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BOOGEYMEN

The whole shameless rip-off is being touted as a greatest hits collection of "the scariest boogeymen ever to appear on film!" What it should be touted as is a collection of "the most contemporary horror movies we could get permission to release as one thinly disguised ad."

For each "monster" you get a two to three minute clip, featuring one of their more grizzly moments. You can watch these clips in one of four ways: you can watch them straight through from the beginning; you can pick the clip off the scene selection list - you'll also be able to, when available, see a trailer from the movie and/or get some background info; you can watch the clips with the triva feature on, where at the bottom of the screen a box appears and gives you a bunch of truly trivial info, like pop-up video without the edge; or, you can watch the clips with Robert Englund's audio commentary, which amounts to "this film was great," "I love the mosh pit," "these guys are friends of mine," "Wow, Leatherface," "Check please," "I'm the cute V." All four options, considering the crème de la crème film selections, suck.

Many of the clips (PSYCHO, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, HALLOWEEN, HELLRAISER, THE PUPPETMASTER, THE GUARDIAN) show the end scenes from the movies they're featuring. Which means that if I lived in a cave and hadn't seen these films and just watched these bits, when I went to go get the real movie, a majority of the suspense would be gone because some jerk from FlixMix already showed me how it turned out. Great call guys, as great as trying to get me to buy that Jack Frost is one of the greatest horror icons of our day - just try finding a video store that's ever rented out a copy of one his classic films.

Speaking of Jack Frost no, not Michael Keaton's JACK FROST; that's a different kind of horror film - his little bit is hidden as an Easter Egg. First you go to the FlixMix "other trailers" section (featuring such hair-raising fare as AMERICAN PIE 2: STILL NOT FUNNY), highlight "FlixMix" at the top and then push right on your cursor. On the upper top of your screen, JACK FROST 2 will light up. Press enter and you'll get the topless scene. Yep, while all the other segments concentrate on spilling guts and slashing faces, the unforgettable and cleverly hidden-from-your-mother moment from JACK FROST 2 is the breast show. Ever the wisecracker, zany horror legend Jack Frost freezes a pool on an unsuspecting and very naked woman. (By the way, don't let your parents see this bit - otherwise you'll be getting some spankings rather than doing some spanking.)

The DVD-ROM extras are rather scant. You get a bunch of sound effects that you can download onto your computer and amount to nothing more then an old "spooky sounds of Halloween" record. The big game feature is a trivia thing with a whopping 20 questions wow, how did they manage the space?!

The DVD is full frame (1.33:1) but some of the segments are letterboxed. The picture quality varies from film to film, but overall is not that great. The clip used from HALLOWEEN is of particular poor quality. The sound, Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0, is decent - the best audio comes with the commentary track, though it again varies from clip to clip.

As extras you get the commentary by Englund (described above), the FlixFacts animated trivia (also described above), "Legends of the Boogeymen" character histories (brief bios on a select number of the Boogeymen featured), and a very lame "Name That Frame" game that shows single frames from the movies clips you've watched and asks you to name the movie they're from - if you've seen the show, you'll have no problem. This extra goes on forever. Last, you get a selection of trailers from a few of the films shown and three other trailers (JURASSIC PARK III, AMERICAN PIE 2, THE MUMMY RETURNS) thrown on for the hell of it. Each segment in the BOOGEYMEN DVD features a bit of stats (origin, trademark, etc.) that seem like info for an inevitable Magic card tie in.

The clip shows are never without their charm. It's nice to sit down and watch a bunch of highlights from horror films, especially when surrounded by buddies. You laugh, groan and throw chips at the TV. However, these types of offerings work best as rentals. There's really not enough on BOOGEYMEN to warrant a purchase, and you can watch the entire thing with and without the features in an evening and even the DVD ROM features can be covered in less then 30 minutes. After that what else do you have? A bunch of clips, mostly from bottom of the barrel movies (William Friedkin's THE GUARDIAN, OH BOY!), that make up the majority of a disc which will just gather dust in your collection. Besides, this release is nowhere near as fun as Image Entertainment's MONSTER MANIA series, which boasts far more dubious offerings, but is so much more schlocky. And I mean that in the best sense of the word.