THE EVIL: A Low-Budget Lesson In High-Effect Scare Tactics

Haunted house movies are always a smart bet for low bud­get film­mak­ers.  They need not have tricky opti­cals or a huge bud­get to make one: all it takes is a good nar­ra­tive hook, some con­vinc­ing actors, a con­vinc­ing loca­tion and the do-it-yourself knack to pull off a few home­spun spe­cial effects.  The only real limit is the tal­ent of the participants.

The film­mak­ers behind The Evil clearly took the above con­cepts to heart.  This 1978 low-budget hor­ror film tells the tale of a group of peo­ple who unwit­tingly choose a haunted house when search­ing out a suit­able loca­tion to start a rehab clinic.  Psychologist C.J. Arnold  (Richard Crenna) and his wife Dr. Caroline Arnold (Joanna Pettet) pick the house out.  Their sci­ence pro­fes­sor friend Raymond (Andrew Prine) meets them at their new loca­tion to help fix it, along with a group of past patients and friends that include famil­iar t.v. faces like Lynne Moody and Cassie Yates.

However, trou­bling things begin to hap­pen once the group set­tles in to work.  A pet dog sud­denly turns vicious and Caroline sees a hazy white appari­tion that guides her toward an ages-old diary that has a coded warn­ing about the house’s dark secrets.  When the house claims a casu­alty, the group tries to leave — only to dis­cover that the house has locked them in.  They strug­gle to find a way out using ratio­nal meth­ods as the house’s entity picks away at their ranks.  The sur­vivors ulti­mately real­ize that their enemy must be fought with meth­ods beyond the realms of sci­ence and reason.

The results aren’t the most unique or orig­i­nal vari­ant on the haunted house sub­genre — but they are unde­ni­ably effec­tive.  Donald Thompson’s script is a no-nonsense affair that gets every­one in the haunted house and gets the scares rolling with speed while also giv­ing the char­ac­ter­i­za­tions enough dimen­sion for the audi­ence to get invested.  C.J. is the req­ui­site ‘doubt­ing Thomas’ who strug­gles to be ratio­nal while Caroline is his open-minded oppo­site, cre­at­ing an inter­est­ing ten­sion to sup­port the main nar­ra­tive.  Raymond adds another shad­ing to the sto­ry­line with his attempts to use sci­ence to com­bat the house’s unseen forces.

However, an even big­ger part of mak­ing a haunted house flick work is hav­ing skilled actors who can sell the audi­ence on the scares.  The Evil comes up aces in this depart­ment thanks to a well-chosen cast:  the always-solid Crenna con­vinc­ingly sum­mons up the intel­lec­tual weight and force­ful per­son­al­ity nec­es­sary to make C.J. con­vinc­ing while the wil­lowy, ethe­real Pettet is an ideal choice for the mem­ber of the group who “feels” the spir­its.  Prine is amus­ingly cocky in the early stages of the film before suf­fer­ing a slide into ghost-induced mad­ness that he pulls off with a pro’s skill.  There’s also a mem­o­rable turn by the actor who por­trays the tit­u­lar force but view­ers should dis­cover that sur­prise for themselves.

Finally, The Evil ben­e­fits from vig­or­ous direc­tion by Gus Trikonis.  This future t.v. direc­tor built his rep­u­ta­tion on a string of ener­getic, well-directed b-movies dur­ing the 1970’s and The Evil is per­haps his best.  He effec­tively deploys Mario DiLeo’s styl­ish cam­er­a­work and an appro­pri­ately creepy/bombastic score by Johnny Harris to cre­ate a good, old-fashioned “blood and thun­der” atmos­phere guar­an­teed to pull fans of vin­tage hor­ror right in.  The effects can be bit rough around the edges at times (par­tic­u­larly the ones that require an opti­cal com­po­nent, like an elec­tro­cu­tion) but the com­bi­na­tion of strong per­for­mances and savvy direc­tion gets the viewer past such bumpy spots.

Trikonis is also smart enough to know that the audi­ence needs a hand­ful of shocks to keep them focused on the story so he works up some mem­o­rable set­pieces along the way, like Moody being thrown around the room by an unseen attacker that tears away at her clothes and a spooky scene where Pettet dis­cov­ers her com­pan­ions are pos­sessed and enact­ing some unholy rit­ual over the body of one of the dead.  The fact that Trikonis makes these scenes work with only rudi­men­tary spe­cial effects makes his work all the more impressive.

To sum up, The Evil is a solid addi­tion to the haunted house sub­genre and a nice object les­son in how film­mak­ing and act­ing skills are the best spe­cial effects.

The Evil / Twice Dead [Double Feature] First time on DVD for both titles! Two chill­ing tales of sus­pense and sur­vival in haunted houses!