The Evil (1978)

Richard Crenna leads in this lackluster 70's horror effort. It tells the story of a couple who buy a mansion much in need of restoration, they call in some friends to assist but find themselves trapped inside by a supernatural entity.Alas very little happens, the story doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense and the whole thing is somewhat of a bore.The IMDB rating for this is quite high so expected more, sadly it misfired on all cylinders and left me scratching my head.No idea how this got its 18 rating either, it's stupidly tame stuff.The Good: Decent settingThe Bad:Rather blandInstantly forgettableOdd endingThings I Learnt From This Movie:Satan is an old fat bearded guy with a cross allergy

Given the fact that this movie is from 1978, it is still a movie that holds its own today. Yes, the effects are hopelessly out of date, but the movie is more than just a hollow special effects movies (as many of todays movies are), and it is driven by the storyline and atmosphere."The Evil" is essentially a haunted house movie, where a doctor rents a vacant house to open a clinic. He accidentally unleash the supernatural powers that are confined deep within the heart of the old house.The acting in "The Evil" was good, and people did fair jobs in bringing the individual characters to life on the screen.Now, I will say that the movie was a bit over-dramatic. How? Well, for starters the music throughout the movie was just overwhelming in the attempt to add to the atmosphere, and it was bordering on being too annoying. And there was just way too much going on in the movie. Sure it kept the boredom at bay, but it felt like director Gus Trikonis was trying to put every single horror idea he ever had into an 89 minute long movie. It was just too much, and it sort of went from dread and despair into 'what will the haunt do in the next scene?'. Which was a shame.But all together an enjoyable enough movie given its age.

The Evil is a brave but rather lacklustre attempt to make a haunted house film in the same style as "The Haunting". It's not too bad but there are a number of reasons why it doesn't really work. The story is very simple...a number of people rent a large old house for a prolonged stay, only to find once they have moved in that something sinister lives there, but they finds out too late and become locked in – many terrible things happen before they few remaining survivors confront the evil entity itself and try to defeat it.Let me start with the things that did impress me. First of all the cast are on the whole pretty good, with only a few weak links in there. Joanna Pettet makes a convincing heroine, and most of the supporting cast are pretty good too. And for a while the ghostly apparitions that confront the cast are quite effective, especially the white hazy figure of a man who appears fleetingly and indistinctly at the start of the proceedings. Some off the other effects are not bad either. People are flung about by unseen forces, which looks pretty convincing, and there is an effective scene of an assault on one woman who effectively portrays the situation without looking like she's doing it all herself. There's even a brief gore shot involving a circular saw which surprised me! Plus the film all seems to be shot on location, and even though it's evidently not a high budget production, the scenes all look good and are well filmed.Now for the drawbacks...well I said the film is set inside what appears to be a genuine large empty house, but the place is one of the ugliest, drabbest mansions I have seen in a haunted house movie It looks far too modern to have any ghostly atmosphere, and the outside in particular completely lacks any stylish design, with some dismally plain stained glass windows and a ridiculously top heavy tower to round things off. However, it's certainly huge, and some of the interior rooms look like banqueting halls, although they are all completely devoid of any effective period features.. bar one amazing over-sized fireplace that the director wisely sets a few scenes in front of whenever he gets the chance.Apart from that it's just a few below-par performances and lame death scenes that stop the tension from mounting as much as it could do, but things roll on in an agreeably entertaining fashion – until, that is...the CLIMAX! Oh my god. The end of the film has caused much debate among film fans, but I'm afraid I fall squarely on the side of the detractors. The climax of the film is a huge mistake. You can read about it elsewhere (I won't spoil it here), but be warned that the force behind "The Evil" which we all knew was lurking in the cellar turns out to be something so un-frightening that you might lose all respect for the film at this point. Which is a shame as everyone involved in the film is obviously trying hard to make it work. Even the background music swells into completely over-the-top dramatics as each "highlight" appears on screen, but nothing can save things from the really bad closing 15 minutes.Quite hard to get now, as there seems to be no DVD at time of writing and all VHS versions are out of print. As haunted house films go, it's around the middle mark. It could have been higher in the rankings if the climax had been re-thought, but it's too late now, so "The Evil" is stuck with it's reputation as a failure, and all because of the last 15 minutes, which is a real shame as for most of it's running time, the proceedings are all pretty well handled.

Compassionate psychologist C.J. Arnold (a fine, bearded Richard Crenna, who starred in the hilariously horrible made-for-TV hoot "Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell" around the same time) and his supportive wife Caroline (gorgeous brunette Joanna Pettet) purchase a huge, creepy, rundown old mansion with the intention of transforming it into a drug rehabilitation center. A kindly apparition warns Caroline to leave the house, but the stubbornly rationale C.J. balks at the idea that the eerie abode might be spooked and invites a team of college students (genial unsung 70's action movie tough guy Robert Viharo and fetching femme faves Cassie Yates and Mary Louise Weller among 'em) led by C.J.'s good buddy Professor Raymond Guy (a nicely subdued performance by the usually more manic Andrew Prine) to help him clean the dingy place up. Things turn sour and get mighty harrowing when C.J. accidentally releases an ancient and extremely malevolent phantasmagoric force that's been confined in the basement for a long time. Said force proceeds to gruesomely decimate most of the cast (grisly electrocutions, a possessed German Shepard causes a chick to take a fatal spill down a flight of stairs, Prine drowns in quicksand, and so on) before C.J. and Caroline discover that none other than Beezlebub his horned, devilish self (a sumptuously ripe, show-stopping slice of grand thespic ham by Victor Buono) is behind the whole diabolical shebang.While the plot might not sound too promising (in fact, it's pretty threadbare), "The Evil" still qualifies as a superior supernatural scarefest because the invigorating deftness and straightforwardness of the execution wholly compensate for the story's dearth of originality. The direction by the always efficient and underrated 70's exploitation feature ace Guy ("The Student Body") Trikonis bristles with remarkable élan, style and restraint. Furthermore, Trikonis adeptly covers all the mandatory bases to make this picture pass muster as a solid little horrorshow: a fair amount of alarming, pulse-quickening tension is ably created and sustained throughout, uniformly on the money acting, a fleshing-crawling score by Johnny Harris, a galloping pace which never lets up for a minute, properly ugly and unpleasant death scenes, a grim gloom-doom mood, shadowy cinematography by Mario DiLeo, and a cogently stated central thesis which firmly argues that not only must supernatural events and entities be accepted and dealt with on their own logic-defying otherworldly terms, but also that the sole way to effectively thwart evil is through direct and aggressive means. To sum up, this honey certainly rates as a a real killer diller haunted house thriller.