Nel nome del maligno

"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.

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 got this movie in a collection of about twelve movies called "Gorehouse Greats". Funny thing is of the ones I have watched in it have been not all that gory. This one is also not all that gory, there is blood and lots of booby shots, but not a whole lot of gore. This one has a sect of devil worshipers living in modern day New York (at least I think it was New York). They perform sacrifices of blood relatives to Satan to stay nice and young, and they get bonus points if they are female and virgins. Meanwhile, a strange handyman is given a list and the next thing you know he is attacking a woman and her lover who is a rather clumsy kick boxer. Dude seems to knock out the handyman until the handyman teleports behind the dude and stabs him dead, then proceeds to kidnap the blond who offered no help during the scuffle. At this point the only thing worth seeing in the movie was the blond's boobs, and that is the theme of the movie. Boobs to see, not much plot to watch. I mean they show a sacrifice of a supposed virgin at the beginning of the film and it is supposedly the one guy's daughter, but she looked old enough to be the guys sister or something. Then a main gal's mother looks like she could be an older sister. Then a gal gets arrested for street walking and is said to be underage, if so being under 30 in New York must be underage. Then there is the boyfriend who raises objections over a certain priest as he kind of gets fresh with the main girl and it is obvious and the girl keeps going "Don't attack him" and stuff, though if I were the boyfriend I would have dumped the gal when she told me why she was hesitant about having sex as she had a bit to much baggage. I know it sounds kind of mean of me, but females dump men for being insecure and more inane reasons than what she had. If this review seems to be skipping around a bit I am just trying to be like the movie. You also have an undercover nun and two cops that looked like they were straight out of that Beastie Boys video Sabotage. So an all around bad effort, but they give you some boobs to look at and great lines like "Don't you wanna get poked?". I am not joking that line is in the film.

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.

Prime Evil tells of a satanic cult whose members can achieve immortality and invulnerability through the regular sacrifice of blood relatives to a hideous demon (that is about two foot tall and seems to be made of red rubber). Aged acolyte George Parkman (Max Jacobs) intends to prolong his powers for another thirteen years by taking the life of his virginal grand-daughter Alex (Christine Moore), and then wrest control of the cult from sinister leader Thomas Seaton (William Beckwith); but with Alex's boyfriend Bill King (Tim Gail) becoming increasingly suspicious of George, will the old man's wicked plans succeed?

After spending the 70s producing and directing porn, Roberta Findlay had a brief career making horror films, but in my opinion, it wasn't brief enough: a few months ago, I watched her horrendous '87 whorehouse horror Blood Sisters, and last night, against my better judgement, I checked out Prime Evil, and all the evidence so far suggests that the woman should have stayed in the 'bump and grind' business.

Findlay simply doesn't possess the fundamental skill set necessary to make a decent non-porn movie, her usual objective being to capture a juicy extreme close-up rather than to present a coherent story or obtain credible (non-sexual) performances from her actors (not that anyone from her dreadful cast looks capable of such an undertaking). A poorly developed script full of diabolical dialogue and precious little action doesn't help matters, of course, and with Findlay's visuals having that distinct porno quality (an effect helped no end by regular nudity from some suspiciously low-rent bimbos), the result is a nasty looking and amateurish yawn-fest that, although not quite as terrible as Blood Sisters, is still a chore to sit through.

3.5 out of 10, rounded up to 4 for the topless tarts, the rubbish demon and a laughable decapitation.