I was originally going to get back on the horse and start making videos for the Cinema Slayer YouTube channel again after I finally was past being sick and my hard drive dying and all of that business. I can't seem to get my complete focus back so instead I decided to write just a regular review here for The Evil instead of making a video for it. I will in the future eventually get around to putting a video together for The Evil, but unfortunately right now, it's just not going to happen. The energy still isn't there all the way yet. Besides that for this film, I have also decided to split my content between writing reviews on here to keep the content updated and to keep the content going on my YouTube channel as well. So I'm planning on making a list of movies to write about on here and a list to make videos for. I want to start putting a lot of time and work into this.
With that bull-squeeze out of the way, let's get to The Evil from 1978. I have this as a Roger Corman double feature on dvd with another film from 1988 titled Twice Dead. Never seen that one before, but I will get around to soaking it in at some point. The Evil is a decently solid entry from the late 70's that is part haunted house, part paranormal and part sludge fest. The pace is well put together overall, even though it just ends up being a slug in some spots with not a whole lot going on in between C.J. and Caroline buying this huge, old, beaten down mansion that they want to renovate and turn into a clinic for mental health patients. The groundskeeper at the beginning of the film is dispatched by way of the furnace randomly turning itself on while he's peeking into it after proclaiming "there ain't nothin'!". He proceeds to burn to death in a most comical way. Other characters that populate this film's run time are also burned alive, electrocuted, have their hand sliced with a power saw. There are some pretty cool kills and injuries with some good practicals here, but they're nothing that's going to make you zits and zombies herald this as a new favorite or anything. Actually, the whole piece is like that. The Evil is a very solid watch that holds together a pretty sweet haunted-by-the-mansion's-previous-owner plot, but it's nothing that's going to rip your underpants off and give you an orgasm.
The biggest dumb moment in The Evil is when C.J. stumbles under the house where Sam (the groundskeeper) was burned alive and finds these two door handles buried in the ground that are held closed by a metal cross, and what a surprise, he opens it like a clown and let's the horrible spirit of the previous owner out. But even before that happens, there are some weird occurrences throughout the house like them finding a book that has a bunch of empty pages, a head on the wall as a decoration that randomly turns towards Caroline to look at her as they enter the house with the students when they arrive to start sprucing the place up.
At the end of the day zits and zombies, I'm going to give The Evil a half-assed recommendation. It's a pretty well constructed haunted house flick from the late 70's, but it's nothing that's going to change your horror viewing life or make you kick a movie off of your personal top ten list. It's pretty good, but it's not that good. Albeit with the decent kills, okay characters and more than one person getting burned to a crisp in two different death scenes, The Evil in my opinion at best is probably a purgatory horror flick in the realm of the paranormal.
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