The October Ordeal Day 9: 976-Evil

October 9th: 976-Evil (1989)

Robert Englund may have picked up a few ideas for his directorial debut watching Wes Craven work; 976-Evil is very much in the style of Craven's 80s output. Unfortunately, this film is quite unexceptional. Englund’s direction is competent, but the film itself is middle of the road: not great, not horrible, just very low-key and unambitious.

976-Evil is a tale of Satan-sponsored nerd-rage revenge (a premise also found in such middle-of-the-road pictures as Evilspeak and The Gate 2). The nerd here is repressed mama’s boy Hoax (that’s really his name), a straight-A student living in awe of his biker cousin Spike. Spike is the black sheep of the family, who’s mother has recently died. His aunt is Hoax’s Christian-Fundamentalist mother Lucy (Sandy Dennis), a cat-collecting fanatic who’s withholding Spike’s inheritance until he turns 18, essentially keeping him hostage.

Despite this unhealthy living situation, things are going alright, until Spike (Patrick O’Bryan) finds an ad for daily “Horrorscopes” in a porno mag. “Dial 666-976-EVIL” the ad says. Drunk enough to try it, Spike calls and inadvertently opens the gates to hell. A strange voice on the other end gives him situation-specific bad advice. With Spike, the advice is about misdemeanor-level. When Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys) decides to call, things get much more intense. In the film’s pivotal moment, Hoax follows Spike and his girlfriend Suzie (Lezlie Deane) to the movies on a date. Spike is derailed at the entrance by his loser pals, all gambling addicts running a high-stakes game in the projection booth (the set for these games is fantastic, with Black Flag and A Clockwork Orange posters everywhere). Hoax shows up to intercept a very pissed-off Suzie. Their first date at a pizza joint is going smoothly, until Suzie finds a pair of her panties in Hoax’s back pocket(!), and storms out. Hoax over-reacts a bit and hexes Suzie in a black-magic ritual involving a giant pentagram and a pizza plate full of poisonous spiders. From then on Hoax becomes an elf-faced demon with claws and a pitch-shifted voice, and its up to Spike to send him back to Satan, with the help of the school principal and a private investigator (J.J. Cohen and Maria Rubell as stock support).

976-Evil is stuck in neutral right until the end. It never takes off. The spark of life found in even Craven’s worst films is missing here. Englund clearly had a lot more to learn. That said, its competent; had the script and actors been upgraded, this could have been a good film. As it stands, 976-Evil is as average as it gets. There is a sequel, which I will try to seek out in the coming weeks.

The October Ordeal Day 4: The First Power

October 4th: The First Power (1990)

The First Power is a film which stands in the shadow of the great 80s and early 90s occult thrillers: Jacob’s Ladder, From Beyond, Prince of Darkness, Candyman, Angel Heart and The Serpent and the Rainbow. While this statement may be derisive by definition, I don’t mean to say that there is never a possibility that a film like The First Power can be good; in fact, the existence of Samurai Dreams is in part predicated upon the premise that it can. While countless “me too” rip-offs crowd around superior films, this does not mean that there will not be superior “B” category films like The First Power.

I’ve actually had my eye out for this film for a while. About a year ago, I saw it for sale at a local video store for three bucks. I got something else instead, and decided to come back for it later. However, the next time I made a visit to the video store in question, it had closed its doors for good (an all-too common occurrence these days). So when I saw it for sale at Astro Video a few months ago, I was happy to throw it in my stack and take it home.

Lou Diamond Phillips plays Logan, a tough cop chasing a vicious satanic serial killer named Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober) with the help of Tess Seaton (Tracy Griffith), a psychic. Tracy has “the second power,” while Channing has the third: possession. While Tess is a reliable police informant, Logan does not come to trust her abilities fully until Channing continues killing after his execution and Logan starts seeing some pretty weird things of his own. Also around to help out is Sister Marguerite (Elizabeth Arlen), a nun who knows quite a bit about Satan and the three heavenly powers (as she holds a cross she says to Logan: “the only person in history to have all three powers,” and then pulls half the cross away, revealing a blade). The first power we can assume is held by Logan, but the film is somewhat ambiguous about this.

Lou Diamond Phillips is not a good actor in the traditional sense. That is to say, his range is very limited; Phillips can not adapt to any character. He can however play one character very well. So, like Keanu or Furlong, he can be cast well. And Phillips is more than adequate here, pulling off angry, confused, cynical and impulsive. The acting in The First Power is uniformly workmanlike. The gray and black indoor and outdoor sets are well decorated, and communicate well the kind of seedy urban (in this case L.A.) environment where occult power could conceivably manifest itself (see also: Candyman and Larry Cohen’s Q: The Winged Serpent). The First Power does a lot of things right—albeit while working within a tested framework—and ends up being wholly entertaining.

The most disappointing thing about The First Power is its conclusion. So often a genre film will unnecessarily end with an ambiguous “Gotcha!” moment, which subverts audience expectation, but for no real reason. As vague as what exactly “the first power” is in the film (and who has it) the ending is even more confusing. A simple and concise conclusion would have been appreciated. But this criticism aside, I very much enjoyed The First Power.

(This review originally appeared in Samurai Dreams issue #4. Its been a busy day so I had to cop out. I haven't posted this review here, so I think I can get away with it. Luckily I don't have many such reviews on reserve, so I'll need to be more diligent in the coming weeks)