Nel nome del maligno

Okay yes, it's not good. But if you really give it a fair shot, it had some decent ideas behind it. The motivation for the villains is acceptable, the acting ranges from horrible to surprisingly decent, and the plot isn't half bad believe it or not. I think the disappointing thing about this movie is that it could have been pretty good, not great, but good if in the hands of a capable director.

Is it bad? YES, but it seems to stand out among the other exploitation schlock for some reason (granted it is exploitation schlock). I can't believe I'm writing this, but this movie begs for a remake, in an era where production companies insist on taking good nostalgic horror movies and making them mediocre, they should take a mediocre movie with decent ideas like this and make it, well, good.

If you can find this, check it out, just don't pay to much to see it, and maybe you'll agree with me.

I'm somewhat surprised by the bad reviews here; only in that I would GUESS someone who took the time to WATCH "Prime Evil" might well LIKE "Prime Evil." But there you go.

I think the film is somewhat better than that. Findley's film is clearly meant to be absurd and is mostly played for laughs. A good portion, if not all, of the silly humor works. William Beckwith is certainly game as a the head bad guy, and Christine Moore is a winning presence who helps you hang in there to the end.

Therein lies the problem, the film wears out it's welcome by about half an hour, and the comic cops who bring up the rear are more tiresome than amusing. Maybe Findley though She needed a lot of padding between the knockers and stage blood, but the film overplays it's hand.

Again, a lot of this plays like a parody of the devil worshiping cult film that goes way back to "The Black Cat", and if your into this kind of stuff at all you might enjoy "Prime Evil."

Okay, so we've got Roberta Findlay ("Tenement: Game of Survival", "Snuff") directing a cheesy 80's horror movie revolving on a brotherhood of devilish monks sacrificing young women to Satan himself and drinking their blood in order to remain immortal. How bad could this possibly be? Correction; it's unquestionably going to be extremely bad, but the right question to ask should be: How is this not going to be entertaining? What we have here is pure late-80's trash-gold, with a completely nonsensical and laughably incoherent plot, tacky make-up effects, gratuitous nudity and a whole lot of gibberish about Our Lord Satan! The script of "Prime Evil" is wonderfully incompetent and aimlessly skips from one theme onto the other without any form of continuity. The film opens in the year thirteen-hundred-forty something with a bunch of monks turning to Satanism because they're angry with God for allowing the Black Plague to kill millions of people. This was obviously a brilliant career move because the story suddenly jumps forward in time 600 years and all the monks contained their same age and virility. But the next winter sacrifice is coming up and one of the cult members suggests using his granddaughter because she's still a virgin. Meanwhile, the leader of the cult engaged a convicted killer to randomly kidnap the granddaughter's best friends and then – finally – there's also a sub plot about a devoted nun going undercover in the cult by order of the Catholic Church. This last sub plot is actually the most hilarious, since Sister Angela is hardly ever mentioned anymore after her initiation rites. This is why I personally love 80's horror movies! There are so many ideas yet they all just loosely connect together. There's no atmosphere of suspense whatsoever and even the whole devil-worshiping concept seems redundant. They're just a posse of bloodthirsty priests craving to cut open voluptuous young girls. There's fairly little gore until the climax arrives and that reddish puppet with horns, supposedly representing Lucifer, is just plain pitiable. The acting performances are horrible, but I don't suppose you expected it any other way. Boring, however, it was not.

A group of evil monks surface in New York City sacrificing humans left and right to Lord Satan.Fortunately,a brave and determined nun infiltrates the sect in an attempt to stop the immortals' demonic sacrifices."Prime Evil" is truly horrible.The action is very dull and the acting is bad.The gore effects made by Ed French are occasionally pretty effective and gruesome.Still the film is horribly boring,so don't waste your time with this one!

"Prime Evil" came in a boxed set of bad "b" movies. The hope was that it would be at minimum watchable. It met those expectations. The plot was complicated enough, and the format was such that it succeeded in building suspense. This is a horror movie without too much horror, and it is presented without any gratuitous violence. I liked the tale told from a feminine perspective. The reality is that, similar to "Rosemary's Baby", it is a tale that could actually be. That perhaps is where the horror creeps in, in retrospect. The cast was decent and had skills beyond that of your typical bad "b" film. Was I glad I watched it? Yes. Would I watch it again? Probably.