A Weak Start: Mr Boogedy

Once in a great while, and maybe more times than not, when you return to your childhood to re-examine your past things just are not what they seemed.  For example, I remember being scared of a movie as a kid called Mr. Boogedy.

Mr. Boogedy was a film released in 1986 that was on the Wonderful World of Disney...I know what you are thinking, how the hell could I possibly be scared of a Disney film?  Well, I remember my five year old self being slightly terrified of this movie. I just recently watched it...and I am now questioning how my five year old self COULD have been terrified of this.  Considering all the stuff I watched as a little guy, this movie gave me the creeps?

After viewing this movie, which had a run time of 45 minutes, I want to say with confidence that maybe I am misremembered the movie.

The plot of the film centers around a family who move into a that is apparently haunted (the mayor of the town warmly greets them by telling them to get out before they encounter Mr. Boogedy).  The father is a salesmen who sells novelty items like hand-buzzers and fake puke, so when the children start to experience strange happenings around the house, they first figure it's their father trying to scare them.

Eventually the children learn the tale of Mr. Boogedy, an old Puritan who despised children and took great delight in scaring them. However, he had a soft spot for the Widow Marian and had asked for her hand in marriage.  When she spurned his advances, Mr. Boogedy (or Williams Hannover) made a deal with the devil (they actually fucking show this part...again, this is a Disney movie) the deal consisted of Hannover getting a magic cloak for his soul. With the cloak he puts a curse on the property of his house so that after he kidnaps Marian's son (again, he hates children) and than blows up his own house, with him and the boy inside (again, a Disney film) in death mother & son are separated, Marian can never enter the house to retrieve her son, and the boy is stuck with Mr. Boogedy.

You could say that Hannover didn't take the rejection on his proposal well.

From than on, you guessed it the family has to try to reunite the mother and son and stop Mr. Boogedy.

This movie was just silly.  It had a great dark premise but nothing about it was scary, I don't remember why I thought it was.  Somehow, if this could have been made into a feature film I think this movie would have had potential to actually be a real serious horror film. But for now, and with my 31 days of Halloween, it was kind of a weak start.

However, the casting had a few nice surprises.  Kristy Swanson (she was Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) Danny Faustino (who was Bud in Married with Children), & Richard Masur (who, quite frankly, was in a lot of stuff. I know him mostly as the adult version of Stan from the Stephen King mini-series IT).

Maybe tomorrow will be a better horror flick.

The Return

Two years ago I decided to have some fun in October.  That fun entailed myself watching a horror film every day for the month of October.  Now, I know some of you may think this is madness, or just plain silly, or possibly abnormal behavior for a man in his early 30's.  But this is really fun for me, I grew up watching horror film since I was a little kid (In my latter years here I am seriously questioning the parenting choices my folks made). 

I saw Nightmare on Elm Street when I was in the first grade, an option I was given to watch over Charlie Brown & the Great Pumpkin King. My parents rented the first Halloween film when I was in the 4th grade to specifically scare my brother and I.  We were allowed to stay up late and watch the USA Network on Friday's when they ran the Friday the 13th marathons (they usually only played parts I, II, V, VII, & VIII, never figured out why these particular ones). In high school my friend and I probably rented every horror film from our local Blockbuster (we saw some really shitty films).

As an adult I still get giddy watching horror films. I like being scared, it's a weird condition I realize and not many people understand it, but it's a thrilling sensation like no other.  I want to be clear about something very quickly, I NEVER cheer for the villains or bad guys of a horror flick that would be insane and I never understand the type of people that are actually cheering when Michael plunges a butcher knife into some poor teenagers chest.  I am always hoping that the good guys will win and defeat the monsters...but of course leave the door open for a sequel.

Last year I attempted to watch a film every day and blog about it. I wanted to find something interesting to write about each film. Not necessarily a review but diving deeper in the film to find hidden meanings, or maybe something I could personally take away.  The watching the movie portion was easy (thank you Netflix) the writing was difficult. However, I did manage to squeeze off 13 blog entries (which I think is not to shabby for 31 days, it's almost half, you have to remember I work for a living and have a complex and very busy social life).

This year, I will again put myself through the rigorous exercise of staying up way to late watching a terrifying movie by myself and than attempting to write something thoughtful about them.  However, this year there will be a little twist.

Some of you may know that I started a podcast in January of this year titled Armchairs & Earphones (we can be found on ITunes as well..you should subscribe) If you have not listened to the podcast I usually, with a guest, talk about a variety of topics that pertain to entertainment from sports to music and whatever else strikes our fancy. I may skip writing about a film in favor of podcasting about it. I also would like to introduce some new guests to the show that can talk in depth about horror films, so be on the lookout for that.

So, that is what is going to happen starting tomorrow. I will be posting on Facebook & my Twitter account when I have completed the film & that write up. Please feel free this year to leave comments, suggest movies you would like me to view (if you want to come over and watch you are more than welcome to). If you would like to be a guest on the Podcast we can also work something out to get you on as well. 

Cheers my friends and expect the first post to be up tomorrow. 

I just saw this movie last week, everyone should go and see this flick, it was fantastic!