Good Against Evil (1977)

This film begins much like "Rosemary's Baby", though in this case Beelzebub apparently got a girl--a girl who grew up and had no idea she was the child of pure EVIL!! During much of the first part of the film, she is wooed by a creepy suitor (Dack Rambo)--who is supposed to be romantic because he won't take NO for an answer (I sure was getting rapist vibes from this!). Then, abruptly, the film switches and you hear nothing more about the lady after she is hypnotized! The plot changes to a child who is possessed and her mother (a young Kim Cattrall)--and the viewer is left wandering what happened to the Devil's daughter?! And, by the end of the film, you have absolutely no idea whatsoever! The film just abruptly ends! "Good Against Evil" was apparently a failed TV series pitched by ABC. It's hard to imagine now, but with the popularity of books and films such as "The Exorcist" and "The Omen", someone at the network thought it would be a good idea to create a TV series about the fight between the followers of Satan and God. The problem is that although this MIGHT have worked, the DVD for this is amazingly unsatisfying to watch--it's not really a movie but PART of a plot for a film that was never completed. What they did show really isn't very good and since there is no ending or even a reasonable stopping point, I can't see any reason to recommend it. It literally stops as if they just ran out of film!! Not worth your time.

Following his move to the United States, Hammer scribe Jimmy Sangster found steady work in TV where thrillers and horrors could be turned out cheap and fast. Having made a mint back home with a mix of DIABOLIQUE (1955) and PSYCHO (1960), Sangster now turned his attention to two major diabolism films of the era: ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) and THE EXORCIST (1973). The result, however, is a dismal failure – for which his own, frankly, lousy screenplay is largely to blame! For the record, I have watched countless rip-offs of both films by this point but I do own at least one virtual copy of the former (THE STRANGER WITHIN {1974}, coincidentally also a TV-movie) and as many as 5 other 'possession' films – ABBY (1974), THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW aka THE SEXORCIST (1974), THE POSSESSED aka DEMON WITCH CHILD (1975), THE EXORCIST III: CRIES AND SHADOWS aka NAKED EXORCISM (1975) and THE POSSESSED (1977; TV). By the way, director Wendkos had earlier helmed a stylish diabolic chiller himself i.e. THE MEPHISTO WALTZ (1971) but, here, he is cramped by the under-lit TV look (even if the film frequently changes locale for the sake of variety – starting in 1955 New York, then cutting to present-day San Francisco and moving to New Orleans for the climax) and, as I said, a plot that is half-hearted, under-nourished and downright confusing! What is more, the whole works its way to a major cop-out of an abrupt ending – having been intended as a pilot to a prospective series but it was understandably not picked up – so that the central premise is pretty much left hanging!The notion of having upper-class types revealed to be Satanists is a pretty tired one by now: meeting every once in a while – here to present the Devil with the child that, upon growing up, is to bear his offspring – to honor their master (whose disciples conveniently keep a statue of the Horned One secured in their private place of worship). That said, after the opening sequence (which recalls Hammer's own TO THE DEVIL…A DAUGHTER {1976}, albeit not Sangster-related), the horror element is so underplayed that it seems to interrupt the blossoming romance between the girl (Elyssa Davalos, who looks too sweet to suggest the evil that is supposed to lurk underneath!) and hero Dack Rambo. Interestingly, having preceded this with THE LEGACY (1978) – another Sangster-scripted mix of diabolism hits – it was amusing to note the interchange of components between them (for instance, horses and cats are involved in both, the girl is unaware of who she is while the boyfriend is an interloper, etc). Another moment that harks back to the Hammer legacy (pardon the pun) is the death-in-the-belfry of the priest (from Dracula HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE {1968}) – which follows one of the few effective moments in the film under review as Davalos throws an instant and unexplained chilly darkness over a church upon entering.Richard Lynch is always good value for money in this type of fare, but he is given little of substance to do except look sinister and make the occasional invocation to the dark forces (at one time, this occurs inside a cave!) – curiously enough, while he plays the leader of the cult here, he had also been a Christ-like alien in Larry Cohen's GOD TOLD ME TO aka DEMON (1976)! Still, why he seems so reticent to eliminate Rambo's character is baffling – he attempts to make the hero forget Davalos by throwing him back into the lap of a former girlfriend (a young Kim Cattrall): the fact that this leads directly to the introduction of Dan O'Herlihy's exorcist figure (since Cattrall's child is decreed as possessed simply for having drawn the sign of the demon Astaroth) seems to me a gross miscalculation on the villain's part! O'Herlihy's sudden appearance – in a state of agitation to boot – in the last act takes the film into its obvious center-piece, which is the battle for the soul of a little child: it does not matter that she has little to no bearing on the main plot but, then, the staging is so tame (indeed lame) that one is amused by the entire scenario, especially as the girl remains calm and composed all the way through it! I was literally thrown into fits of hysterical laughter when Rambo goes up to check on the priest and finds him at the mercy of an invisible hand suffocating him with a pillow!! With Lynch admitting defeat soon after the Devil is expelled and the unlikely team of Rambo and O'Herlihy keeping up the search for Davalos (while Cattrall offers herself in case the hero just happens to fail in his ultimate quest!), the film just ends: had one been completely unaware of its pedigree, we could say that the script was suggesting that the fight between Good and Evil is a continuing struggle and not easily won...

Pilot film for a series that I don't think ever happened that should have worked because it was written by Jimmy Sangster. The basic premise was to have Dack Rambo and Dan O'Herlihy as a detective and an exorcist go around and fight the evils kicked up by the evil Richard Lynch.It's a mess. The need to be for TV and to set up an episodic series meas that nothing is ultimately gripping or resolved. Tension isn't created so much a phoned in at carefully timed breaks for commercials. Released on tape and DVD as a feature you never stop seeing it for the TV movie that it is. Avoid even at 99 cents.

****SPOILERS**** Off the wall but still very watchable, because of the films unintentional humor, horror movie that has to do with a future virgin bride of Satan, or Asterof as he's called here, Jennifer Gordon( Elyssa Davelous) who's in danger of losing her way by falling in love, and thus losing her virginity, with a mare mortal the handsome and not taking no for an answer Andy Stuart, Dack Rambo.Were given a prologue in the film with a scene that takes place in New York City back in 1955 with this what seems like a very disturbed woman, Jenny O'Hara, going through labor and giving birth to what turned out to be Jennifer Gordon. Within minutes of giving birth the woman is killed as she falls down a flight of stairs when she's attacked by a black cat! This mysterious feline shows up in the movie, being responsible for at least two more deaths, a number of times including the films surprise ending.It's now 22 years later and in the city of San Francisco that we see Jennifer working at a boutique and then running into Andy Stuart who ran his van into Jennifer's parked car. Romance blossoms between the two star-struck lovers until Andy takes Jennifer out for a ride, on horses, and is attacked by the same black cat that attacked and killed her mother at the start of the film. This time around the black Cat killed, by causing him to be trampled to death, one of the Satanists a Mr. Brown, Richard Stahl, who's assigned to look after Jeniffer's safety.Having absolutely no clue in what he got himself into Andy goes to a local church and asks the preacher Father Wheatley, John Harkins, to marry him and Jennifer as soon as possible. It turns out that Father Weathley is on to who Jennifer really is, The Bride of Satan! Father Weathley not only refuses to marry Jennifer and Andy but if fact tells Andy to get help by having Jennifer exorcised by his fellow Catholic Priest and exorcist expert Father Kemschler, Dan O'Herlihy.Things really start to get wild when Jennifer realized that she's been groomed to be Satan's Bride and breaks up with the by now totally confused Andy. Andy himself soon sees how wrong he was in not taking Father Wheatley advice when he goes to his church finding the place ransacked with Father Weatley both dead and hanging from the church's bell tower! The movie then takes a totally different turn, with an entirely new storyline, in what the Devil and his secretive followers are really up to.Andy now knowing what he has to do after he read a story about a child being possessed by the Devil in the local newspaper and rushes down to New Orleans. It's there where not only the child Cindy Isley, Natasha Ryan, is hospitalized after she was attacked by our old friend the black cat but her divorced mother Linday Isley, Kim Cattrall, just happened to be an old friend, or lover, of Andy! What a small world!The ending is about as good if not even better then you would have expected it to be with Father Kemschler coming out of his corner swinging punches at the Devil in an effort to save Cindy's soul as well as her life. With Cindy's bedroom in total chaos with books chairs tables and toys flying in all directions, as well as what seems like elephants trumpeting in the background, Father Kemscher has a life and death struggle with the Devil himself who's disguised as a pillow! It's then that what seems like the head honcho of the Sanatic cult Rimmin, Richard Lynch, involved with Jennifer, who by then completely disappeared from the movie,calls it quits and goes off looking for another candidate, a new bride, for his master Satan. That's if his master decides to give Rimmin another chance to redeem himself! ****SPOILER****The film ends with the threat of a sequel in that the very annoying and deadly black cat pops up again but now after thirty years that threat can finally be discounted.