 Welcome to today's edition of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, but to start things off, what are we drinking today? Fire in the Sky, Rye. Today we're finally covering a movie that several people have asked us to cover so we're going to do it and that is 1981's The Boogins. This one was directed by James Conway and he's done mostly TV and Marie Martin is in this and she's in a couple of horror movies that we've got to mention, Prom Night and she's uncredited in Halloween too. Fred McCarron is in this and also Rebecca Baldings is in this too. Baldig? The Boogins starts off with opening credits, which you have to pay attention to because it's all these newspaper clippings about this mine back in the late 1800s. Town strikes it big, hundreds flee to town to mine, cave-in miners trapped, miners found dead, mine closed. There's a company pulling up in a truck called Syndicated Mines and they are hired to basically reopen this mine to veterans and there's two newbies on the crew and that is Mark and Roger. They go into the mine and the map we have is an even current, you know. Stumble upon this spot where there's all these bones, just a boneyard, they also stumble upon this big river creek type thing in the middle of this mine which is kind of odd. You can see this lady driving up the highway, a deer comes out and she swerves to miss the deer, goes into the ditch, walks back and we find out that she's opening up this house to be rented to miners who are coming in from out of town. She has to spend the night there because her car is in the ditch. There's also this old man that's beginning to hang in around the mine and then he's also at that house. She hears kind of something in the basement. Something grabs her and drags her into the basement. This is the location Jessica driving up to this town and they are the girlfriends of Mark and Roger, all going to be living in this house together. And they've got their dog. Tiger. Tiger. A little bastard. Roger and Mark get off work for the day. One of them has to drive out that night to go get these plans and it wrecks his plans and getting with his lady for the first time in eight days and he's saying eight days, it's been eight days. They're hoping to maybe get a little hanky-panky in but Tiger is all in the way. So they go out to a bar and they have a couple of beers, play some pool. We find out that Jessica is a big pool shark and oh, you jealous? I'm pissed off. You're better than I am. At this point, Roger goes back to the house to try and get some sleep. He finds that it's like trashed from the fucking dog, lays down in bed and the bed all breaks again. So finally he's like, well screw this, I'll just get up and go then. So he goes into the garage to get into the truck. There's something that whacks him into like big cabinet or something. He gets dragged under the truck and that's it. The next morning, Mark goes to the mine. The mine is all boarded up and there's like three crosses in the front and there's like a warning. Jessica is back at the house. The dog's kind of barking and he sees like, the dog sees like these claws are like tentacle things come through the grates, snatches the dog. So that's the end of that fucking annoying ass dog. Finally, dog finally got it. Yeah, Jessica comes out. These tentacles grab her right from through that grate and grab her arm. Meanwhile, back at the mine, they kind of notice something that's floating in the lake or like this pond thing and it's Roger and he's all like faces all torn up. Yeah. The old man that's been hanging around is finally down there with them and he's got dynamite. You know, there's something down here. He wants to collapse the mine and finally rid the area of whatever this monster is. The boogins. Yeah. So if you want to see what happens with the miners and the old man with the dynamite, yeah, keep watching. There's a lot more to go. This movie is actually really, really good. It's a slow paced movie, but that's just fine because it's never gets boring and that's because of the characters and the dialogue are so good. Yeah. It's all the character development and stuff that really makes this movie move along nicely. The characters are really like you really believe that they're friends and really a tight knit unit. Funny where it needs to be, but not campy funny. Exactly. Just natural funny. The comedy works in the context of the scenes and the movie as a whole, right? And it's not shoved in your face. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like normal banter. Just like you and me would run into the situation. It's also an intriguing movie because they tease you a lot. There's a lot of teasing. Like you never really see the monster. You don't really know what's up with this mind. So there's a lot of mystery here that keeps you watching it. One of the really neat things about this movie, which is unique, is the dog, that fucking tiger. As soon as they show it, I'm like, oh, fucking white, yappy poodles. I hate white, yappy poodles. But it's neat because the dog is like part of the cast. It's a character in the movie that you kind of either root for or you hate him. It's kind of like the jokester character from all these slashers, like Shelley from Friday the 13th, part three. It's kind of annoying, but you kind of feel you kind of like him at the same time. And when he finally does die, you're kind of like, ah. Yeah, yeah. And everybody else kind of hates him, too. They're sort of annoyed by him. But when he disappears, you're kind of upset, right? Yeah, they love him, yeah. Exactly. They love him, but he's annoying, you know? And he gets a lot of screen time this dog. He does, yeah. And he's a little bastard. He gets up to a lot of shenanigans. And once you're eating my shoes, and as soon as I leave, the dog goes for the shoes right away. He's a well-trained dog, I must say. Yeah, whoever, like, whatever dog did the movie was great. Like, it did everything perfectly. Yeah, yeah. One of the nicest things about this movie is the production value feels top notch. The setting, too, is like beautiful, like the mountains. And then when they show the caves and everything with the water, it's like, wow, this is a nice looking movie. The effects, like even the monster effects, are pretty good. And they're so simple, right? They don't need to be super good, because they don't show tons of the monster. There's a fucking monster in their minds, yeah. Yeah, it's like, OK, that's a little silly. You have to temper that with not showing it, because if you show too much, it gets ridiculous. They did a really good job of teasing the monster. And every time someone encounters the monster, it gets killed, they show a little bit more. Finally, towards the end, you don't see the full monster ever, but you see like the face, finally, you know? What is this? Yeah. Is it an alien? Is it some weird creature from prehistoric times? You don't really know. That's maybe my one misgiving about the movie. And I normally don't like a lot of backstory in movies. But I kind of wish they would have went a little bit more into what the minors had found like 100 years ago and what they maybe thought that it was. I kind of like that you don't know what it is, though. It does. It works, though. It helps with the mystery. Yeah. And the sounds that the thing makes, like when you don't see it, and you just see there's like a lot of POV shots of what the monster sees. Yeah. Yeah, so you know he's around. You know he's a mean fucker, too. That's why movies like this work so well. Like they probably don't have the biggest budget in the world. They probably couldn't build the whole monster. You build part of it. Yeah. And then you just show that little part in the rest of all POV and less is more in this case, right? Yeah, exactly. The actors acting out what the monster looks like, right? Because they're terrified. So you know it's like, well, what they're looking at is fucking scary. Yeah. Yeah, the reaction to the monster is so good where you don't need to see it. Exactly. It's a surprisingly good movie for a movie called The Boogins. Yeah, I think. You expect it to be just pure cheese, right? But it's not. So I guess that's it. And if you've never seen 1981's The Boogins and have kind of put it away because the name is kind of cheese, watch it anyways, because it's a great little watch. It's a lot of fun. You're not going to be disappointed. It's a very enjoyable movie. And you'll either love or hate that fucking dog. Until next time. Keep drinking.