Boogeymen Movie Review

Just when you think there are no new ideas in Hollywood comes a DVD like Boogeymen, which shakes up your expectations of the movies. With the promise of giving you "the greatest hits of horror," Boogeymen is a compilation of scenes from 17 horror movies, ostensibly the best-known bits of the movies' "boogeymen" doing their dirtiest work.

Some of these boogeymen are the real deal -- Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) at the end of the film, Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street) in his finest hour, Jason (Friday the 13th) chasing a towel-wrapped co-ed, Pinhead (Hellraiser) ripping apart some dude. These are memorable horror baddies who haunted us during our youth. Then there are scenes from Wishmaster, Leprechaun, The Guardian, and even The Dentist -- not only is it not scary, it's silly and insulting to the other villains (like Psycho's Norman Bates) in the lineup. The Puppetmaster? And The Ugly? I've never even heard of The Ugly.

Normally this would be sacrilege to say, but Boogeymen merits skipping over the standard audio track and heading straight to the commentary track by Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger himself), who offers either personal insights into each of the films (since he appears in half of them, it seems) or places them in a historical context. If anyone can make the otherwise ridiculous sight of Leprechaun's Warwick Davis pogo-sticking a guy to death seem interesting, Englund can.

A few extra bits on the disc like trivia and trailers make it an interesting release -- even if it is just a novelty.