, or boogeyman.

The film begins with the star and co-writer of the first film (and Lommel's then-wife) Suzanna Love being driven through Hollywood by a mysterious man. She arrives at the Hollywood Hills home of  childhood friend Shannah Hall (Bonnie Lombard) for some rest and relaxation after the terrifying events of the first film. Shannah is married to filmmaker Mickey Lombard (Lommel), a European art film director trying to make it in the American exploitation market. Lacey (Love) tells Shannah and Mickey what happened to her, and the audience gets 40 full minutes of footage from the previous film (an amazing 85 minutes in the "director's cut" DVD version). To make it worse, the flashback footage is made darker to signify that it's a flashback, so it's hard to tell what the fuck is going on. Fortunately, I'd seen The Boogey Man a handful of weeks ago, so I did indeed know what the fuck was going on. Unfortunately, it made this chunk of the film incredibly boring.

As Lacey tells her tale, padding the only 75-minute film by half its running time, the mysterious driver eavesdrops creepily. He is Shannah and Mickey's live-in help, Joseph (played by the incredibly named Sholto Von Douglas), and he loves skulking and hiding around the house to hear what people say to each other in private. The couple hired Joseph because he appeared out of nowhere and was walking up their hill (cool move). Later in the film, when Joseph can't be found, Mickey remarks that "he probably walked down the hill to another house."
For nonsensical reasons, Lacey keeps a shard of the broken possessed mirror from the first film, and she tells Mickey about it. Joseph overhears and steals it, unleashing mayhem. Meanwhile, Shannah decides Lacey's tale of the boogey man should be made into a film, directed by a reluctant Mickey, and she invites some industry weasels to a party in an attempt to get some financing and cast some parts. Lacey doesn't want a movie made about this part of her life, but Shannah moves ahead anyway. The boogey man proceeds to massacre the party guests, but on a shoestring budget. This is mostly hilarious and involves someone offscreen shaking inanimate objects onscreen, including a toothbrush, a shaving cream can, a ladder, a weed whacker, and most hilariously, a wine bottle opener (which looks like a tiny man bouncing his arms up and down). Truly terrifying.

Lines are read mechanically, as if from cue cards. The small child of Shannah and Mickey is introduced, then completely forgotten about once the mayhem begins. (Her voice is also weirdly double tracked and given echo in one pool scene, for no discernible reason.) Shaving cream is terrifyingly sprayed in a victim's face. One young actor interrupts a young actress by shushing her and saying, "Be quiet now. Let's pretend we're in a silent movie." Joseph pushes everyone to try his dessert, but only Lacey responds. (We never see this dessert!) Yes, this movie is bad.
The film's director is credited as Bruce Pearn (sometimes billed as Bruce Starr), a cameraman who has no other directing credits, but Lommel apparently directed much of it uncredited. This is not surprising. On the positive side, the kills are funny, it's short, and I did like the Tangerine Dream-esque synth score by Tim Krog.      

The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932)

James Whale's second foray into the macabre after the previous year's Frankenstein is another major success and one of my favorite '30s horror films. I think I liked it even more on this second viewing than I did the first time around. Whale is both an accomplished visual stylist and a great observer of people and their mannerisms and quirks, and he has a sense of humor that is both wicked and empathetic. This combination gives his best films tremendous staying power, high rewatchability, and a modern sensibility that doesn't date.

The Old Dark House, written by Benn W. Levy based on the novel by J.B. Priestley, takes a familiar setup (travelers forced to take refuge in a storm at the home of sinister people with mysterious motives) and transforms it into something unique. None of the characters are tropes; all have their own particular points of view and ways of being that aren't movie types. It's so refreshing and entertaining to see these fleshed-out characters (played by great actors) interacting with each other in front of Whale's interested camera on the beautifully designed sets of Russell A. Gausman (with much input there from Whale).

The film begins with bickering married couple Philip and Margaret Waverton (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) and their pipe-smoking, wise-cracking buddy Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) driving through terrible conditions late at night, lost in a storm. The Wavertons are tense, taking their frustration out on each other (it's refreshing to see couples arguing like actual couples in a Hollywood movie without it being some premonition of murder, infidelity, divorce, or happily-ever-after reconciliation; they're just stressed out and having a normal fight), but Penderel is having his usual detached good time, smoking away and changing popular song lyrics to storm-related tunes like some kind of big-band "Weird Al."

After nearly getting wiped out by a mudslide, the trio decides to stop at an old, dark house until the storm blows over. The door is answered by a menacing, hulking figure with a scarred face who grunts and mutters gibberish. This man is a servant named Morgan (Boris Karloff), and, in addition to his servant duties and his mutterings and groans, his favorite activities include glowering angrily and drinking to excess. He's an unfriendly presence, but Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger) welcomes them inside. He's a nervous man, terrified of the storm, but, despite being an atheist, he does the Christian thing and takes in the weary, lost travelers even though his sister Rebecca (Eva Moore), despite being devoutly religious, makes it clear these people are not wanted.

Horace, despite his nervousness, is a welcoming host, pouring a round of gin (much to Penderel's delight) and insisting the strangers join them for a dinner of potatoes, roast beef, and pickled onions (Rebecca is a pickled onion fiend). The siblings constantly argue about religion, whether or not they should have allowed the strangers to enter, and the checkered history of the Femms, several of whom have met untimely ends or become insane. Mid-dinner, more knocks sound on the door. Two more stranded strangers join the party, a wealthy businessman and widow named Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his paid escort, a chorus girl named Gladys (Lillian Bond). Gladys and Penderel are immediately drawn to each other, and the whole gang drink gin, eat, and tell their sometimes emotionally heated life stories, to Horace's amusement and Rebecca's irritation and contempt.

Things get creepier when Morgan gets drunk and violent and our stranded characters learn about two more Femms in the house, the 102-year-old patriarch Sir Roderic (played by a woman, Elspeth Dudgeon) and homicidally insane brother Saul (Brember Wills). Saul is locked away on the top floor, and the siblings are both terrified of him, but servant Morgan has a deep feeling of warmth for the man, the only person in the house he appears to like.

The film remains creepy, exciting, funny, and compelling for each of its 72 minutes. Though The Old Dark House doesn't get as much attention as Whale's two Frankenstein films, it is just as good. Everything works: the acting, the shot compositions, the writing, the pacing, the big storm scene at the beginning, the introduction of each character, the descent into action at the end. This is one of Whale's greatest films.

It's fascinating to look at this film through the lens of Whale's (and Laughton's) sexuality, too. Whale was gay in a time and an industry where it was necessary for comfort, career, and survival to remain in the closet, and his horror films have a great deal of empathy for their monsters and madmen and third wheels and loners and people with secrets. Homosexuality was considered an abomination and/or perversion by much of mainstream society, and it's not too much of a stretch to see Whale's horror films as his way of struggling with this. Whale loves his monsters, who can't help being who they are, even the murderous ones in this film, and the viewer can sense real pain in their ostracization from society. Laughton was also a closeted gay man (married to the star of Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, Elsa Lanchester, a closeted gay woman), and his character's widower who pays a woman for platonic companionship is handled with such warmth and compassion by Laughton and Whale. There's also real gender-bending fun in having a woman play the elderly patriarch of the Femms, and in switching some traditionally masculine and feminine traits in the siblings played by Thesiger and Moore.
Check this movie out, why don't ya? Whale rules.