At this point, those of us that were interested have had time to recover from the collective Disney+ sugar crash, and have learned to incorporate a moderate dose of Disney magic into our regular video streaming diet. The Disney+ catalog may be small in comparison to other streaming platforms, but depending on your interests, it can offer some very different experiences; whether that be Star Wars, or Marvel, or the animated classics, or the slew of overly cheery made-for-Disney-TV movies that came out when the Disney Channel redirected its focus to mostly pre-teens.

OR…

…You might be like me and want to plunder all the old content the Disney dragon has been jealously nesting on top of for decades. Honestly, I’ve barely heard that baby Yoda cry because I’ve been all, “More black and white Donald, please.” (Does baby Yoda cry? I wouldn’t know)

But along with my private glee over seeing such titles as ‘Benji the Hunted’ and ‘Blackbeard’s Ghost’, (both of which I hadn’t seen since I was very little) there was one inclusion that just about exploded all the fireworks of my life all at once.

And that title is… wait for it… Mr. Boogedy.

You may be thinking that I must really love this movie; that I must have watched it over and over again on pirated VHS; that driven by obsession with this movie I forced my extended family to watch Mr. Boogedy every time they visited whether they wanted to or not because strong-arming tradition is what a child loves best. Well, that is very astute of you, because that’s basically/altogether correct; but whereas it’s true that Mr. Boogedy is one of my all time favorite childhood movies, its appearance on the list is not solely responsible for the random moments of giddiness I experienced during the first week of Disney+.

Within the first couple days, before I myself had subscribed, I started getting messages from friends that I had introduced to Mr. Boogedy over the years as part of a bonding ritual, with links to articles that they thought I might find interesting. Turns out that, 33 years after its release, this almost forgotten Disney TV special, that *fun fact* was originally written for Cheech and Chong, was inexplicably getting press. Curious subscribers, while exploring the Disney+ catalog, were discovering this strange title coupled with the visage of the terrifying, glowing titular character of the movie.

The curious were then rewarded with the bizarre story of a family of practical jokers that move to a New England town named Lucifer Falls, and surprise surprise, into a haunted house. The movie is silly and campy and dated, but there’s something charming in its full-lean into its silly, campy, datedness.

It stars some surprising familiar faces. The family is made up of actors Richard Masur, Mimi Kennedy, a very young Kristy Swanson, David Faustino pre-Married with Children, and best of all it guest stars John Astin, the original Gomez Addams as the creepy town Historian and real estate agent.

There are some even tastier casting treats in the sequel, Bride of Boogedy, but that one isn’t available yet, so I’ll leave those to be discovered with an imminent “to be continued”.

I can only speculate what the experience must be like to watch Mr. Boogedy for the very first time as an adult, because there has never been a Boogedy-free period in my life long enough for me to forget and rediscover this movie, but it must have struck a chord in some sort of significant way because the story told by these online articles featured a hashtag phenomenon known as the #boodegychallenge. This movement was encouraging subscribers of Disney+ to watch Mr. Boogedy before anything else in an attempt to confuse the algorithm into thinking that consumers at large desired a reboot/remake/sequel starring the sinister Pilgrim ghost.

Of course, upon learning this, I immediately took on that challenge then subsequently texted/ordered all of my family to do the same. The sudden, seemingly exponential increase of attention being paid to this thing that I have loved my whole life, this thing that I had learned to assume no one beyond family would ever understand references to, kept rocking random giggles from me where random giggles were out of place. I’m perfectly aware that a grand chunk, if not the entire purpose of the #boogedychallenge is meant ironically, but what could be more fitting for a movie about a family of pranksters than to use it to fuel a good old practical joke on the House of Mouse?