UK VHS title - Revenge of the Bogey Man. I acknowledge that The Bogey Man was no classic but I have a soft spot for it. So back in the 1980's when I saw it's sequel on the shelf in my local video store I was over the moon. Boy, was I in for a disappointment! At least half of Revenge's running time is footage from the original. John Carradine's name appears in the opening credits yet only delivers a few words (stock footage). The new footage consists mainly of a group of people chatting around a Hollywood home. When they do start getting bumped off we get such pathetic treats such as death by toothbrush, by car exhaust, etc. As for the promised "Carrie" style ending, what a load of rubbish. How this made the "Video Nasty" list in the UK I just don't know. Just shows what a farce the whole affair was.

Writer/director Ulli Lommel is nowadays a very notorious and even quite hated individual because he unleashes multiple downright insufferable straight-to-video horror stinkers on the market every single year, but there once was a time when he was a promising filmmaker. In the very earliest phase of his career he made the near-brilliant "The Tenderness of Wolves" and throughout the early eighties he made a handful of inferior but highly amusing horror movies, like "Brain Waves", "The Devonsville Terror" and "The Boogeyman". That last one is definitely a minor 80's classic. The story is pure hokum, but the film is full of absurdly grotesque murder sequences and extreme gore. Ulli Lommel and his buddies must have been so proud on their accomplishment that they decided to re-use all the best footage to fill up almost three quarters of the sequel. Yes, you read that right: "Boogeyman II" is stuffed like a Christmas turkey with key footage of the original, and that's the main reason why it receives so many negative reviews around here. Personally I didn't mind all that much, because it's been a couple of years since I watched it. This way, I get to re-watch all the fun parts (like that awesome mouth-to-mouth impalement sequence) without having to sit through the dull parts. Part two takes place in Hollywood, where survivor Lacey is staying with friends to recover from her trauma. Through long and extremely detailed flashbacks, Lacey tells the story about the murderous spirit in the little piece of mirror to befriended actress and her husband director (played by Ulli Lommel himself, with his atrocious German accent). Naturally they want to exploit Lacey's bizarre thriller story and turn it into a horror movie, but then the Boogeyman returns to kill them all during a typical Hollywood pool party. "Boogeyman II" is 50 minutes of stock footage and 25 minutes of non-stop new murders. The new massacres are very lame in comparison with those of the original, though. Death by electric toothbrush and suffocation in shaving gel, for example. The film still got included in the infamous list of video nasties, but only because of the stock footage of the original and not because of the ridiculous new murder set pieces.

It was more then fifteen years ago that I watched the original Boge(e)yman. It was still the era of VHS. Now that most OOP's and other obscure movies are available on DVD I just watched the original Boogeyman 2. Original, cause a few years ago they made Boogeyman and Boogeyman 2. Back to the eighties it was for me. All I could remember from the first movie was that there wasn't a lot of killings and if they appear they weren't bloody after all. I also noticed in reviews that this version was a bit of a best off of the first part with some additional scene's. And it was, all the best parts of the first part are included in this part and sometimes they show the killing twice in different parts through the film. There are more bloodier killings in this one and a lot are seen from first person shots, but they are cheesy. The score is okay too. That's the reason that I gave it a 3 out of 10. The storyline is terrible, the movie isn't about anything and you can see things coming from miles away. Wait until the end at the graveyard...can you guess what will happen? So, my conclusion, if you haven't seen the first part watch this flick, you will have both movies in one.

If you haven't seen part 1 of this film, skip it and just watch this one. As other reviewers have already commented, this film is half scenes from part 1 and half new, ridiculous, hilarious killings. I can understand someone being upset with this film if they've already seen the original film.However, I hadn't seen the original when I watched this, so I found the constant, fast-paced kill scenes to be amazingly entertaining. After viewing part 1, I found this film to actually be superior; you have all the best scenes from the first film with some of the craziest deaths ever filmed for the second half! Completely bizarre and ridiculous, very atmospheric, great music, good acting, extremely fast-moving, great death scenes, etc. What more could you want? Again, if you're a fan of the first film, this movie is probably unnecessary. However, if you haven't seen either one, this is definitely one of the most bizarre and amazing films you'll ever see...