A Semente do Mal

My review was written in September 1987 after watching the movie on Camp video cassette.

"Evil Spawn", previously titled "Alive by Night" and "Deadly Sting", is a tolerable, poverty row variation on Roger Corman's 1959 Susan Cabot-starrer "The Wasp Woman". Topliner Bobbie Bresee provides enough flesh and ham acting to please camp followers (pic appropriately is released by Camp Video, from Fred Olen Ray's new AIP production banner.

In a script far too overloaded with in-jokes on the world of low-budget filmmaking, Bresee toplines as Lynn Roman, a fading superstar actress who jumps at the chance to look younger via a formula given her by unscrupulous scientist Evelyn Avery (played by Donna Shock, a pseudonym for Dawn Wildsmith). Side effects turn her, werewolf-style, into an insect-like monster.

Though some of the monsters on view are rubbery, pic's gore is impressive and combines with enough nudity to keep the hardcore horror fans alert, however, pic's jokes are unfunny and storyline is a drag. Besides Bresee, a cult figure from "Mausoleum", Wildsmith, from "Surf Nazis Must Die", is an elegant villainess. John Carradine appears in one scene of "generic footage", a lengthy dialog opposite Wildsmith in which both thesps speak entirely in euphemisms, suitable for splicing into any thriller film.

The original EVIL SPAWN was completed and released in the halcyon days of video, when just about anything that was made could find its way onto product hungry rental shelves and turn a profit for all involved. It is an okay low budget horror item. The revised and revamped ALIEN WITHIN inserts new footage with venerable genre stalwarts Richard Harrison and Gordon Mitchell, and twists the storyline in a different direction. The revised ALIEN WITHIN will be of interest to fans of these veteran actors and Fred Olen Ray. I believe Ray was involved with the original film, and ended up with the rights after some litigation, and elected to make the revisions with new footage. ALIEN WITHIN showed on TV and came out on video from a small outfit, MNTX, which also released Brett McCormick's MACON COUNTY WAR (with Dan Haggerty). I prefer the new version, but that's just my opinion.

... is in the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Some woman who's about to get chowed down on by some unseen evil opts to take the suicide route. She jams a gun into her mouth and get this... they cut to a shot of the wall behind her, brains and muck splatter the wall and a second later, you hear the gunshot. Give the sound editors a friggin' award! I rented this over ten years ago because my friend liked the nude woman on the cover so much that he had to see it. I haven't let him live it down since. Avoid at all costs and I do mean all.

How do you make a bad movie even worse? Apparently you hire Ted Newsom, give him a camcorder and put him under the not-so-watchful eye of producer Fred Olen Ray. Here we have the very fun Grade-Z classic EVIL SPAWN (1986) by director Kenneth J. Hall reedited and with new and pointless inserts shot on tape. The new scenes feature Jay Richardson and Suzanne Ager as cops sitting in a car talking, eating doughnuts and fighting an awful hand-puppet monster, Gordon Mitchell sitting at a desk on the phone and Richard Harrison turning into an pathetic rubbery monster and ripping Melissa Moore's top off. Scenes from the original film easily provide the most entertaining moments in this version, so you might as well seek it out. Forrest J. Ackerman is seen briefly in the old and the new footage.

EVIL SPAWN (original version): 5 out of 10

New footage contained on THE ALIEN WITHIN: 1 out of 10

Now, I knew about the movie from its title, but I have never actually had the opportunity to sit down and watch it. So when the opportunity presented itself here in 2024, of course I opted to check out the movie. Maybe I had been missing out on some late 1980s gold.

Turns out that I had indeed not been missing out on gold here. The movie was semi-watchable at best.

I am sure that writers Kenneth J. Hall and Ted Newsom put together what they deemed was a good script. But the transition from script to screen just wasn't successful. It was a rather mundane movie to sit through. And I have to admit that I didn't care one bit about any of the characters, much less did I actually remember their names.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie. But it should be said that the acting performances were fair. Nothing grand or memorable here, but it was fair enough given the material they had to work with.

Visually then "Evil Spawn" wasn't a good movie. The effects were cheesy. But not among the worst of effects I've seen in movies, and that is even in movies newer that "Evil Spawn".

The intro sequence with Fred Olen Ray and his wife was seriously some of the worst garbage I've ever seen. I don't understand why that rubbish even made it to the movie. It was so cringeworthy and painful to witness.

"Evil Spawn" is not a movie that I would recommend to horror sci-fi fans, nor to fans of the cheesy 1980s movies for that matter. And it certainly isn't a movie that I will return to watch a second time.

My rating of "Evil Spawn", from directors Kenneth J. Hall, Ted Newsom and Fred Olen Ray, lands on a three out of ten stars.