Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

The Boogens Blu-ray Movie Review

Scary funny.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 28, 2012

The Boogens is one of those cult horror films that some people love even as they’re laughing at it. Filmed in and around Park City, Utah in the early eighties, the film has some very effective sequences which are undercut by some (hopefully) unintentionally hilarious moments, none more so than when we finally get a peek or two at the titular monster, a sort of half turtle – half crocodile looking beastie that has been awakened from its primordial sleep by the meddlesome efforts of some nearby miners (in an added unintended hilarity, the liner notes on the keepcase insert refer to these workers as “minors”, but the film actually deals with adults in peril, not amorous teens, a more typical horror trope). The film is notable for building a fair amount of suspense throughout about two thirds of its running time, as two couples who are staying at a mountainside cabin keep hearing strange noises emanating from the basement but never quite figure out what’s going on. The viewer has already seen another hapless soul, who ended up in the cabin after her car crashed in a snow drift, being dragged into the basement by some unseen force, so we know whatever is down there is up to no good. Co-scenarists David O’Malley and a pseudonymous Bob Hunt along with director James L. Conway do a rather admirable job in creating an unsettling ambience without ever really showing any outright violence or mayhem, but ultimately with a film like this that is built around a scary monster, the viewer needs to see something, and that’s when The Boogens takes a decided step into self-parody. The Boogens features perhaps the all time funniest monster in movie monster history, and that’s quite an achievement. The good news here is Conway, O’Malley and star Rebecca Balding, who contribute a very enjoyable commentary commissioned especially for this Blu-ray release, are only too aware of this shortcoming of their little film. The commentary is almost as funny as seeing the monster, as Conway and Balding (who are married) discuss just how many nanoseconds the beast should have remained in view so as not to have revealed too much.

Park City has become famous in the film world for hosting the Sundance Film Festival every year (though truth be told, Redford’s Sundance Ski Resort is nowhere near Park City). I grew up in Salt Lake City and during my tot years at least, Park City was little more than a ramshackle assortment of abandoned mining buildings. Family lore has it that my father, who was a prominent General at Salt Lake City’s Ft. Douglas (the military museum there was founded by him and is housed in a building named after him) was once offered the bulk of Park City real estate for some astoundingly low sum of money, but my mother took one look at the aggregation of distressed buildings and told my Dad he was out of his friggin’ mind. It was a decision she obviously later rued and my father would occasionally mercilessly tease her about it, mentioning how cushy their retirement would have been had he invested back in the day. But by the eighties, when The Boogens was filmed, Park City had become at least somewhat gentrified, and in fact it housed the production company headed by Conway and his partners, a company which according to the commentary had recently struck gold with the Grizzly Adams movie and subsequent television series and was beginning to branch out in ancillary product.

Conway uses the Utah locations to his benefit, with a feeling of isolation and even desolation helping to establish a nice creepy mood throughout most of The Boogens. The commentary reveals that most of the interior “cave” sequences were actually done in an abandoned supermarket in Park City, where the crew built rock formations out of Styrofoam, which led to a devastating fire late in the shoot. But the snowy hills and frosty ambience is well utilized and is kind of a nice change from the more typical “hot summer nights” setting of so many other horror movies, where things need to be warm enough for lusty teens to begin taking off their clothes before they’re decimated. (In a kind of funny aside, the commentary gets into a nudity clause that some of the actresses in the film agreed to and then reneged on.)

The best sequences in the film are taught little moments like when one of the damsels in distress gets her arm pulled through a heating vent in the floor of the cabin and is struggling to free herself. Unfortunately that moment is then followed by the same damsel hilariously throwing empty cardboard boxes at the beast, as if that’s going to be an effective means of killing it. Later, in the cave, a miner and the area’s weird old man (a horror staple) try to blow up the beast with dynamite. Guess who wins that battle? The sequence is mostly well staged, though, with a nice shot of flailing in the cave’s glowing pool of water.

Things go horribly, horribly awry, though, in the film’s final fifteen or so minutes, when Conway simply can’t continue avoiding showing the so-called Boogens (according to O’Malley he coined the term himself but then pitched the film by claiming it was an ancient Scottish term). When we finally see The Boogens, it’s so patently ludicrous that it sucks the horrific life out of the film and most people are just going to descend into helpless giggles, especially when the beast latches on to a nearby man’s face. To give Conway and his crew a little credit, evidently they experienced numerous problems with a planned animatronic device (shades of Spielberg’s first attempts with the robotic shark in Jaws), and they simply didn’t have the time or money to make things look any better. The fact that they actually got away with their collective sleight of hand for as long as they did is something of a minor miracle. Up until the final reveal, The Boogens is a rather decently creepy little horror film.

The Boogens Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Boogens is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Despite this being a relatively low budget feature, things look really surprisingly spry throughout this high definition presentation, if you can get past a few recurrent issues with the elements. Color is very well saturated, fine object detail is very good to excellent, and contrast is strong and well defined. Where this transfer occasionally fails to miss the mark is simply due to the age of the elements and the damage they've weathered through the years. This is one of the more consistently speckled source elements we've seen from Olive, with recurrent white flecks and specks occurring throughout the presentation. That one qualm aside, though, this is a remarkably sharp and nice looking transfer that should certainly please The Boogens' coterie of fans.

The Boogens Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Boogens features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix that like the video quality has stood up to the ravages of time really rather well. All frequency ranges sound full and boisterous, and the nice sliding massed glissandi of strings, a recurrent score cue throughout the film, add a decidedly creepy element to the film. Dialogue is clean and clearly presented. There are a number of nice low frequency moments that sound surprisingly bombastic within the confines of a mono mix. This isn't a showy track, obviously, and is somewhat restrained even for a low budget horror film, but it gets the job done and has no real damage to report.

The Boogens Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director James L. Conway, Screenwriter David O'Malley and Star Rebecca Balding. Jeff McKay is also on hand as host and occasional commentator. The rapport between the married Conway and Balding is often hilarious ("We were both whores," Balding states in an off-handed comment about their amorous first meeting during the film's casting sessions). There's quite a bit of great information imparted, and the three are appropriately appalled at just how horrible the "monster" looks in the film. Chatty but very enjoyable.

The Boogens Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Boogens achieved at least part of its cult status due to a glowing revew Stephen King gave the film in Twilight Zone Magazine, and the fact is, the film really is surprisingly effective, at least up until the final few minutes. If you can get past the outright hilarity provoked by one of the silliest looking monsters ever captured on celluloid, there's actually quite a bit to like here. This Blu-ray sports nice looking video and great sounding audio, and the commentary is a lot of fun to listen to. Recommended.