Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the next installment of A Movie A Day: Halloween 2010 edition!
[For the entirety of October I will be showcasing one horror film each day. Every film is pulled from my DVD shelf or streamed via Netflix Instant and will be one I haven’t seen. Unlike my A Movie A Day or A Movie A Week columns there won’t necessarily be connectors between each film, but you’ll more than likely see patterns emerge day to day.]
I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s AMAD that I was excited to check out today’s film because having recently seen the trailer some imagery in the film led me to believe that this was one of those “what was that movie?!?” titles from my childhood.
As a young lad we didn’t have premium cable, just the kinda scrambled cable that most used to pleasure themselves with, the dirty buggers. But we did have the basic channels which included USA Up All Night. Gilbert Gottfried was the host I remember most, but I was there for the beginning of the Rhonda Sheer days.
Anyway, there was a movie I watched some late night with the TV volume turned veeerrryyyy low so as to not get caught that stuck with me. I never saw it again and was looking for the title forever. The only things I vividly remembered was that it was a haunted house movie and there was a scene where a character is trying to cut through a door with a power saw only to end up cutting his fingers off.
Yep, that’s this flick, except my young brain added in the fingers actually coming off. In the film the poor bastard just slices his hand badly, but I guess even as a kid I knew that these movies were censored and that the implication was that the dude was losing fingers.
Watching this film as a 6, 7 or 8 year old is the best way to see it. Because as an adult you see how poorly shot it is and laugh at how stupid the ending is, but watching it as a child, who hasn’t seen the best the genre has to offer, a few solid haunted house images is all it takes to make an impression.
And that’s not to say the movie’s horrible, it just has a horrible ending, but it’s certainly not as creepy as I remember.
A lot of that has to do with the lighting, which is about as atmospheric as a Wal-Mart. No, Wal-Mart’s far creepier. Bad analogy.
However, there’s some really strong haunted house imagery, like shutters that fold up and slam shut by themselves, that kind of thing, that is pulled off very well. If the pay off had worked then I wouldn’t be so disappointed with the flick as there are some really strong moments.
It’s a simple story that takes a page from The Exorcist as a man without faith has to find God in order to challenge pure evil.
In this case the man isn’t a priest, but a man of science, a doctor (played by Rambo’s boss, Richard Crenna) who wants to take an old mansion and convert it into a rehab clinic. His wife (Joanna Pettet) immediately feels things are wrong and starts seeing a shimmering form.
Lame, I thought. I like my ghosts to be mean and pissed or completely alien (a la Poltergeist), not cheap over-bright manifestations. Luckily for me this being is actually a good guy ghost, albeit a good ghost that murders a maintenance man in order to try to scare away the young people who show up to convert the mansion into a clinic.
He is the ghost of a man called Vargas who built the mansion on an old Indian burial ground as a means to keep the evil trapped via a crazy iron crucifix that bolts a door in the ground down in the cellar.
This would have made a good double feature with an early AMAD, The Church, which had the same premise. Except that’s more of an Italian demonic possession movie and this is a straight up haunted house flick.
So we have a group comprised of college kids getting extra credit for helping set up the clinic, ex-junkies indebted to Crenna for his help in getting them off drugs and the more blue-blooded, intellectual compatriots of Crenna’s all facing a pissed off entity.
Speaking of The Entity, the chick from that flick might want to look over at this place because a rape ghost lives there, too. But this one won’t actually rape you, just laugh as it slaps you around, tear pieces of clothes off and drag you around the room.
I’m not going to be shy in describing how this film goes wrong, which is total last act spoiler stuff, so be warned.
After damn near everybody dies (or becomes possessed for a brief amount of time… and you know they’re possessed because, and I shit you not, their eyebrows get bushier) we’re left with Crenna and his wife, guided by the nice ghost to the door that Crenna opened and down they go into the hole.
At first it’s creepy, dusty everywhere, dark stone pillars… then Crenna finds his way in to a bright room. It’s almost like he finds the Architect in the Matrix, except it’s a goofy looking bald chubby dude in a white suit giggling like a school girl.
This is what’s been causing all the fuss? I get they were going for something exactly opposite of expectations, but it so doesn’t work. It doesn’t work when it’s just the guy in the suit and it doesn’t work when we see him with his devil make-up that looks like a rejected Klingon design.
Final Thoughts: The kills are fine, Crenna does an admirable job at playing a normal guy in a horrible situation and there’s a character that pulls a Friday the 13th Part 3 (yes, I know this came first) and plays pranks pretending to be dead and I love that in goofy horror flicks… and I swear to God they pull the sound of a TIE Fighter from Star Wars use it as a creepy sound during the crazier haunting moments. There are things to like, but THE EVIL is not a great film.
Currently in print on DVD: YES
Currently available on Netflix Instant: NO
Upcoming A Movie A Day Titles:
Thursday, October 28th: THE DEVIL DOLL (1936)
Friday, October 29th: DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (1981)
Saturday, October 30th: SCARECROWS (1988)
Sunday, October 31st: RAZORBACK (1984)
That’s one barely remembered movie down. Now I just need to find the one that had a bitchy mother character shoved into an electric can opener which catches her neck, turns her around and somehow decapitates her. Tomorrow’s flick is a Tod Browning classic called THE DEVIL DOLL.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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