The Evil Below

My review was written in July 1989 after watching the film on Raedon video cassette.

This routine South African-lensed thriller about legendary evil scares up little interest in its video release.

Comfortable team of Wyane Crawford and June Chadwick go diving for a treasure ship that sank in 1683. They encounter rivals for the booty, as well as shark attacks and lots of local talk about "the devil walks on this island". Incoherent nightmares pad out the running time. Lack of a decent budget puts the kibosh on this one.

It's ho-hum low adventure. Crawford is okay in his typical ne-er-do-well action role.

They sure loved their aquatic Sci-Fi/horror tales at the end of the 80s! In less than two years, no less than six similarly themed movies were unleashed upon cult-loving audiences. Of course, of all those, only James Cameron's "The Abyss" is a REALLY good film, and the other five vary from mediocre to abysmal. "Deepstar Six" and "The Rift" are titles I proudly rank among my guilty pleasures, but together with the horrendous "Lords of the Deep", this "The Evil Below" is the worst of the worst.

It's an indescribably tedious and uninteresting story of a hermit boat captain in the Caribbean teaming up with a mysterious woman to search for a sunken 17th century Spanish galleon named El Diablo. The ship supposedly still hides great treasures, but it's protected by supernatural forces and whoever tries to enter it unleashes a curse. Or something like that, at least, I must admit I wasn't paying attention the whole time. This is clearly more of an adventure flick than a horror movie, and it's even worse if they are boring. None of the characters, good or villainous, are worth mentioning and even the underwater footage isn't the least bit remarkable.

The VHS cover for The Evil Below makes it look like a cool underwater horror flick. Sadly it's closer to a boring adventure flick and has no real horror elements. It starts off with some divers who get attacked and we see a bit of blood, but that's the only blood in the entire film.

The Evil Below isn't the worst around, but for a horror film it is tediously boring. The acting is decent and to be honest the only thing that keeps you watching is the developing romance between the two leads. There's a few nightmare sequences where it just seems like the director didn't know what to do. I manged to sit through it all (just about) but I wouldn't recommend this film to ANYONE. Horror fans might want a copy for the cool VHS cover, but it's best left at that.

This movie was total rubbish. A typical 1980s flick. Over the top n moronic.

There was no action no suspense n no tension. I would class it as a drama of sorts. Definitely not a horror.

The acting was terrible n the characters were benign n wooden.

The story was ridiculous n the plot was so outrageous.

Everything about this movie was bland n so lacking in charisma.

The ending was really really lame n so predictable.

I can not recommend this movie at all even if you like maritime mayhem.

Now this is by no means the worst film I've ever seen, but it might be one of the cheapest looking. And at under 90 minutes in length it still plods on. The cast are universally dull, the two leads are slightly better but that's not saying much. The plot about sunken treasure has all been done better many times and as for the Evil Below, it doesn't ever really happen. One two be left under the waves.