Sam Panico If an old man tells you to not open the old mine, you should just leave the old mine closed. No one tells you these sorts of things without a reason. After all, there could be turtle creatures lurking in there, ready to kill everyone.Our friends at Jensen Farley Productions took a break from In Search of Historic Jesus and The Outer Space Connection to produce this film that is a strange mix between 1950's science fiction and a slasher. It's also filled with one of the horniest male characters in the history of 1980's horror and that's saying plenty.Awhile back, a silver mine closed after everyone in it but one person died. Brian Deering (John Crawford, The Towering Inferno) and Dan Ostroff are in town to make it happen, along with two young guys, Roger Lowrie and Mark Kinner. They're making the closed mine modern and also find tons of bones, but no one complete skeleton. It's at this point that I would move on to the next mine. But I'm not in The Boogens. I'm just a viewer. And I'm also a viewer who was five beers in at the drive-in while watching it.Roger and Mark are soon joined by Mark's girl Jessica (Anne-Marie Martin, Prom Night, the TV version of Dr. Strange) and another girl named Trish (Rebecca Balding, Silent Scream). While this is all going on, the landlady comes to open up their house, hits a deer, goes into a ditch, walks to the house in the freezing cold and then gets pulled into the basement and killed by what we can only assume is a Boogen.Roger has, by now, been the horniest dude ever and mentioned how many times he's going to have sex with Jessica and how long it's been since they have had sex (twelve days, trust me, I heard it a hundred times). Through whim of fate, Mark and Trish also hook up and we're treated to some heavy petting. But as Dr. Dealgood once told to the fine folks of Bartertown, "Dying time is here!"Also: Greenwalt (Jon Lormer, who gets his cake in Creepshow) is sneaking around and it's revealed that his father was the lone survivor of the mine. He's gonna blow up the mine real good to get rid of the Boogens.This movie moves at a glacial pace, with the last fifteen minutes finally being the energetic fun that Stephen King's blurb about it promised. That is, if you find turtle monsters scary. Or whatever that are.Director James L. Conway also directed Hangar 18, as well as numerous TV shows (he's currently working on Orville and The Magicians, was a producer on Charmed and even married Rebecca Balding during the filming).

TheBlueHairedLawyer Years ago there was a small town where the main employer was a large silver mine. When a bizarre accident occurs, the mine is shut down, leaving the town near-empty.Years later, a group of friends go to spend the night at one of the houses. It has a bootleg mine in the basement below, and unknown to anyone but the freaky old man who hangs around the mine, there are strange mutant creatures living within that eat people; the old man calls them Boogens. The mine is re-opening and some of the workers find themselves trapped inside with the strange creatures. Who will survive? Oh, the suspense! Anyway, Boogens isn't very scary, but for its time it isn't a bad movie, it's a little funny and creepy and at least stays entertaining the whole way through. My little brother says that boogens are just mutated nose boogers that grew large and needed a much bigger cave than noses, so they moved into the mine. I think the boogens were just supposed to be a made-up fantasy creature species or mutants.The soundtrack was creepy and eerie, the acting was decent, the scenery was great and you've gotta admit, the plot sure is original! If you crossed My Bloody Valentine (1981) with Gremlins (1985), you'd get this. The beginning credits with the old newspapers were pretty cool and different as well. It's overall a pretty good horror movie.

Jonathon Dabell The Boogens differs from a lot of animal-on-the-rampage features of its era for two reasons: firstly, it is never exactly clear what kind of animal is on the rampage; and secondly, its style is more akin to a slasher movie than the nature-strikes-back genre. Only in the final ten minutes do we actually get a glimpse of the titular creatures, and even then the script avoids definitively identifying them as a species (they are best described as giant turtles with sharp teeth and a penchant for human flesh). The slasher genre motifs are pretty evident throughout – we have a) creepily atmospheric P.O.V shots as the boogens move around stalking their victims, b) young oversexed couples staying in a remote house, c) numerous false scares before the real killings begin, and d) the obligatory shower scene.Young mineworkers Mark (Fred McCarren) and Roger (Jeff Harlan) - supervised by older miners Brian (John Crawford) and Dan (Med Flory) - reopen a disused silver mine with explosives many decades after it was originally sealed. Unbeknown to them, they also release some subterranean turtle-like creatures (boogens) at the same time. Mark and Roger are due to move into a log cabin in the area the following day, and their girlfriends Jessica (Anne-Marie Martin) and Trish (Rebecca Balding) are already en route to join them. It isn't long before the boogens are on the loose in the community, hungrily devouring their first victim – the departing cabin owner, spending her final night there before moving out. The young new owners, plus their pet dog, look set to be next on the menu. It's just as well that crazy old loon Greenwalt (Jon Lormer) – an ex-miner who happens to be the only living soul who knows the boogens exist – is on hand to deliver the obligatory "you-had-to-go-and-release-them-didn't-ya?" speech, galvanising the survivors into action in time for the final reel.Perhaps The Boogens greatest claim to fame is that it received positive attention in an old edition of Twilight Zone magazine from one Stephen King. "A wildly energetic monster movie" was King's glowing review of the film, though it should be noted that he hated the film version of The Shining and, when given the chance to direct a movie himself, gave us the abysmal Maximum Overdrive… so his credentials as a movie critic are not to be accepted without caution. Nevertheless, there are good things in The Boogens. It has surprisingly convincing and witty dialogue, the acting is generally rather good, and its early sequences are all the more spine-tingling for keeping the creatures hidden off-screen. Two scenes in particular, set in the cellar beneath the cabin, generate stomach-knotting unease, while the build-up to each boogen attack pays off handsomely thanks to atmospheric lighting and clever use of false alarms before the actual pay-off. Logic is in short supply throughout and the monsters, when they finally appear, are somewhat unconvincing… but overall The Boogens is an under-appreciated entry in the animals-on-the-rampage sub-genre.

sjrobb99-997-836393 After an opening montage of newspaper headlines ("Motherlode Found!" segues to "Mine Closed Forever By Gruesome Death!" or some such) establishing that this mine is a Dangerous Place, we meet Roger and Mark, two young miners-in-training, hired to help two older and crustier miners (Brian and Dan) re-open the Mine of Death.Roger (Jeff Harlan, who looks a little too much like David Spade for my comfort) and Mark (Fred McCarren) have rented a house together near the mine. Roger is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his girlfriend, and his early dialogue consists almost entirely of smarmy jokes about how long it's been since he got some. Mark is leery of a set-up with Jessica's friend, Trish, who is helping Jessica move; he refers to the last blind date Roger set up for him as "Quasimodo's daughter".Jessica (Anne-Marie Martin) and Trish (Rebecca Balding) arrive in a VW bug, accompanied by a spirited miniature poodle named Tiger. I must confess I found Jessica a little distracting, since I was more familiar with her splendid, scenery-chewing turn as the bitchy Wendy in "Prom Night" and it was odd to see her acting like a nice person.A white-haired old man slinks periodically through the narrative, looking furtive and atmospheric so you know he's got Knowledge Of The Past. Hijinks ensue almost immediately as the guys knock a hole in the wall of the mine, freeing monsters who earlier tunneled into every house in town (hence the early murders that closed the mine) and were just waiting to be set free to murder and maim anew. The monsters promptly take advantage of the miner's carelessness by setting up shop in the basement of Mark and Roger's house, which sets up the first killing: Roger and Mark's landlady, who has come to open up the house and makes a fateful trip to the basement.The second victim is Roger himself, who takes a break from banging his girlfriend to get some sleep and is yanked under his work truck by a tentacle. The third victim, sadly, is Tiger, arguably one of the best actors in the film. That's where the movie and I parted company; I can't stand movies where the dog dies. When Jessica gets out of the bathtub to investigate Tiger's howls, she discovers his tiny corpse, and is promptly gnawed to death clad only a towel. The director seems to have had a thing about personal daintiness, because for the women in this movie, bathing is invariably fatal: Jessica dies fresh from the tub, the landlady is killed in her bathrobe after showering, and Mark's first view of Trish is her naked backside as she stands, dripping and be-toweled, in a doorway. Somewhere in between monster attacks, Mark and Trish discover they are hot for each other and have gauzy 80's sex in front of the fireplace.Things clatter to a predictable conclusion: Brian and Dan discover the remains of Roger, whose face has been chewed off; Mark rescues Trish from the Basement of Death, seconds before one of the monsters attaches itself to the face of the Sheriff; Brian and Dan die honorably, attempting to save Mark; the old man turns out to have The Key To It All, and the mine shaft and house are blown up real good.There are standout moments: a sequence in a pool hall, where Jessica turns out to be a ringer on the order of Minnesota Fats and wins a handful of cash from Brian and Dan; the flirtatious coupling of Mark and Trish, made believable by genuine chemistry between the actors; the foursome leaving the house and admonishing Tiger to behave -- after which Tiger promptly paws open the bedroom closet and settles down to gnaw a shoe. As has been mentioned before, the fact that the monsters don't really show their faces until the very end of the movie is a good thing, not because they are laughable (which they kind of are) but because they are a lot scarier before you see them.I give the movie 7 out of 10, but only because they killed the damn dog.