Gutierrez 1

Ximena Gutierrez

Prof. Cunningham

ENGL 1113

11 April 2022

Rhetorical Analysis: “The Boogeyman”

Director and screenplay writer Jeffery Schiro captured Stephen King’s AIM that you

shouldn’t trust anyone, even if you think they’re helping you, in his 1982 film rendition of The

Boogeyman. It is evident through his use of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos.

Logos is defined as a way of persuasion using logistics and facts. There seemed to be a

significant lack of logistics throughout the movie. For example, the detective mentions the gap

between the time the body was discovered versus when the police were called. He then questions

Mr. Billings why it took him an hour to call the cops to report his daughter's dead body, “Where

Mr. Billings was the body when you found it? Billings, where was the body?... In the bath. And

what time was this? One o'clock. It's now 2:15. Are you telling me it took you an hour before

you call the police?”. (Schiro 07:08-07:48). There was no detective scene in the original story, so

there was a significant lack of logos in the story. One of the few examples would be when

Billings walks into his son’s room to see the Boogeyman with his son in its grasp, shaking him

around till his neck breaks. Rather than stepping in to save his child, Billings says he ran to a

diner “Oh I ran… I went to an all-night diner. How's that for complete cowardice? Ran to an all-

night diner and drank six cups of coffee. Then I went home.” (King 161) This lacks logistics be-

cause how many people would run away from something hurting their child? Most people would

run toward the danger and try to help their children, but Billings chose to run to the diner instead.
 Gutierrez 2

Ethos appeals to ethics, which is best described as proving something to the audience us-

ing the authority or credibility of someone like a celebrity or a well-known figure. Nothing is

known about director Jeff Schiro except that he was born in Maine and has been directing films

for over 20 years now. In the movie, the main character is played by Michael Reid, who had just

begun his acting career with the production of this film in 1982. He later went on to be on more

well-known shows like How I Met Your Mother, 2 Broke Girls, Kickin’ It, and many more,

mostly playing a hobo or ragged-looking character. In King’s story, there was an illustrator men-

tioned named Graham Ingle. He was best remembered for his work on EC Comics with his Tales

from the Crypt, which is also mentioned in the story. He was brought up when Billings described

what he thought the monster looked like based on the things he’d seen as a child in his comic

books. This mention is relevant to the story because it allows you to envision what the monster

could look like using Ingles’ work as a base for its features.

Finally, Pathos is the appeal to emotions, defined as convincing the audience of some-

thing by creating an emotional response. This was by far the most well-captured rhetorical de-

vice in the movie. You begin the film with eerie energy surrounding the main character, but

you’re never able to figure out why until he opens the shower curtain to reveal his dead daugh-

ter’s body in the tub. The camerawork, special effects, and lighting all worked together wonder-

fully and captured Billings’ feelings without him having to say any words. In both the story and

film, Billings talks about his experiences of losing his children before noticing a closet door in

the doctor’s office. He becomes extremely panicked and demands Dr. Harper to open it. He then

begins to tell the story of the deaths of his children and describes that when they would find their

corpses, he would notice that the closet door was always cracked open. He claimed that the

Boogeyman had come out of the closet to kill his kids and that he was now coming for him, “The
 Gutierrez 3

boogeyman killed them all. Just came out of the closet and killed them”. (King 148) After telling

the doctor everything, Billings is advised to return for therapy sessions twice a week. When he

looks for the nurse and doesn’t see her at her desk, Billings returns to Dr. Harper’s office to find

the Boogeyman standing there holding a mask of Dr. Harper’s face. This proves King’s AIM that

you cannot trust anyone because it could be that those you think are helping you could turn out to

be your worst nightmare.

Director Jeff Schiro’s 1982 film rendition of The Boogeyman was a thrilling and sus-

penseful take on Stephen King’s original story. Though there was a lack of Logos and Ethos, he

proved through Pathos that you shouldn’t trust anyone, even if you think they’re helping you.
 Gutierrez 4

Works Cited

“Examples of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.” Examples,

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-ethos-logos-and-pathos.html.

“Graham Ingels.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 16 Jan. 2022,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Ingels.

“Michael Earl Reid.” IMDb, IMDb.com, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0717369/?

ref_=nmbio_bio_nm.

Schiro, Jeffery, director. Stephen King's "The Boogeyman" (1982), 8 Jan. 2019,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFqGXqPX6s. Accessed 31 Mar. 2022.

King, Stephen. “The Boogeyman.” Night Shift, Anchor Books, 1978, pp. 145–163.