October 27, 2020 — I recognize that gazebo. It was a combination of words that had never formed in my brain before. It appeared because I was watching Bride of Boogedy on Disney+. You probably hate this introductory paragraph, but I really like it.
Bride of Boogedy is the 1987 made-for-TV sequel to
the 1986 made-for-TV movie Mr. Boogedy. The first movie tells the story
of a family who movies to Lucifer Falls in New England to find a colonial-era ghost holding
his ghost-family ghost-hostage in it. Mr. Boogedy mostly doesn’t appear and when he
does he shimmers in a corner. He’s also beaten by a vacuum cleaner. It’s a
cringey little flick, unfortunately. Although it does feature John Astin. And
the two sons are the kid from Married with Children and the kid from ALF.
I like the second movie a lot better. In it, the family who beat Mr. Boogedy opens a gag shop in downtown Lucifer Falls (in an old horror wax museum) while the town throws its annual Lucyfest carnival. Meanwhile, Mr. Boogedy escapes his overly wrought grave to get some strange. It has classic monsters, seances, the aforementioned carnival, Eugene Levy as a villain, Victor Schiavelli as a gravedigger. Lots to like.
The first movie mostly takes place in the house, with only one other building in town shown, but the whole downtown of Lucifer Falls features prominently in the sequel. And that downtown looked familiar to me. It didn’t take me long to place it. The green Victorian wrought-iron gazebo in the middle of the town square tipped me off.
Lucifer Falls is Green Town.
Green Town, Illinois, is the setting for the 1983 Disney movie Something Wicked This Way Comes, based on the Ray Bradbury book of the same name. I have watched this movie, like I have read that book, too many times to count. It is the story of a dark carnival that comes to a small town in the 1930s to tempt the souls of a town and of two boys in particular.
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| Here is the gazebo and Lucifer Falls town square in Bride of Boogedy. |
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| And here it is again as Green Town in Something Wicked This Way Comes. |
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| Mr. Boogedy himself even lands on top of it. |
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| Notice the oval crown on the building behind Boogedy. You can see it in the previous Something Wicked shot, too. |
After I noticed that the two movies had been filmed in the
same place, the next step should have been to find out where they were filmed and get a direct flight there.
Except that I already knew that Something Wicked wasn't filmed in a real town. It was filmed on the
Disney Studios backlot in California. So my next step was to map the major sites from Something
Wicked to the sites from the two Boogedy movies. Because why not?
You can see a good overview of the town square in the first and last shots of Something Wicked, which is also the location of the parade search party from Something Wicked and the carnival in Bride of Boogedy. The only scenes inside the gazebo are a conversation between Will and Jim in Something Wicked, and the carnival band using it as a stage in Bride of Boogedy, although Mr. Boogedy himself does stand on the roof of the gazebo during the film's climax. I assume he didn't actually stand up there, but they did make it real enough that he's shown grasping the finial (see above).
The exterior of the bar in Something Wicked is the
exterior of the Lucifer Falls Historical Society in both Boogedy’s. The
interior of the bar is also the same as the interior of the historical society in
the first Boogedy movie, although I can’t tell in Bride. There are two
scenes set inside in Bride, one of which, the town hall meeting, was
definitely not filmed inside, but the second, when the boys (now played by the kid
from Married with Children and the kid from Harry and the Hendersons)
might have been.
Tetley's Cigar Store from Something Wicked is Lynch Hardware
in Bride of Boogedy (the store run by Eugene Levy).
And those were really the only buildings shared between the
two productions. The horror wax museum turned gag store from Bride
of Boogedy is a store called J.M. McLean in Something Wicked, which
doesn’t feature in the latter, although you can see it when the
boys run to the library near the beginning of the film.
So let’s talk more about that magical town set where
Jonathan Pryce played one of the best villains of film and Mr. Boogedy played one of
the worst. It was custom-built for Something Wicked on the Disney Studios
backlot and lasted ten years before it was torn down for
something else. I have no idea what else was filmed there, but I do hope the gazebo ended up somewhere cool.
Overall, these two movies have a lot in common. Both are
Disney movies, both came out in the 1980s, both feature carnivals. Both have
New England connections (the Boogedy movies take place in New England while
the establishing shots of Something Wicked were filmed in Vermont). Both
have bad special effects. Both villains insist on people using their titles. And both took place on the same fake town…that
doesn’t exist anymore, carted away on some nightmare train in the middle of the
night.
I could weave a timeline out of these movies. The evil Mr.
Dark is defeated in the 1930s, and in honor of the moment, the people of Green
Town proudly rename their home Lucifer Falls and throw an annual Lucyfest with
a carnival mimicking Dark and Cooger’s original one. But Mr. Dark’s demise awoke
a local spook, Mr. Boogedy, who tries to corrupt the town where Mr. Dark failed.
But Lucifer falls again. And now they have to name themselves Lucifers Fall.
And if I can find out what other movies were filmed on this
lot in those ten years of its existence, I’ll weave them into the timeline, too.
