If an old man tells you to not open the old mine, you should just leave the old mine closed. No one tells you these sorts of things without a reason. After all, there could be turtle creatures lurking in there, ready to kill everyone.

Our friends at Jensen Farley Productions took a break from In Search of Historic Jesus and The Outer Space Connection to produce this film that is a strange mix between 1950’s science fiction and a slasher. It’s also filled with one of the horniest male characters in the history of 1980’s horror and that’s saying plenty.

Awhile back, a silver mine closed after everyone in it but one person died. Brian Deering (John Crawford, The Towering Inferno) and Dan Ostroff are in town to make it happen, along with two young guys, Roger Lowrie and Mark Kinner. They’re making the closed mine modern and also find tons of bones, but no one complete skeleton. It’s at this point that I would move on to the next mine. But I’m not in The Boogens. I’m just a viewer. And I’m also a viewer who was five beers in at the drive-in while watching it.

Roger and Mark are soon joined by Mark’s girl Jessica (Anne-Marie Martin, Prom Night, the TV version of Dr. Strange) and another girl named Trish (Rebecca Balding, Silent Scream). While this is all going on, the landlady comes to open up their house, hits a deer, goes into a ditch, walks to the house in the freezing cold and then gets pulled into the basement and killed by what we can only assume is a Boogen.

Roger has, by now, been the horniest dude ever and mentioned how many times he’s going to have sex with Jessica and how long it’s been since they have had sex (twelve days, trust me, I heard it a hundred times). Through whim of fate, Mark and Trish also hook up and we’re treated to some heavy petting. But as Dr. Dealgood once told to the fine folks of Bartertown, “Dying time is here!”

Also: Greenwalt (Jon Lormer, who gets his cake in Creepshow) is sneaking around and it’s revealed that his father was the lone survivor of the mine. He’s gonna blow up the mine real good to get rid of the Boogens.

This movie moves at a glacial pace, with the last fifteen minutes finally being the energetic fun that Stephen King’s blurb about it promised. That is, if you find turtle monsters scary. Or whatever that are.

Director James L. Conway also directed Hangar 18, as well as numerous TV shows (he’s currently working on Orville and The Magicians, was a producer on Charmed and even married Rebecca Balding during the filming).

If you want to check out The Boogens, you can grab the DVD or blu-ray at Olive Films.