Tuesday, October 1, 2013

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.


1 comment:

  1. This movie gave me nightmares for a week when I first saw it when it first came out. I was 6 at the time.

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