It is week 3 of Spooky Season, but first I want to take a minute to reflect on last week's disappointment; Wolves of Wall Street. A movie that promises werewolves and then doesn't deliver werewolves. It really let the team down to be honest and almost feel like I have to apologise for it. It was a disappointment and we deserved better. So after a frankly underwhelming experience last week, I am really looking forward to moving on to this weeks Disney Week pick; Mr Boogedy. A weird quirk from 1986, that Disney was quite happy for you to forget about really fucking quickly, and one that I have been really looking forward to watching but have especially held back on covering, until now. It's short; 45 minutes probably making it the shortest movie I'll cover on the blog and not really qualifying as a movie at all, really, but I really want to cover it and it's Spooky Season, so what better time? None.
A family of travelling... uh practical jokers I guess, Carlton Davis (Richard Masur) and his wife Eloise Davis (Mimi Kennedy) move to New England with their daughter Jennifer (Kristy Swanson) and annoying sons Reginald "RE" (Benjamin Gregory) and Corwin (David Faustino), arriving at their "fixer-upper" house at the dead of night, with dramatic thunder and lightning in the background and everything to be greeted inside the old, definitely not haunted, house by creepy weirdo Neil Witherspoon (John Astin). Proceeding to scare the living shit out his new neighbours he warns them to leave while they still can, and "keep an eye out for the Boogedy Man!" Completely ignoring creepy Neil's advice the family stay anyway, and whilst exploring the definitely not haunted at all basement, RE loses his teddy bear after putting it on a miniature chair and it disappears whilst his back his turned.... OOOOOH! Meanwhile Jennifer goes exploring when she can hear sneezing coming from another room and opening the door she is bathed in a green glow before passing out... waking up she cries out that she saw the Boogedy man, and after investigating the same room Carlton discovers a set of green, sticky footprints running up the wall which he immediately passes off as an impressive gag left by Neil Witherspoon. At breakfast the following morning Corwin and RE witness some really odd goings on in the kitchen when cupboard doors begin to flap open and closed and kettles whistling of their own accord, garden variety hauntings, and with Jennifer they pay a visit to Lucifer Falls Historical Society, which just so happens to be the workplace of Neil Witherspoon... Neil tells the kids the story of William Hanover - a grumpy Pilgrim from hundreds of years ago who delighted in scaring children but fell in love with a widow; Marion. Selling his soul to the devil for a magic cloak, William kidnapped Marion's son; Jonathan and demanded Marion marry him or never see her son again, but then; trying a magic trick he blew up the house and everyone in it. And any house built on the same plot is doomed to be haunted by the trio. Finishing his story, Neil tells the kids that if they should do anything, they should move away... Back at the house the kids desperately try to tell their parents the house is haunted, only for their parents to continuously be distracted unpacking, and testing, their latest range of practical jokes, but their fun is interrupted by maniacal laughter and suddenly Calton's pranks spring to life of their own accord! This, however isn't enough to deter Carlton from leaving, despite his families protestations, and the family camp around the old fireplace in the living room all night instead, but when Eloise gets up in the middle of the night for a midnight.... banquet (seriously, who has that much food for a snack?!) she is alerted to tapping on the window which transpires to be Widow Marion (Katherine Kelly Lang) who wants nothing more than to be re-united with her Jonathan, but despite Eloise insisting she comes into the house, Marion says that whilst the magic exists that keeps Mr Boogedy there, she can't come inside. Telling the rest of the family about her experience, they decide they have to get rid of Mr Boogedy and his cloak. Whilst Katherine and the parents head to the green glow room, the two annoying boys both split from the group; Corwin goes looking for RE after he disappears completely and ends up back in the basement, where he finds RE and, presumably ghostly Jonathan (Jaimie McEnnan) fighting over RE's teddy bear. They befriend Jonathan who warns them that Mr Boogedy could "keep them here forever" and when they start to hear that same laughter again they flee from the basement, only to run straight into Katherine and their parents in the living room. Suddenly everything gets real spooky and emerging from a green glow Mr Boogedy (Howard Witt) appears, complete with horrendous burns victim looking face... Carlton initially tries to reason with him but Mr Boogedy is having none of it and begins to cast mischievous spells on all the family members, but when possession of a hoover chasing RE backfires... or err... backsucks if you like... and the hoover begins to swallow Mr Boogedy's cloak, he is unable to stop it and with his magic cloak gone, he disappears with a blinding green flash. With Mr Boogedy gone, Marion and Jonathan materialize and are reunited, thanking the family before disappearing and just as Carlton leaves the room saying "there's no such thing as ghosts", a familiar throaty voice cries out; "you wanna bet!?".... OOOOH!
This... was a weird one. Never really intended to be a movie, Mr Boogedy was always supposed to be a pilot episode for a TV show. A TV Show that never came to be. And I'm not quite sure what Disney were even aiming for. Maybe they saw the Addams Family and the Munsters demographic and thought they could cash in on that same audience? It certainly feels like fans of those kind of shows, despite dating 20 years prior to this, were the target audience here, but the premise feels too thinly spread to really conjure the same appeal. That and the story almost starts and completes itself in the pilot episode; the house is haunted by Mr Boogedy, they exorcize him, end of movie... It looks like they were going to go down the avenue of Mr Boogedy then possessing all of the families novelty practical jokes, and maybe more ghosts being working into the plot? But really how much material do you have to work with on that before it just gets old and boring.
Mr Boogedy, on one hand, is nothing more than a standard, inoffensive Disney villain, with barely any spoken lines at all, apart from variations of the word "Boogedy". He appears dressed in a black cloak but with severely messed up face, bathed in a green glow and casts evil magic that controls the objects he casts it on. He is a reimaging of the Wicked Witch from the old Mickey cartoons, or similar and whilst he was stereotypically Disney enough, in contrast and on the other hand he was also a little bit unsettling. His grotesque appearance combined with his creepy and scary body language, and his evil, cackling voice I believe, would have genuinely made him too terrifying for tiny children - probably this shows demographic and he was a bit unsettling to watch even now some 30 odd years later...
The other characters didn't really have enough substance to tell you anything about them that could really help to immerse viewers in the narrative. I found the two young boys just annoying mostly, and Katherine was nothing more than a female character to get scared by all the jumpy stuff. The parents at least had characters albeit quite stereotypical ones, with Eloise being the compassionate mother and Carlton being the naïve, jovial father, but they existed as nothing more than a family for Mr Boogedy to "terrorise" and that phrase is having to do a lot of work here, given that this is very much a daytime TV friendly "horror" movie, but that was it. You could have swapped this family out for another one if the TV show had actually taken off and I don't think it would have bothered the audience.
Aside from those major criticisms everything else was pretty standard. It's hard to comment in depth on much because this was only 45 minutes of actual movie, but it was filmed just fine for the time, the cinematography actually was good in places as it tried to mimic the old classic horror movie shots of the past with the scenes focusing on character reactions as they opened spooky doors, went down dark staircases e.t.c, the usual clichés but if they weren't here, it wouldn't have worked. And the set design was perfectly fine, it was believable enough that it was a pretty old, pretty haunted house. And the storyline was fine, if not stale even at this point in time; family move into a house, it's haunted, they overcome the ghost. And I think because of that, because of the lack of imagination there was nowhere else really for this to go. It was almost doomed from the start? A failed experiment?
All of the above being said, and after reading about this movie, it was great to finally sit down and actually watch it, and at least they promised a boogeyman, and delivered a boogeyman! Not like that other movie... And because I went in with zero expectations, just a huge sense of curiosity and almost excitement at finally getting to see what a creepy and weird little movie this actually was, I actually enjoyed this. Sure it's absolute pure cheese, not the tiniest bit scary and if nothing else, a very on the nose parody of horror movies. But to think it was potentially a TV show that had absolutely no chance of ever going on to be a TV show and just witnessing for myself why that was the case, it was interesting enough for me, even if it was just to satisfy my morbid curiosity and yes; I will absolutely show this to my future children and talk over the top of it about how much of a failed experiment it was! Although, in good conscience, I can't really score this anything higher than a 2 out of 5. Sorry Mr Boogedy!
