Naked Evil

NAKED EVIL is one of the most obscure British horror films out there, and due to the Jamaican angle it seems to be much better known in America than it is here. It's a pity, as it has much in interest and common with other black magic-themed horrors of the era, particlarly NIGHT OF THE EAGLE. The story is about rival Jamaicans battling on the streets of London. Some are studious academics, while others are low lives, and the voodoo angle comes in with the introduction of creepy 'obis', graveyard bottles that contain evil spirits. Before long, poltergeist-style activity is decimating the cast. This is filmed in a lean, documentary style and the scare scenes are effectively staged, although the pacing is glacial at times.

For the most part, this is a black and white cheapie lensed in 1965 in England and based on a tired play "The Obi" by Jon Manchip White. A more exploitive title was tacked on "Naked Evil", but don't expect any nudity here. The story revolves around an English hamlet populated with several Jamaicans, some of whom are the usual ruffians you'd find at your local 7 - 11 mini mart while the others are an atypical crowd of Jamaican science students who live at the voodoo infested school hostel. Somehow, never very well explained, these two groups are at war with each other. Trapped in the middle of all this, is a stuffy school hostel headmaster who is almost always drunk. Also skulking through the badly lit hallways is an ancient Jamaican janitor who may or may not be making the dread "Obi" -- death objects made of old bottles stuffed with graveyard dirt and chicken feathers. As one can imagine, the goings on in this nest of unsavory types are breathtaking in their complexity. And for 75 of its 85 minute running time, nothing actually happens. In the last 10 minutes something actually does take place and those last 10 minutes are almost worth staying awake for.

After doing nothing at the box office, this stinker was picked up by an American releasing outfit and was pastiched together with a color opening, mid section and conclusion starring the immortal screen legend Lawrence Tierney. The rest of the British film with a few minutes excised and strangely tinted were stuck together and re-released upon a public who in its wisdom still refused to watch. Now the thing was retitled and probably did some business in Texas where B movies go to die.

In conclusion, I must say, this is the finest film of the long and cherished career of Jamaican thespian Brylo Forde; without him this pastiche would have been intolerable, indeed. As it stands now, it is merely worthless.

I have to say at the outset that I have a major complaint about the DVD for this film by Image Entertainment. Like other Image DVDs, this one has no closed captions nor does it have DVD captions. Considering that there are a lot of thick British and Jamaican accents in the film and I am slightly hard of hearing, it was frustrating watching NAKED EVIL. I understand that it costs money to caption films, but still think it unfair to make customers struggle to follow everything being said in the film. Had this been on an older videotape I could understand but not with a DVD that was released long after captioning became the norm.

NAKED EVIL is packaged along with EXORCISM AT MIDNIGHT--which is essentially the same film but with a few added goofy special effects. Considering how similar they both are, I doubt if you'll want to watch them both. And, oddly, they do not have separate entries on IMDb.

The film begins with two Jamaican gangs in the UK fighting each other. By mistake, an Obi (a bottle filled with graveyard earth) is broken--releasing a demon that makes people kill themselves in dramatic ways. The police are assisted by Father Goodman and headmaster Mr. Benson in their investigation. Naturally, all kinds of scary crap occurs until you reach the stirring conclusion.

Overall, despite reasonably good production values, a rather dull story that never seemed to involve me. I wanted to like this film a lot more than I did--after all, it's about voodoo! But, unfortunately it's just a chore to watch.