Family man and general salesman of cheap sight gags Carleton Davis (Richard Masur!) has uprooted his family and U-Hauled their asses out to the sleepy burg of Lucifer Falls so he can open up his Gag City joke shop franchise in the middle of an area founded by humorless Puritans. Though his wife Eloise (who needs to be eviscerated before her terrible laugh makes my brain melt) and his young sons Corwin (David Faustino!) and Aurie (Benji Gregory, the son from "ALF"!) support dear old Carl in his pursuits of profiting off of fossilized komedy, the "hip" teen daughter Jennifer (Kristy Swanson... who's only 16 in this movie, so put it back in your pants guys) is the always rebellious girl who knows her parents are lame and is more concerned with digging up some "hot guys". Of course the old mansion they move into is haunted by more than rats and silverfish... it's haunted by John Astin! Oh, wait, he's not dead. So, what's the Addams family patriarch doing in this flick? He's just there to play Neil Witherspoon, local weirdo and the movie's general doomsaying character, who's standing in the family's house when they arrive so he can tell them to leave, less they become the victims of "the Boogedy Man". He's probably been standing in that place all day too, just waiting to make his dramatic introduction while the Davises made numerous stops at demonic gas station bathrooms and consumed bags and bags of chemically altered fast food beef and potato products.

Of course the hauntings start early with strange sounds (sneezing?!) and Aurie's disappearing teddy bear. Yeah, I know it's not bleeding walls and fish monsters in the bath tub, but it's Disney, what do you expect? Jen is the first to see the visage of our titular spook though, passing out from terror and describing Big B as having a face that looked like "grilled cheese"... so she's terrified of grilled cheese? I guess she's lactose intolerant? Anyway, dad chalks the incident up to a practical joke by their new pal Neil, but the kids ain't convinced. When the youngsters go to Mr. Witherspoon to inquire about this supposed spook, he tells them (via pop-up book) about a crotchety old Pilgrim named William Hanover who hated crap like laughter and merriment, so he liked to scare happy little brats away by chasing them and shouting "Boogedy Boogedy Boogedy Boo!". He didn't hate everybody though, and had a stirring in his Pilgrim pants for a widowed local dame named Marian, despite the fact that she came with the excess baggage of a son. Being a still young and available MILF, Marian wasn't exactly jumping at the opportunity to open her oven for a log of geezer meat, so she turned him down. Billy was pretty insistent about slapping his ball and chain on the babe's ankle though, so he stopped by Satan's thrift shop and sold his soul to Ol' Scratch in exchange for a magical cloak that gave him evil super powers. Magical cloak? Yeah, Hanover probably kept it the same closet he was always getting himself trapped in...

Instead of using his powers to raise and army of undead Indian soldiers with which to rule the burgeoning new world, he just kidnapped Marian's kid while little Jonathan was on the way to see the doctor about a cold (hence the sneezing ghost) and threatened that Marian would never see him again if she didn't marry him. And it's not like she could just annul the things afterwards or anything, as this was the days of "death before divorce". Anyway, when Booger Beef tried to cast his first spell with the enchanted accessory (is he gay, a superhero, or just Frank Costanza's lawyer?), he manages to blow up his own house with himself and Jonathan inside. My grandfather always said, never give a child a rocket launcher and never give horny old men magic powers. This little tale of course convinces the kids further on the haunting of their new home, but it isn't until Eloise has a heart-to-heart with Marian's specter that mom and dad finally accept the spookshow. Now they need to get rid of Boogedy's sparkley green cloak (and stupid buckled Pilgrim hat) so they can lift the three centuries old curse on the house, free the spirit of Jonathan so he can be reunited with his mom, and avoid having to take a loss by trying to resell the dump on the sketchy housing market of the mid-1980s.

An evil, perverted Pilgrim phantom with a Freddy Krueger makeup job who sells his soul to Satan and blows up a sick child?! Ya gotta admit it's fairly hardcore for a Disney flick! Well, until Boogedy finally makes his much awaited screen appearance and only uses his Hellborn demonic powers to possess a ping-pong ball firing vacuum cleaner and give everybody big static electricity afros... Well, at least it had potential, right? Unfortunately, the "movie" was one of those "Wonderful World of Disney" episodes, so the actual feature is only 45 minutes long. And when your climax consists of no more danger than bad hair and possibly dropping a 10 year-old from a height of maybe six feet, there really isn't much of a pay off. The fact that Boogedy managed to screw himself over and bring about his own downfall for the second time in 300 years only adds insult to the injury. Mr. Boogedy isn't a terrible movie as far as family oriented Halloween flicks go, and the 45 minute running time is actually better suited for the short attention spans that come with most kids, so it's not a total loss. For a movie that I looked forward to every year as a lad though, it doesn't quite hold up as well over time as stuff like Return to Oz or The Dark Crystal did. Now, I've got Nefertiti and a half-gallon of panty-peeler waiting for me in the other room, so how about you Shoogedy, Shoogedy, Shoogedy, Shoo! If you've got nothing better to do, go check out Kristy Swanson's Playboy pics, as our little Halloween treat to all you horny old Pilgrims out there... uhm, you know, only if you're 18 that is...