Prime Evil

"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.

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.

I watched this as one of the movies in Rhino's Horrible Horrors Vol. 1 box set. While it wasn't entirely horrible, it was pretty poor.

It starts off with some narration (which is absent for the rest of the movie), and a scene of a monk turning Satanist in the 1300s or something like that. Then in the present day, the death of a priest who was secretly a Satanist prompts a nun to go undercover to try to infiltrate the Satanists. She isn't given much to do for most of the movie, though.

There's a young woman who had been abused by her father and a group of child pornographers who plans to get married. Apart from the sexual abuse as a child, she's never had sex. Her grandfather is one of the Satanists and plans to use her in a sacrifice. He would like to take over the group.

There's also the Satanist's goon, who goes about like a slasher killing some people, abducting others. The cinematography and editing and so on aren't incompetent, but the acting and story are pretty lifeless. Surprisingly, there's no nudity. There's not a whole lot of blood, but there is some, and towards the end some people rapidly age or melt, I'm not sure.

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.

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."