Evil Town

Awful, wretched and plain lousy... Apparently this film was cut together from the remains of three unfinished films??? Maybe you wouldn't guess it right away (there's plenty of films out there that are an incoherent mess), but the ending really makes the film look like it was never finished.

While extremely painful and super-boring to sit through, here's a few laughs I had:

-- There's this blond bimbo (apparantly an ex-playmate) that keeps on running topless during the first act of the movie. And boy, look at those big cahoocha's! You'd say the director would show some respect and love when filming those two wonders of nature, but one "smoochy"-scene has her pressing her naked breasts against her boyfriend's chest in such a way that they just look plain wrong. Like one of them is mutated, or something. Best part has her running topless through the woods: bounce, wobble, shake, bump!

-- There's a couple of scenes in which old people drug a young couple and fight with a young dude... all in slow-motion! They wave syringes, they get kicked in the face, fall on the ground, wrestle with the young dude... all in slow-motion!

-- You'll never believe the town's evil doctor! Not only he can't act, he also has a speech-problem of sorts. The guy just can't articulate and stutters his every line. "Pituitary gland" comes out sounding "Patwooatwy gland" and even a simple word like "country" sounds like "cµntwee".

And will you listen to that downright abominable and most inappropriate music on the soundtrack...

EVIL TOWN is one of the worst "small town with a secret"-horror films I've ever seen. Oh, and in case you're wondering: There's no zombies in it.

Two points for those cahoocha's as they always come in pairs. And that's it.

At least that's how I was hoping this movie would end. I managed to NOT absolutely hate this movie, although the rental synopsis was misleading. The only reason I tried "Evil Town" was my weakness for zombie movies, and this movie promised to be about a doctor who creates an army of the living dead. Not quite.

I regard "Evil Town" as an ultra-cheap "Pulp Fiction" of B-grade horror movies. It basically has three plots, all involving the same group of people in a sleepy town. (If anything, watch this one to see the sign in the opening minute of the movie - Smalltown, Pop. 666, Elev. 13) One plot involves two perverts who get a kick out of kidnapping girls who are passing through. Another is about an escaped patient from the local hospital. And the third and major plot is about the aforementioned doctor performing experiments at the same hospital, creating an army of the brain-dead who don't end up doing anything anyway.

So the acting is terrible. So the gore is non-existent. So the directing is flat and talentless. (The movie had 3 - count 'em, three - directors!) So the entire thing could be made by a group of friends and their immediate families. Hey, I know I've never seen a movie involving a town of rampaging senior citizens! If you want to see a movie where the only thing that sets the hero apart from all the other characters is his willingness to beat up old people, I say give "Evil Town" a quick view.

From what I understand this film was actually started in 1984 and completed in 1987. However, it used segments of other films which were produced earlier such as "God Bless Dr. Shagetz" and I suppose this is the reason "Evil Town" carries a production date of 1977. Regardless, this movie is essentially about a scientist named "Dr. Schaeffer" (Dean Jagger) who has invented a serum extracted from the pituitary gland which can extend a person's life. This is great news for the elderly residents of the small town who benefit from Dr. Schaeffer's research. Unfortunately, it is terrible news for any unlucky travelers who have the misfortune to stop there for gas as they are subsequently abducted and used as donors. This results in their becoming mindless creatures who are incapable of supporting themselves. That's not to say that they are necessarily "zombies" but rather poor souls who are reduced to a semi-vegetative state. As such, I don't consider this to be a "zombie movie" by any current standard. In any case, although the movie certainly had potential, there really wasn't any great horror or suspense which might have made this movie stand out and as a result I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Somewhere in the mid-90s, when I was actually too young for it, I read a terrifying book entitled "Darkness" by John Saul. The plot, if I remember correctly, was about a community of elderly people that structurally extracted a serum from the younger inhabitants and passers-by to maintain their own youthfulness. Back then already, I thought about how cool it must be if there existed a horror film version of this book.

Of course, the idea has been used in horror films already, and apparently even long before "Darkness" got published in 1991. Today I found out that "Evil Town" also features a very reminiscent plot, but despite the enormous potential, it's one of the worst and most boring horror movies of the 80s (and that's saying something).

"Evil Town" can only be described as hectic, unstructured, and hopelessly inept. What do you expect from a film that has three different directors and four different scriptwriters? What started out in the early 70s as a good idea by a promising young director (Curtis "L. A. Confidential" Hanson) quickly ended up in production hell and oblivion, until it was picked up again during the 80s and expanded with gratuitous nudity and dull sub plots. The nudity, primarily provided by voluptuous Lynda Wiesmeier, still stands as the highlight of the film; - even though shot quite distastefully. The essence of the story, namely the mad doctor and his rejuvenating serum, is totally ruined by the lack of tension, the absence of half-decent special effects, and by the actor (Dean Jagger) who can't even pronounce simple medical terms correctly.

Wretched film was the result of three (or two) unfinished films being edited together in order to create one film. The final results are a choppy and dull. What little plot there is, is about a crazed doctor bringing the dead back to life in order to create an army of zombies in a small town. Virtually no gore is present in this so called zombie outing and the film doesn't even entertain in a so bad it's good way. One of the absolute worst horror films to ever be made. Rated R.