like Cocaine Cowboys and upon his relocation to America, director and former 
Fassbinder actor Ulli Lommel took an eccentric but very successful stab at the new slasher craze with The Boogeyman in 1980 (or The Boogey Man as it's called in the main titles). A fun little drive-in favorite, the film gleefully mixes elements from Halloween, The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, and Carrie, among many others, into a gruesome bit of occasionally hysterical horror mayhem.
John Carpenter and Dario Argento to give the film a dreamy, atmosphere boosted by an effective synthesizer score by Tim Krog (originally billed as 
the collective "Synthe•Sound•Trax"). Old VHS editions of The Boogeyman have been around since the dawn of video, beginning with a fuzzy-looking print from Wizard Video (who distributed quite a few Jerry Gross titles like this) and an improved full-screen edition later on in the '90s from Magnum (also released on laserdisc via Image Entertainment). The open matte transfers early on gave the film a made-for-TV appearance that really worked against its more ambitious intentions, and the first DVD from Anchor Bay (matted to 1.78:1) in 1999 went some way to correcting that problem. The goofiest turn in the film's home video history came in 2005 when Lommel threatened Sony with legal action over its theatrical film Boogeyman, claiming he had a right to the title (never mind that Stephen King and many others got there first). To appease him the studio issued his film on DVD and VHS (billed as "The Original 1980 Version!") paired up with the wretched Return of the Boogeyman, and Lommel parlayed the exposure into a string of mid-'00s true crime-inspired cheapies released by semi-majors like Lionsgate. 
video interview with the director (in English), the U.S. and German trailers, two TV spots, and a gallery. In 2015, 88 Films issued a now 
discontinued Blu-ray in the U.K. (as part of its Slasher Collection along with Lommel's The Devonsville Terror and Olivia), taken from the same scan and featuring the Lommel interview, the trailer two TV spots, and an insert booklet with a text interview between Love and Calum Waddell. 
runs through the quirks of European slasher movies from the '80s, the out-there nature of this film in particular, the qualities she feels have been lost in modern genre criticism, 
and connected titles like Candyman and The Perfume of the Lady in Black. "Scenes from a Marriage" (38m57s) is a very candid new interview with Love talking about her relationship with the director, her cooperative nature that made her an asset for what she feels are Lommel's best American films, her acting background before taking on her most famous roles, and some pretty crazy drug-related stories, too. In "Boogey Man, and So On" (33m59s), cinematographer and co-writer David Sperling about his work on the film (doing all the primary shooting before some reshoots took place), his roundabout writing credit, the ideas he brought to the film, the punk scene that brought him and Lommel together, and the convoluted evolution of the concept. "Pick-Up Girl" (8m21s) is a new interview with actress Catherine Tambini about her acting background at NYU, her move to L.A., the story behind her one "red herring" scene in a barn on this film, and her subsequent work behind the scenes on some big Hollywood productions. In "Cuts from the Mirror" (20m38s), Tannen goes into his background starting in Washington D.C. and gives more background that wasn't covered in his commentary including the shoot in Maryland and the subsequent editing in L.A. Finally in "Boogey Man as Art" (15m1s), camera operator Jürg V. Walther recalls his early days in L.A.'s music scene, his thrill at working on 35mm with this film, and the "ethereal excitement" about the process of making the film. The archival 18-minute Lommel interview is also included, plus the trailer and two TV spots. 
