{"id":8503,"date":"2024-11-18T23:34:53","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T04:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8503"},"modified":"2024-11-18T23:34:53","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T04:34:53","slug":"the-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/18\/the-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Evil<\/strong> (1978)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Gus Trikonis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Galen Thompson and Gus Trikonis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Johnny Harris\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mario Di Leo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 8, 1978 (US)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cast: Richard Crenna, Joanna Pettet, Andrew Prine, Cassie Yates, George O\u2019Hanlon Jr., Lynne Moody, Mary Louise Weller, George Viharo, Victor Buono, Milton Selzer, Ed Bakey, Galen Thompson, Emory Souza.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0The title The Evil<\/strong> is about as generic as they come. It doesn\u2019t tell you much about the movie except that it\u2019s in the horror genre. It sounds like a movie you\u2019d only watch on cable or as a rental from the 99-cent bargain shelf at your local video store. The latter is how I first saw it. During a period of unemployment in the early 90s (it was summertime), I\u2019d often hit up West Coast Video for cheapie rentals. The Evil<\/strong>, a movie I didn\u2019t hear good things about, is one of the titles I brought home. I thought it was okay. I decided to make it part of this week\u2019s grindhouse package when I realized it was executive produced by schlockmeister Roger Corman and originally distributed by New World.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As far as haunted house movies go, The Evil<\/strong> isn\u2019t too bad. It\u2019s no Poltergeist or Burnt Offerings (not by a long shot!) but it actually tries to tell a scary story rather than inundate the viewer with a lot fancy CGI effects. While it doesn\u2019t wholly succeed, its efforts are commendable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Gus Trikonis (Take This Job and Shove It) starts things off just right with the caretaker (Bakey, Telefon) of a musty Civil War-era house being incinerated by the furnace when he goes to the basement to investigate strange noises. He was getting it ready for its new owners, psychiatrist CJ Arnold (Crenna, First Blood) and his physician wife Caroline (Pettet, Casino Royale), who plan to convert it into a drug rehab clinic. First, they have to clean it up. They invite friends and former addicts- professor Raymond (Prine, Amityville II: The Possession), his student\/girlfriend Laurie (Weller, Animal House), practical joker Pete (O\u2019Hanlon, Getting Wasted), level-headed Felicia (Moody, Scream Blacula Scream), dog owner Mary (Yates, FM) and local electrician (Viharo, Return to Macon County)- to aid them in their venture.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Soon after everybody\u2019s arrival, strange things of a paranormal nature start happening starting with Caroline spotting an apparition within moments of entering the place. It\u2019s the ghost of the house\u2019s original owner, Vargas (Thompson, Project: Kill), who built the house on unholy ground or some such nonsense. Other bizarre events, like Mary\u2019s German Shepherd Kaiser turning on her, follow. It starts storming outside. Then CJ inadvertently unleashes an evil spirit when he removes an iron cross securing a trap door in the basement. All the doors and windows go into lockdown mode trapping everybody inside. They try to find a way out. The evil stalking the house kills them off one by one in gruesome ways. It all leads to a showdown with Old Scratch himself played with campy glee by Victor Buono (King Tut from the Batman TV series).<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s that last thing that makes The Evil<\/strong> stand out slightly from others of its ilk. You see, The Evil<\/strong> is definitely a product of its era with plot elements borrowed from The Exorcist and The Omen only it\u2019s a comparatively pale echo of both flicks. For all its plotting and theological conversations (CJ is an atheist, Caroline is a believer), The Evil<\/strong> is mostly slow and predictable. It\u2019s not exactly boring but it isn\u2019t exactly a thrill-a-moment affair either. The death scenes are okay. Somebody spontaneously combusts while attempting an escape. Two people are electrocuted. Another falls to their death. Somebody drowns in quicksand. As you can see, they don\u2019t hold a candle to priests being impaled by falling lightning rods or photographers being beheaded in freak accidents. As for scares, I didn\u2019t really find any. Anything jump-worthy can be seen coming from a mile away.<\/p>\n

\u00a0However, when The Evil<\/strong> makes its sudden jump at the end into dealings with the Devil, it gets a little more interesting. Although it predates The Beyond by three years, I couldn\u2019t help but think of Fulci\u2019s grisly classic with the notion of finding an entrance to Hell or something like that. I wish the rest of The Evil<\/strong> had the courage to be as weird. It spends so much time putting its characters through the motions; it doesn\u2019t stop to explore more intriguing ideas.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To his credit, Trikonis tries to make something of the main characters differing religious ideologies but doesn\u2019t quite get there. The actors do a decent job in their thinly-written roles BUT I had to laugh at the physical aspect of their performances. There are a few scenes where the house shakes and rumbles; it\u2019s clear that the actors are faking being thrown around and knocked down. Their movements are obviously deliberate. No amount of fancy camerawork can cover that up. Well, it is a Roger Corman movie so….<\/p>\n

\u00a0Trikonis, who wrote the movie with supporting player Thompson, is to be commended for making an effort with The Evil<\/strong>. Made on a budget of $700,000, the effects look pretty good. At the same time, they don\u2019t dominate the movie. This is old school exploitation filmmaking. For all its faults, I honestly prefer The Evil<\/strong> to most of today\u2019s PG-13 piffle even if it doesn\u2019t bring on the blood and boobies a good R-rated exploitation movie should. It\u2019s watchable and even fun at times. Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t come together like it should.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Evil (1978)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Gus Trikonis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Galen Thompson and Gus Trikonis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Johnny Harris\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Mario Di Leo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 8, 1978 (US)\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Cast: Richard Crenna, Joanna Pettet, Andrew Prine, Cassie Yates, George O\u2019Hanlon Jr., Lynne Moody, Mary Louise Weller, George Viharo, Victor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/The-Evil-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8749,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8503\/revisions\/8749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}