When done well, a monster movie does not need a lot though it does need a monster no matter what it might turn out to look like and The Boogens is just such a picture. It is quite evident that the picture’s practical effects budget was not as high as it could have been but given how well it was directed and shot and everything else that went into it, it turned out to be quite effective and a very good time.

It all begins with a group of men looking to re-open a silver mine after having been shut down decades earlier after some sort of mysterious accident during which quite a few people had died. It is precarious work and yet they make good time doing so. While setting off their explosives, little did they know they let something loose which is where the monster of the movie comes into play. It is not long before unwitting innocents are beginning to get killed off and it goes unnoticed for a time until it can no longer be ignored.

Despite a title that makes one think of snot demons rather than monster worms, the movie is rather formulaic in its delivery and rather uninspired if one were to truly look at it objectively. That did not preclude it from being enjoyable though or a solid way to pass an hour and a half for it had everything one could want from a monster flick even if those monsters did not fully appear until the last act of the film. It was also for the best that they stayed off-screen for they did look rather poor considering it was 1981 and Alien had come out a couple of years previous and The Thing would come out the next with far superior effects. That being said, they were not all that disappointing for one always has to use their imagination to offset that which they see and as the audience was already trying to picture what they looked like, it was not all that hard to simply keep at it. As it is, director James L. Conway would allude to the creatures and frame his shots in certain ways to intimate the monsters were around and it not only made up for the absence, it made it better, ratcheting up the suspense and the tension so that when the eventual clash came between monster and man, one could not help but continue to be enthralled.

The cast was good, consisting of Rebecca Balding, Anne-Marie Martin, John Crawford, Jeff Harlan and Fred McCarren to name but a few and their performances were helped by a good script courtesy of David O’Malley and Bob Hunt. There would be a little nudity for those wondering though little blood which was a bit of a shame for while keeping the creature off-camera might have been a smart move, there is no reason why they couldn’t have spared a few dollars for a few buckets of blood. Even better was the locale with the picture having been filmed in Kansas and Utah, the overall abandoned look of the place, the snow and the stifling feel of the mine tunnels added to the atmosphere that permeated the entire affair. As such, this movie had a lot going for it and even now forty years later after its initial release, it remains a bit of a hidden gem as it never seems to be talked about very much. Definitely worth a look.

3.5 out of 5