Boogeyman, or bogeyman, is a name that's been used for the last few hundred years throughout different cultures. For many, including in America, there is fun to be had in the name. It's what we conjure up for misbehaving kids. "Be good, or the boogeyman is gonna get you." It's what our easily frightened childhood imaginations obsess over at night as well. When we're in bed in the dark, some creepy creature, a boogeyman, is lurking under our bed, waiting to snatch our feet, or hiding in the closet, waiting for us to fall asleep.
The boogeyman is such a huge part of horror films, its definition can be used to cover a wide array of cinematic monsters. Is Pennywise considered a boogeyman? What about Freddy Krueger, Bughuul, the Candyman, or the Babadook? The genre is not only filled with what can be defined as boogeymen, but sometimes, it's a word that's actually used in a film to describe its ghastly antagonist, and a few times, "Boogeyman" has been used in the actual title for a movie.
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Why Is Michael Myers Called "The Boogeyman" in 'Halloween'?
In 1978, director John Carpenter changed horror forever with his film Halloween. Though it wasn't the first slasher (films like Black Christmas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came before it), it was the one that resonated with audiences on such a level that it ushered in a wave of movies featuring psychopaths, often masked, going on a killing spree. The '80s were all about Halloween clones, Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise being the most notable one.
All of those clone slashers were made out of men with motives. Jason Voorhees, for example, kills to get revenge on those that killed his mother. Michael Myers, at least in the beginning anyway, didn't have a motive. Minus two seconds at the end of Halloween, we never see his face. All we know is that he is a man who killed his sister for no reason when he was six, then sat catatonic in a psychiatric hospital room for 15 years. That lack of thought, or even rage, behind Michael's masked face made him something more than a maniac. The film even calls him "The Shape" in the credits, because with the mask on, Michael Myers is no longer a man. Instead, Michael Myers is a symbol for what goes bump in the night, a silent form watching you in the dark without you even knowing he's there.
The word "boogeyman" is used several times throughout Halloween's runtime. The young boy Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) babysits, Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews), is teased at school by bullies who promise that the boogeyman is coming to get him. It's something Tommy can't let go of, and later that Halloween night, he asks Laurie about it. That childhood fear becomes reality when Tommy is later looking out the window and sees The Shape across the street carrying a lifeless body in his arms. "It's the boogeyman!" Tommy screams repeatedly.
At the end of the night, with Laurie's friends all dead, she will have to go up against The Shape herself. No matter what she does to him, he keeps getting back up. "Was it the boogeyman?" Tommy asks when Laurie thinks she has killed him. Finally, Michael's doctor, Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), arrives, shooting Michael six times, and knocking him off of a bedroom balcony. Laurie cries, and like a child asks, "Was it the boogeyman?" Loomis looks at her, and without a trace of doubt, says, "As a matter of fact, it was." The film ends by showing that Michael Myers has survived yet again and wandered off into the darkness. The boogeyman is no longer a myth. He is now flesh and bone.
'The Nightmare Before Christmas' Gave Us a Different Type of Boogeyman
15 years later, in 1993, moviegoers were introduced to a very different kind of boogeyman. Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (let's not forget that it was painstakingly directed by Henry Selik) is a whimsical, musical story about the skull-faced Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, Jack Skellington, and his discovery of Christmas Town. More childlike fantasy than anything horrific, The Nightmare Before Christmas brings to stop-motion life many memorable characters, including Sally and Doctor Finkelstein. It even shows us a boogeyman.
Voiced by Ken Page, the boogeyman of Halloween Town is Oogie Boogie, a ghost-shaped creature made out of a burlap sack filled with creepy crawly bugs and spiders. When Santa Claus is taken from Christmas Town, it is Oogie Boogie who holds him captive in his underground lair filled with all sorts of traps. He tries to take out not just Santa Claus, but Sally and Jack as well.
Oogie Boogie might look creepy, but it's hard to be scared of a Boogeyman who is such an excellent singer. One of the best songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas is "Oogie Boogie's Song," which he sings to a frightened Santa held against his will. In it, Oogie Boogie sings:
"When Mr. Oogie Boogie says
There's trouble close at hand
You'd better pay attention, now
'Cause I'm the Boogie Man
And if you aren't shaking
There's something very wrong
'Cause this may be the last time you hear the Boogie song, oh (wow)
Oh (wow)
Oh (oh, he's the Oogie Boogie Man)"
Several Horror Films Have Included "Boogeyman" in Their Title
Not all boogeymen become instant classics. Michael Myers and Oogie Boogie might be unforgettable, but there have been several films with "boogeyman" in the title that only the biggest horror aficionados will remember. Just the word "boogeyman" gets our attention, reminding us of childhood fears, and these films promise they'll make us feel that scared again. What they forget though is that they needed way more than a clever title.
In 1980 came The Boogeyman and its brilliant tagline, "The most terrifying nightmare of childhood is about to return!" Spoiler alert: it didn't. Though it did okay from a profit perspective thanks to the promise of its title and the creepy poster showcasing a scared woman looking out her window at night while a shadow plays against the house, it couldn't live up to expectations. Written and directed by Ulli Lommel, The Boogeyman focuses on an adult brother and sister being haunted by their mom's dead boyfriend. It rips off better films like Halloween and The Amityville Horror while not doing much to create anything memorable on its own. It's more cheesy and shocking than scary, though it does a decent job exploring another of our fears: the horror that comes when you break a mirror. The Boogeyman was followed by two underwhelming sequels, Boogeyman II in 1983, and Return of the Boogeyman in 1994.
Hollywood would try to slap "the boogeyman" title on another potential franchise a quarter of a century later for 2005's Boogeyman. Though Sam Rami is involved as a producer, this new look at the creepy monster in the closet didn't scare anyone. Still, at least it leans into exploring our perception of the boogeyman, with the film's protagonist, Tim Jensen (Barry Watson), witnessing his own dad being taken by a boogeyman who came out of the closet. Yikes. It's no doubt messed Tim up, so much so that he won't sleep on a bed or anywhere with a closet because the boogeyman could be there. There's a fascinating idea there about a grown man having to face his childhood demons, but this Boogeyman bombed, rejected by critics and audiences as dull, with a tame monster we barely get to know much about. Still, with Boogeyman being an easy attention-getting title, two direct-to-DVD sequels were made, 2007's Boogeyman 2 and 2008's Boogeyman 3.
This year sees the arrival of another horror film called The Boogeyman. Based on Stephen King's 50-year-old short story, trailers have shown a film leaning heavily into what we know and fear about the childhood creature, with a slender, long-limbed being seen climbing under the bed of young Sawyer (Livien Lyra Blair). It's up to her older sister, Sadie (Yellowjackets' Sophie Thatcher), to believe, and save her. Hopefully, it'll be better than other films bearing the same name, and give us a new boogeyman to rival both The Shape and Tim Burton's singing entity.
