A Name for Evil

This is one of those moments when you try to warn people about losing, perhaps, a good deal of their lives to this slopfest. I watched this "movie" last night in AMC, having nothing better to do. Alas, doing nothing would have been actually better, but I was NOT warned.

A Name For Evil starts promising enough, about a bores-out-of-his-skull architect (or something like that) that inherits this wreck of a house, supposedly built during the civil war era. This is supposed to be a haunted house movie, but it suddenly degenerates into somebody's acid trip, when Robert Culp goes out for a walk and jumps into this white horse, goes to a hippie party, gets a blonde chick laid, goes back home, confronts his wife (who believes the guy never left), goes OUT again but this time in his car, goes back to pick up the blond chick, frolic in a pond... then the guy gets back home and kills the wife in a pseudosurrealistic scene, and in comes the credits... uh, forget about the shadows the guy saw at his home, or the tunnel in the basement from where air with enough pneumatic pressure knocks his lantern off his hand...

I know some movie makers in the early 70s experimented a lot, but horror movies are pretty much straightforward affairs, so why in the world did the producers of this stinker see the need to change a well known and tried formula? I mean, gosh, the seventies WAS the decade of The Exorcist and The Omen... I do not know, but I guess the producers needed a good platform for the folksy singer that plays the guitar, accompanied by a full orchestra that happens to be invisible... well, lets say I do not think Mr. Culp remembers this stinker with much nostalgia.

Others have commented on the evidently different versions of this film, the nudity, beautiful cinematography, and scrambled plot. My two cents: "A Name For Evil" looks like a film that has gone through many hands. It definitely has it's strengths: the afore-mentioned photography of some spectacular locations, good performances from Culp and Egger, a stunning evocation of early '70's wackiness, and a few nicely creepy moments.

But I have to mention something else no one else has yet talked about: Dominic Frontiere's grand score. If you like Frontiere's work, especially his "Outer Limits" music which this strongly resembles, you owe it to yourself to at least listen to this movie.

"A Name For Evil" is one of those seventies films that tries to blend a genre (horror, noir, crime, comedy, what-have-you) with the counter culture movement that had caught on by then and become a trendy, pop, fashion movement. Culp, who looks good for his age (he was in his early forties at the time) is way too long in the tooth for hippyville, but still, he's groovy man, really groovy. Clearly this is his movie, with an emphasis on his body rather than the women, evidenced by several beefcake scenes and one full frontal. He and his wife the beautiful Samantha Eggar, live in a not too distant futuristic world of oppression who decide to move to a huge gorgeous ruin of a lake house and go back to nature. The gigantic fixer-upper is haunted by the previous owner, "The Major", who, we are told repeatedly, does not like change. Creepy things happen and are discovered in the house, and go nowhere. Culp and Eggar have marital problems that go nowhere. The most bizarre moment comes late in the film when Culp rides off on a white horse after being unable to make love to his stunning wife. He ends up riding into a hippie hootenanny that quickly becomes a bizarre antique version of a music video with a folk song sung by a sombre looking young man and strange choreographed dance on the part of the youngins. An orgy ensues (natch) and Culp is officially a flower child (make that flower middle aged man, but at this point who cares), then it's back to the house for a stupid ending that tries to shock. I got the feeling during this movie, particularly with the presence of Culp's then wife who plays the hippie chick he hooks up with at the love-in, that this was some sort of excuse for the cast and crew to get away from the city and party. If you're looking for a ghost story or thriller, you'll be disappointed. If you're in the mood for a blast from the seventies past, where men still wore necklaces over flower patterned dress shirts and hated "THE MAN", check it out.

Perhaps it takes a certain kind of film viewer to appreciate the charms of A Name for Evil. As has been bemoaned by other reviewers, A Name for Evil has a disjointed story, a hippie orgy, and a full frontal sex scene with past his prime Robert Culp. Yet, for some viewers these eccentricities can be strengths. I have seen A Name for Evil twice now. I was not bored either time. The film kept me watching because, on the first viewing, I did not know what to expect next, and on the second viewing, I admired the film's mixtures of styles as a Gothic horror film is given early swinging seventies treatment, from Penthouse Films no less.

According to IMDb, A Name for Evil had a troubled production. It appears to this viewer that certain scenes were not shot, either because of time or because the filmmakers thought certain points were clearer than they were. However, the lack of a linear narrative does lend the film a certain disquieting mood, as the viewer is left almost as confused as Robert Culp's character.

There is a certain type of viewer who occasionally tires of professionally told plots and seeks out films not afraid to go off the rails, a viewer who loves when artiness is wedded to exploitation. All my years of watching Euro-horror, where plots did not matter as long as a scene was moody, surprising, or odd, has turned me into such a viewer. A Name for Evil surprises the viewer. From the opening credits over surreal paintings of twisted figures to the abrupt finale, A Name for Evil keeps the viewer off balance. I also think parts of it are well filmed. For instance, unlike one other reviewer, I find the underwater sex scene moody and hypnotic, having some of the off-kilter quality of Let's Scare Jessica to Death (another film I champion). Obviously, I cannot recommend A Name for Evil to most people, yet I will probably watch the film for a third time.

The video box makes "A Name For Evil" look like an ordinary thriller but it's got a very distinct flavor to it. Robert Culp plays a man who gets fed up with the rat race and heads off with his wife (Samantha Eggar) to the forest to try to get himself back together. He soon begins having odd hallucinations. This is where the film comes into it's own. During the scenes in which Culp rides off on a white horse (the spirit of his grand-father) the film seems to become a bizarre nightmare. It gets hard to tell what is real and what is fantasy. It's almost like being on an acid trip. The film is disjointed and confusing at times which makes it annoying but the end result is a most unusual film that lingers in one's mind long after watching it.