A Name for Evil

Like so many movies I've seen recently, A NAME FOR EVIL starts off promisingly but it quickly, and I mean QUICKLY, degenerates into a stunning mess. Once Robert Culp rides that horse and accidentally joins a a bunch of partying hippies who all shed their clothes and have an orgy all over the forest, the film self-destructs, literally. BOOM!!! The whole thing becomes stultifyingly, inexplicably bad. What were they thinking? The ending is the weirdest looking one I've ever seen (the whole moment of Samantha Eggar falling towards the ground). And the scene when Culp makes love under water has to be the worst conceived scene ever put on film. It's 100% fake looking. The film is very short (thank god), which only points out how the folks behind the camera had no idea what they were doing and wanted to end the whole thing fast.

But the odd thing about this seldom seen movie is that the cinematography is stunning. I love this kind of photography. As bad as everything else is in this disaster, I have to give credit to the DP. Had the cinematography been average or just bad, then I think I would qualify A NAME FOR EVIL as one of the worst films ever made.

Perhaps it takes a certain kind of film viewer to appreciate the charms of A Name for Evil. As has been bemoaned by other reviewers, A Name for Evil has a disjointed story, a hippie orgy, and a full frontal sex scene with past his prime Robert Culp. Yet, for some viewers these eccentricities can be strengths. I have seen A Name for Evil twice now. I was not bored either time. The film kept me watching because, on the first viewing, I did not know what to expect next, and on the second viewing, I admired the film's mixtures of styles as a Gothic horror film is given early swinging seventies treatment, from Penthouse Films no less.

According to IMDb, A Name for Evil had a troubled production. It appears to this viewer that certain scenes were not shot, either because of time or because the filmmakers thought certain points were clearer than they were. However, the lack of a linear narrative does lend the film a certain disquieting mood, as the viewer is left almost as confused as Robert Culp's character.

There is a certain type of viewer who occasionally tires of professionally told plots and seeks out films not afraid to go off the rails, a viewer who loves when artiness is wedded to exploitation. All my years of watching Euro-horror, where plots did not matter as long as a scene was moody, surprising, or odd, has turned me into such a viewer. A Name for Evil surprises the viewer. From the opening credits over surreal paintings of twisted figures to the abrupt finale, A Name for Evil keeps the viewer off balance. I also think parts of it are well filmed. For instance, unlike one other reviewer, I find the underwater sex scene moody and hypnotic, having some of the off-kilter quality of Let's Scare Jessica to Death (another film I champion). Obviously, I cannot recommend A Name for Evil to most people, yet I will probably watch the film for a third time.

Much has been made of this movie's 'plot', or lack of one. The white horse is just not scary! The hippy scenes are dated and unintentionally humorous (I guess hippies love noodles). It could easily qualify for a Mystery Science Theater 3000 feature. But I really enjoyed the first thirty minutes or so of this movie. I liked the intro, and the photography is great. The dilapitated house in what appears to be the middle of nowhere is one of the more interesting settings I've ever seen in a ghost film. I like the fact that the caretakers wanted it to rot away. If they stayed away from the counter-culture movement and focused soley on telling a ghost story it would have been a better film.

Poor Robert Culp looks utterly bewildered in this strange oddity that never decides just what kind of film it wants to be. The production values are surprisingly strong, and the movie does have some striking visuals that will stick in your head. But the story is just about totally incoherent, with scenes seeming to be missing, scenes that don't seem to serve any purpose, and scenes that just don't make any kind of sense. If you do stick around, you will be rewarded with what just might be one of the most unintentionally funny orgy sequences every put onto film... as well as a frontal nude Culp, which must have made him glad that the movie was first shelved for several years, subsequently barely released to theaters, and only given a small video release on a now-defunct video label.

"A Name For Evil" is one of those seventies films that tries to blend a genre (horror, noir, crime, comedy, what-have-you) with the counter culture movement that had caught on by then and become a trendy, pop, fashion movement. Culp, who looks good for his age (he was in his early forties at the time) is way too long in the tooth for hippyville, but still, he's groovy man, really groovy. Clearly this is his movie, with an emphasis on his body rather than the women, evidenced by several beefcake scenes and one full frontal. He and his wife the beautiful Samantha Eggar, live in a not too distant futuristic world of oppression who decide to move to a huge gorgeous ruin of a lake house and go back to nature. The gigantic fixer-upper is haunted by the previous owner, "The Major", who, we are told repeatedly, does not like change. Creepy things happen and are discovered in the house, and go nowhere. Culp and Eggar have marital problems that go nowhere. The most bizarre moment comes late in the film when Culp rides off on a white horse after being unable to make love to his stunning wife. He ends up riding into a hippie hootenanny that quickly becomes a bizarre antique version of a music video with a folk song sung by a sombre looking young man and strange choreographed dance on the part of the youngins. An orgy ensues (natch) and Culp is officially a flower child (make that flower middle aged man, but at this point who cares), then it's back to the house for a stupid ending that tries to shock. I got the feeling during this movie, particularly with the presence of Culp's then wife who plays the hippie chick he hooks up with at the love-in, that this was some sort of excuse for the cast and crew to get away from the city and party. If you're looking for a ghost story or thriller, you'll be disappointed. If you're in the mood for a blast from the seventies past, where men still wore necklaces over flower patterned dress shirts and hated "THE MAN", check it out.