Uli Lommel was supposed to be a prodigy of some sort. Working as a protege to world famous German auteur Werner Fassbender, it looked like he was off to a running start with the particularly disturbing, but respected The Tenderness of the Wolves. This was a not so exact telling of the perverse child killer in Germany known as the Vampire of Dusseldorf, a story done much more effectively by Fritz Lang with M starring Peter Lorre. He had connections to Andy Warhol and the art scene. Why he decided to become a slasher film-maker is beyond me.
Effective as Lommel's Wolves was, it didn't launch a major career, and several disturbing moments of it still linger in my mind, thanks to Spectrum. (Film school it may have been, its sneaky intentions weren't always pure).
By the late 90's/early 2000's Lommel had been conscripted by Lionsgate to make a series of direct to DVD loose attachments to real life serial killers, of which I could only make it halfway through part of one. Look! It's David Hess!! And what the fuck is P!nk doing the theme music for it for? (These are questions someone needs to address as soon as possible).
Somewhere along the line in the late 70's, he made a slasher film that gained audience attention (and eventually a cult following) because it rode Carpenter's train. That train grew its 350,000$ budget into 25,000,000 at the box office. This little trifle was known as "The Boogeyman". It starts with sex, two children being treated as annoyances, then abused, then eventually a grisly murder. A mirror captures the antagonist's death that comes as a response to his actions.
Jump forward years later, one of these two unfortunate kids is now mute, the other living a normal life. Being that this script is convoluted and stupid, during a psychiatrist-suggested visit to the childhood home, the previously mentioned mirror is shattered in one of the films actual scary moments.
And of course fragments of a murderers spirit are carried by the shards. And the slashing begins by this captured ghost; it’s like a twisted version of a furniture commercial; one for the ghost of Jason Voorhees less creative younger brother. On occasion, people get Exorcist-style possessed by the mirror bits, and there's even a house bearing a more than passing resemblance to the Amityville dutch colonial making a ridiculous and unnecessary appearance here.
Now, as a nine year old, this movie scared the shits out of me (as always, "shits" is intentionally plural). It affected me in such a way that I thought the very existence of evil was imprinted on every frame, like the fictional murderous movie by George Melies referenced in the faux documentary Fury of the Demon. It scared me that much.
For some reason at this time in my life, my mom, claiming otherwise, took a shine to slashers. I tried to warn her not to watch this one, as my experience with it had me hiding behind my sister's couch the previous summer.
This film did have a particularly effective synth-score (a la Carpenter) that haunted me a bit, especially an opening sting just as the title card is appearing on screen. So, Mom is watching this movie, despite a warning from me as intense as any old man's in any horror movie from the 30's to now. I have a haunting memory of lying in bed on a Sunday Night, jaunted awake by that sting from the very beginning I described. I lay there, eyes open in the dark, clutching for my dog Ginger, in spite of myself, visualizing what I had seen months before.
Thanks, Mom
Thanks, Uli.
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