Good Against Evil

I saw this on TV back in 1977 when I was in high school. The next day me and all the other kids in school were ripping it apart. It's a predictable yawner about a kid being the Devil's child...or something like that. The exorcism at the end has certainly got to be one of the most BORING ones ever filmed! And, since it was a TV movie, no violence, no blood, no skin...no NOTHING! This even has a silly ending to pave the way for a TV series (which, thankfully, never came about). It might be enjoyable to watch with a roomful of friends to tear apart...but it just might put everybody to sleep. Add to this some truly terrible acting and you've got a worthless movie. Avoid.

This is a real waste of time. Only 74 minutes long, but seems much more, a dreary, sanitised "Exorcist" style plot is trotted out in typical seventies TV movie style. That means no violence and very little action as a group of satanists plot to stop their chosen disciple from falling in love with any man who will stand in the way of her union with the god Astoroth. Even Hammer's "To the devil a daughter" which was weakly plotted along similar lines, had more going for it than this tedious offering. Too much chocolate box romance and too little horror sinks this one. Not suprisingly, this pilot movie didn't launch a series. I guess the producers realised that there wasn't much they could do with the format of a priest and a lovesick man mooning around the country looking for his lost love and throwing in the odd exorcism every week .A few TV movies from the seventies managed to stir up some shudders, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, The Night Stalker, Gargoyles, Trilogy of Terror spring to mind, but this anaemic offering deserves to remain anonymous.

Good Against Evil is a 70's American made-for-TV film, more specifically it was a pilot to a series that never was. This factor explains its strange open-ending which leaves one crucial plot-strand completely unresolved. It owes a pretty obvious debt to The Exorcist (1973) and to the 70's thirst for occult horror in general. It tells the story of a satanic group who brutally manage the birth of a little girl in the 50's. 22 years later she starts stepping out with a journalist completely unaware of her evil guardians. These occultists once again step out from the shadows to put a stop to this liaison, having already pencilled the girl in as the bride of their evil demon Astaroth.

This is obviously a bit of an anomaly in the sense of it being a pilot with no real resolution. I found this initially quite baffling but to be honest it didn't really bother me too much. In fact, the oddness of the finale makes for quite a distinctive and unusual ending. The content on the lead up was fairly run-of-the-mill occult horror stuff, with several scenes that take ideas from other movies from the time. But I felt it sort of worked quite well on the whole and thought the opening segment set in the 50's was especially well done, particularly in how they played upon how sinister the nun's with the big hats can appear. Admittedly, the film sort of loses momentum once it switches to the story of the little possessed girl in a segment that owes a huge amount to The Exorcist. But up to that point I honestly felt pretty involved in this one. On a side note, it is worth pointing out that the current poster image used for it here on IMDb is hilariously misleading; it makes it look like it must be a sexploitation flick. I can only imagine the disappointment that many people had if they bought this film on the basis of this cover.

This was meant as a pilot film, being an initial sequence for a projected television series that did not come about, and it is quite clear why it was not found to be acceptable, since it is immensely uninventive, with both its format and attitudes plainly copied from William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST, released but a few years prior, and the 1968 ROSEMARY'S BABY, directed by Roman Polanski. Two primary threads are woven into the narrative, the first relating the efforts of one Mister Rimmin (Richard Lynch), who is in fact Astaroth a Grand Duke of Hell, to breed with a young woman, Jessica (Elyssa Davalos), who has been reared and protected by a coterie of Satanists from infancy through her 22nd year (the present), with an objective to produce a child that will rule the world in favour of The Forces Of Evil. Since Satan and his court, whose acolytes are legion, may readily mate with any number of women at any time that they choose, there seems to be little point in Rimmin tarrying for Jessica. However, such flaws in logic are matched with those of risible continuity issues. The second principal theme in the plot is of the soap opera variety, a blithely groundless love affair between Jessica and a young man, Andy (Dack Rambo) whose romantic role in Jessica's life upsets the Duke of Darkness no end. His attempts to interfere with the budding relationship of the young lovers is empty of those cunning components that are requisite for films of the "Thriller" genre. The original television airing was for only 72 minutes, and the reason is revealed by an ongoing spate of orchestral crescendi along with fades indicating arrival of commercial interruptions. The release in the DVD format adds about 25 minutes, with little overall improvement, because of uninspired parallel editing that fails to engage a viewer with either of the contrasting story lines. There is even an exorcism here, in spite of its having little significant connection to the narrative but rather a bit more with the Friedkin film that it partially apes. Direction seems to be unfocused, and few able acting turns are to be found; nonetheless Richard Lynch, playing Astaroth as earthling, is impressive as ever. The film ends abruptly, with some lead-in dialogue to subsequent chapters that did not occur, an unsatisfactory finish to a work that is rapidly paced, easy to watch, and easy to forget. There are a good many such minor productions being reissued with fresh packaging to cash in on the burgeoning popularity of DVDs. This one should probably have remained wherever it was mouldering.

This film begins much like "Rosemary's Baby", though in this case Beelzebub apparently got a girl--a girl who grew up and had no idea she was the child of pure EVIL!! During much of the first part of the film, she is wooed by a creepy suitor (Dack Rambo)--who is supposed to be romantic because he won't take NO for an answer (I sure was getting rapist vibes from this!). Then, abruptly, the film switches and you hear nothing more about the lady after she is hypnotized! The plot changes to a child who is possessed and her mother (a young Kim Cattrall)--and the viewer is left wandering what happened to the Devil's daughter?! And, by the end of the film, you have absolutely no idea whatsoever! The film just abruptly ends!

"Good Against Evil" was apparently a failed TV series pitched by ABC. It's hard to imagine now, but with the popularity of books and films such as "The Exorcist" and "The Omen", someone at the network thought it would be a good idea to create a TV series about the fight between the followers of Satan and God. The problem is that although this MIGHT have worked, the DVD for this is amazingly unsatisfying to watch--it's not really a movie but PART of a plot for a film that was never completed. What they did show really isn't very good and since there is no ending or even a reasonable stopping point, I can't see any reason to recommend it. It literally stops as if they just ran out of film!! Not worth your time.